Father’s Day, like Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day is a man-made holiday. A synthetic creation of our culture rather than an organic product of the Christian calendar.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against these observances. I’m for them. But they do have the effect of tainting anything done on them with a slight element of perceived obligation.

In other words, if on August 14th I spontaneously bring my wife flowers and a handwritten note expressing my devotion, she is likely to feel nothing but pure, crystalline appreciation and delight. She’ll think, “My goodness, my husband really cares about me.”  But that same gesture on February 14th, while being met with gratitude, will not have near the same impact.

Indeed, several days before Valentine’s Day each year, my bride usually starts saying things like, “Please don’t feel like you have to get me anything for Valentine’s Day.” And she means it. “Okay,” I say dutifully, while mentally trying to figure what I’m going to get her. After all, I’m not going to be THAT guy. You know. The guy who didn’t do anything for the wife he loves on Valentine’s Day.

Do you see what I mean? Even the most heartfelt expressions invariably pick up extra baggage in transit on these days. It’s unavoidable.

Of course, the answer isn’t to boycott the holiday. It’s to make sure we’re faithful to express love and gratitude on other days as well. It’s those random, surprising, spontaneous expressions that carry the pure power to bless.

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Today is my first Father’s Day since Dad went to Heaven back in September. Tomorrow is his birthday. He would have been 82. Father’s Day always fell within a day or two of his birthday which always resulted in combining the two observances for him.

Just this last week, Mom held a giant yard sale in which she sold much of Dad’s accumulated man-stuff. Actually, my sisters and brother-in-law organized the sale. Mom’s part was to agree to allow stuff to be sold (and to allow a bunch of stuff to be hauled to the landfill.)

My sisters went through a “junk room” and an attic in the old homestead that had 40+ years accumulation. They found quite a few treasures. Among them:

• Five $25 U.S. savings bonds that had matured sometime back in the late ’70s.
• A bank envelope with several hundred dollars in it.
• The funeral service registry book from my grandfathers funeral (1968).
• The “Conrad Birdie” costume I wore in Eastern Oklahoma State College’s production of Bye Bye Birdie (Spring 1978)
• An orange vinyl ’60s Modern swivel chair from an ultra-mod dining set Mom bought back in 1968.
• And this . . .

My sister sent me this picture and at first I didn’t recognize the trucks as being mine. But then I looked at the bridge on the box and neurons deep in my memory cells started firing. I also have a memory of assembling the plastic tubing that comprised the “track” that the battery powered trucks ran on.

The date on the box is 1966. I would have been seven years old the year this showed up under the Christmas tree.

At another point in the excavation, they came across a pair of little spurs. These, actually:

I remember these well, even though they go back even farther into my childhood. I got them the same Christmas I received my first pair of cowboy boots. The one’s I’m wearing in this picture:

Yes, that’s me, second from the right rocking the white sweatshirt. ( I think it says “Bonanza.”) My little brother is wearing the footie jammies. If he’s two years old here, then I’m four.

By the way, those five $25 savings bonds that were sitting in box in our old house for the last 34 years? . . . Guess how much that $125 would have grown to today if it had been put in a compounding investment bearing an average of 10% per year.

About $3,200.

Enough to buy a very, very nice pair of cowboy boots. And maybe even some awesome spurs.

###

Eight great movies about Fathers or Fatherhood:

Field of Dreams

The Natural

Father of the Bride

Big Fish

The Road to Perdition

Mr. Mom

My Life

Taken

We were “five” at church last night for the first time in quite a while. Which was nice. We have all three Female Offspring Units at home for a brief season. In a few weeks FOU #2 heads back to Norman to start a job. Meanwhile #1 is searching for meaningful employment with a freshly signed Baylor University sheepskin under her arm.

She is limiting her search to the Dallas-Fort Worth market so she can live at home and get some student loans paid off before launching out on her own. Of course, the DFW market is a pretty good one to be limited to. It’s the fourth largest metropolitan area in the nation. And the Texas economy is much less anemic than in most other areas of the nation.

Nevertheless, her efforts so far in finding a job commensurate with the extraordinary time, effort and especially, expense involved in obtaining a degree from a prestigious university have not produced a breakthrough. She is not alone.

A recent survey revealed that about 72% of recent college graduates are currently working in the service sector. (Translation: They’re waiting tables and working at The Gap.) Another study showed that fewer than half of recent college graduates are finding jobs that actually require a college degree.

And to piggyback on my previous post about the current economic “recovery,” a news item last week pointed out that roughly half of the new jobs created last month are directly attributable to McDonalds.

There’s nothing wrong with working in fast food. It’s honest work and, for the diligent and enterprising, will invariably lead to bigger better things. But for those emerging from college with $50k-$100k in student loans, it’s a prescription for a decades of indentured servitude.

All of this is causing a long-overdue reevaluation as to whether the expense of college is worth it. (See here for example.)

Graduates with degrees in engineering or science are doing just fine. Liberal arts majors, not so much. As with many of our current troubles, the roots of this problem can be traced to a progressive article of faith that, when enacted into policy produces ugly unintended consequences.

In this case it’s the dual presuppositions that every person who wishes to “succeed” should go to college and that every person who wants to attend college should be able to do so (either at taxpayer expense or with taxpayer subsidized debt).

These twin articles of faith resulted in flooding college campuses with students over the last several decades. Then the immutable laws of supply and demand kicked in. Increased demand for admission slots sent costs soaring. And in a simultaneous double whammy, the glut of graduates flooding the labor markets diluted the value of those ever-more-expensive diplomas.

Why is this? Because flooding a market with something cannot help but dilute the value of that something. Put another way when everyone is special–nobody is.

The “everyone has a right to to go into debt for a college education” paradigm is similar to the “everyone has a right to go into debt so they can own a house” article of faith among progressives.

The latter paradigm, and the policies that flowed from it, produced both the housing bubble and the sub-prime loan debacle that produced the current crisis.

Right now searching the phrase “higher education bubble” produces more than 123,000 results. The top result is this excellent op-ed by Michael Barone: “The Higher Education Bubble Poised to Burst”

Of course, we know God is going to open up a great door for our girl. She’s bright, articulate, is an outstanding written and verbal communicator, and walks in great favor. All that trumps the averages and trends.

@@@

It’s been an fascinating week for me and my fellow students of Palin Derangement Syndrome.

As I write, powerful left-wing media institutions like the New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC,  and Mother Jones magazine have rallied several small armies of zealous volunteers to pour over a recently released cache of Palin’s private emails from her abbreviated tenure as governor of Alaska.

It’s an amazing precedent that liberal Palin-haters have won in the court ruling that the state of Alaska must release 24,000 pages of Palin’s private emails because she discussed state business in some of them. I promise you, it is a precedent that will come back to bite them in the hinder parts.

Meanwhile, the great search for dirt or mockery fodder among the emails has thus far produced nada. Zilch. On the contrary, the whole thing seems to be in the midst of backfiring on the vicious pack of snarling, sneering elites.

What has emerged from the emails is the not-too-surprising news that Palin received numerous death threats from deranged haters during he tenure as governor.

And if there is a bombshell, it this one that just blew up in the faces of all those who have fed bizarre conspiracy theories about Sarah Palin’s youngest son, Trig.

For the first time, we now have the full text of an email Palin sent to her extended family sharing the news that she is pregnant and that the child she is carrying as been determined to have Down’s Syndrome. Palin chose to write the message as if it was written by God, to her and her husband. Here it is:

I’m convinced that future historians will look back on the 2006 and 2008 elections as years in which Americans chose the worst possible government at the worst possible moment.

Not that the preceding governmental policies were all that great. Indeed, we now know that most of the apparent prosperity that followed the bursting of the Internet stock bubble in the spring of 2000 was fake, unsustainable prosperity based upon dirt-cheap mortgage money that created the housing bubble plus out-of-control consumer credit card debt.

Things were definitely going to get ugly economically around 2008 no matter what. That was baked into the cake long ago. But what the U.S. electorate did by putting Democrats in control of both houses of Congress in 2006 and then handing them the White House too in 2008, was put in charge those least ideologically, philosophically, and morally equipped to manage the crises. Indeed, it was like having one’s house on fire and calling in the gasoline brigade. The Republican firefighters might have been inept, but at least they would have used water.

That brings us the latest update of ClusterStock’s employment chart, which compares this recession and “recovery” with that of past recessions since World War II.

Sadly, we’re in the red line at the bottom. The dotted line shows what employment levels would have been without the wave of temporary census worker hiring. In other words, there has been almost no recovery.

The chart shows that in the past, steep drops in employment were invariably followed by equally steep rebounds. Indeed, the pattern is, the more dramatic the drop in employment, the more dramatic the recovery. It’s the classic business cycle at work–creating a predictable and natural sine wave on economic growth charts.

But not this recession. What is different about this one? Three words:

Hope and Change.

As I have noted in past cranky, gloomy posts (like this one, for example), this administration has been conducting a quiet (but obviously effective) war on business owners from day one. And it is business owners that create jobs. From the day Mr. Obama’s crew got unpacked in Washington, small-to-medium sized businesses have been under assault from virtually every department of the Executive Branch.

OSHA, the National Labor Relations Board, the EPA, Health and Human Services, and about a half dozen different departments within Eric Holder’s Justice Department have been a part of this shock-and-awe campaign.

So what was this President’s recent response? Blame the business owners.

CNBC: “Obama Tells Companies to ‘Step Up’ and Hire Workers”

Right. It’s not that business owners are being perfectly rational in holding off hiring while the government is being run by a bunch of lefty academics who have never so much as run a lemonade stand in their lives and view with disdain anyone with the huevos to launch a business and consider profit an inherent evil to be minimized if at all possible. America’s business owners just aren’t being patriotic.

“Step up” indeed. I suspect business owners will begin to step up right after Mr. Obama gets invited by the voters to step down.

Add this to the extensive and growing “Evidence that Western Civilization is Doomed” list.

Occasionally, as Mrs. Blather and I drive through what’s left of the U.S. 114 – U.S. 121 interchange in Grapevine (it’s currently blown up to allow for a long-needed extreme makeover) one of us will shake a head and comment on the proliferation of boob-themed restaurants there.

A recent post on the Business Insider blog called  them “Breastaurants.” (Warning: pics accompanying article are a carnival of bare midriffs and pierced navals.)

First there was just a Hooters there–the creepy, pervy grandfather of all boob-themed eateries–nestled amid TGI Friday’s, California Pizza Kitchen, Don Pablo’s and a half dozen other national chains.

But success invariably triggers imitation. And the Hooters chain has been wildly successful. Now the TGI Friday’s has been replaced by something called “The Tilted Kilt” which, according that Business Insider article, is clearly appealing to the quasi-pedophilic “school girl uniform” fetish crowd. And across the road we now have a “Bone Daddy’s House of Smoke” (get it).

Among the other establishments infesting what has become the restaurant industry’s fastest growing category you’ll find “Twin Peaks,” “Brick House Tavern,” “Big Racks BBQ,” and, God help us, “Mugs ‘n Jugs.” And sadly, Texas seems to be the place where a lot of these chains are being birthed.

Surely they’re about to run out of euphemisms for mammary glands. Sadly, I won’t be surprised to see a Jello-themed dessert shop pop up on the corner carrying the name “Jiggle.”

Yes, I know to some I sound like Mr. Prudence McUptight. But let’s face it, these are basically a halfway house, next-best-thing for guys who would actually like to be at a strip bar for lunch. But these are supposedly respectable enough that businessmen can put them on their expense reports.

This whole phenomenon raises a number of troubling questions about our culture. First, what kind of culture produces men who frequent these places? And what kind of culture produces an endless supply of young women eager to work in them?

As I’ve asked in past posts: Where are the feminists? Oh that’s right, they’ve been too busy keeping partial-birth providers legally in business and making sure we all say “chairperson” to muster a peep as an entire generation of American women embrace the idea that the highest thing they can aspire to is to be an object of lust.

On a lighter note . . .

About 15 years ago, when I was the Media Pastor at a large church up in Minneapolis, the men on the pastoral staff had a December tradition. We would take a Friday off and go as a group to the Mall of America to Christmas shop for our wives.

For some reason, I missed this particular outing, but when lunch time came, the guys decided to explore the new restaurants that had just opened up in the huge mall’s restaurant row. There were lot’s of “theme” restaurants at the Mall of America, including a recently opened “Rainforest Cafe” and a “Planet Hollywood.”

Instead, this group of about eight pastors decided to check out a new “owl” themed restaurant. Called Hooters. They had been seated and had ordered before they began to connect the dots and realized, to their deep mortification, that the theme of the restaurant wasn’t owls at all.

They prayed no church members would see them in there and when the food arrived set a world record for eating.

Another good weekend filled with not-writing. I’ve been doing a lot of not-writing lately. In fact, I’m cranking out some of the finest not-writing of my life.

(There’s a rumor I’m about to be nominated for a anti-Pulitzer for best non-fiction not-writing.)

This weekend we all traveled in a family caravan to Austin for the wedding of a niece. It seems we’re in a season of life in which the majority of major family get-togethers are triggered either by marriage or death. The weddings are definitely much lighter, funner affairs than the funerals.

This is our second wedding in as many weeks. And we have two more to attend in the weeks to come.

Of course as the father of three daughters who will soon be 22, 20, an 18 years of age respectively, I’m finding it nigh-unto impossible to attend these lovely, joyous things without constantly wondering how much the bride’s parents are spending on everything.

Yes, I know how ugly and crass that sounds. I fight it. Honestly, I do. But it’s a symptom of my circumstances.

I spoke to one father who mentioned that he had pretty much cleaned out his savings for his only daughter’s recent wedding. I spoke to another who had to dip into his retirement funds. Again, he had only one daughter.

Let me just say that, given the effects of the Great Recession of ’08-‘?? on my business, neither of those are currently an option for us.

I’ve been blessed with three girls. And I mean “blessed” in the sincerest, non-ironic, most gratitude-filled way imaginable. As I have mentioned in this space on numerous occasions, I have loved every second of being a father to daughters.

I have always felt, and continue to feel, like George Bailey–“the richest man in town.” (And like George, there’s probably a magistrate with a warrant for my arrest on the doorstep as I write.)

Nevertheless, we believe better days are ahead. We’re anticipating a dramatic turnaround. We’re genuinely confident things won’t always be like they’ve been the last two or three years.

And I’m sure that when our time for weddings come, we’ll have all we need to make it a wonderful day–even if that requires a miracle. I’m assured of that because Jesus will be at the top of the guest list. And He has a track record were these things are concerned (see John 2:1-11)

I mentioned in a previous post that a few Saturdays ago I spoke to a group of men called “318.” My topic was masculine spirituality  The audio of my talk is now available on the podcast page of their web site.

What a great and diverse group of men I met that morning.

I think I rambled on for about 45 minutes. If you’re interested, you can give it a listen here.

Two weeks ago I began a series of posts laying out a masculine model of spirituality. In that first post I observed:

Ten thousand Womens’ Studies masters theses were built around the doctrinaire assertion that there were no inherent differences between men and women other than some plumbing and a little difference in upper body strength.

In the same post I mentioned that these stubborn feminist orthodoxies were finally beginning to crumble under the weight of scientific evidence. But obviously not in Canada.

This article about two parents in Toronto who allow their children to decide what gender they are has to be read to be believed:

Parents keep child’s gender secret

“When the baby comes out, even the people who love you the most and know you so intimately, the first question they ask is, ‘Is it a girl or a boy?’” says Witterick, bouncing Storm, dressed in a red-fleece jumper, on her lap at the kitchen table.

“If you really want to get to know someone, you don’t ask what’s between their legs,” says Stocker.

When Storm was born, the couple sent an email to friends and family: “We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime (a more progressive place? …).”

These parents display a degree of faith in discredited “progressive” presuppositions that is simultaneously breathtaking and heartbreaking. If you doubted me that some people believe that the only difference between men and women is some plumbing, meet the parents of Jazz, Kio and Storm Stocker:

“What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It’s obnoxious,” says Stocker.

Jazz and Kio have picked out their own clothes in the boys and girls sections of stores since they were 18 months old. Just this week, Jazz unearthed a pink dress at Value Village, which he loves because it “really poofs out at the bottom. It feels so nice.” The boys decide whether to cut their hair or let it grow.

Like all mothers and fathers, Witterick and Stocker struggle with parenting decisions. The boys are encouraged to challenge how they’re expected to look and act based on their sex.

The idea that small children can decide their “gender” is a major exercise in denial and self-delusion. Gender is not cultural. It’s chromosomal. It’s not just a function of, to use the parent’s phrase, what’s between the legs. Hormonal influences in the womb have profound effects on the brain’s circuitry.

Even so, the holder of a “progressive” worldview desperately needs it to be true that there is no such thing as “sex roles.” Thus, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Progressive simply chooses to pretend it’s so. (And they accuse Christians of ignoring science.) I suspect you’ve already figured out that these parents hold political views that are, shall we say, left-of-center. How far left? Well . . .

Stocker teaches at City View Alternative, a tiny school west of Dufferin Grove Park, with four teachers and about 60 Grade 7 and 8 students whose lessons are framed by social-justice issues around class, race and gender.

When Kio was a baby, the family travelled through the mountains of Mexico, speaking with the Zapatistas, a revolutionary group who shun mainstream politics as corrupt and demand greater indigenous rights. In 1994, about 150 people died in violent clashes with the Mexican military, but the leftist movement has been largely peaceful since.

Last year, they spent two weeks in Cuba, living with local families and learning about the revolution.

Alrighty then.

By the way, this hatred for the concept of sex roles is at the root of the feminist movement’s near-maniacal commitment to abortion–even to the detriment of other “women’s issues.”

Pregnancy and childbirth are Nature screaming that men and women are designed for differing, complementary roles. To deny that this is so requires something very closely approximating religious faith.

Last weekend it was the college graduation of FOU #1.

This weekend, the rehearsal dinner and wedding of the daughter of some of our closest friends. We’ve known the bride since she was about three years old and have lived within a mile of her parents in three different states. It was my privilege to play the part of emcee at post-wedding reception.

Next weekend, it’s the wedding of niece in Austin. And the weekend after that?

Well, I’m scheduled to meet with the former president of large Latin American nation to discuss his book-in-progress.  And then meet with a prospective presidential candidate for that same nation.

Then we get a free weekend followed by two more family weddings. Lot’s of happy occasions. Much preferable to seeing aunts, uncles and cousins only at funerals (as was the case a couple weeks ago with the passing of my Uncle “Breezy.”)

By the time this conga line of celebration, socializing, and cake comes to a stop, we’ll officially be into summer.

In my previous post, I mentioned a book that had been profoundly influential in my thinking about what it means to be a Christian man. I didn’t mention the title–only that I read it about 12 years ago. Several readers guessed John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart. A good guess, but that is not the book I was referring to.

In 1999 an Oregon pastor named Stu Weber came out with Four Pillars of a Man’s Heart: Bringing Strength Into Balance. I came across a copy on a friend’s shelf and have never been the same.

Weber’s thesis, in a nutshell, is that men are God-created to function (in equilibrium) in four different roles (pillars). And that there is a place for these roles  in every sphere of their lives–marriage, parenting, work, church and community. Those four pillars are:

Shepherd-King, Warrior, Mentor, and Friend.

The function of the Shepherd-King is to provide servant-leadership. The obvious biblical models are Moses, David and, of course, Jesus. In Warrior mode, a man protects and defends. There is also something in every man that was built to teach, model and build a legacy–in other words, be a Mentor. And finally, men are constructed for a unique brand of friendship.

Early on in Four Pillars, Weber points out that The Fall was in fact the result of a failure by Adam in all four areas. And throughout the book he reveals how many men lack balance–going to an extreme in one or more of the pillars while abdicating in others.

One of my favorte passages in the book is actually the text of a letter written 150 years ago. Sullivan Ballou was a soldier in the Civil War serving in the Rhode Island Volunteers. He wrote his beloved wife, Sarah, from an encampment only days before one of the first major battles of the war. Ken Burns also featured an excerpt of this letter in his brilliant documentary The Civil War.

Stu Weber cites it as a stunning example of balanced, four-pillared manhood expressed on paper. Here is the text of that letter:

July 14, 1861 Camp Clark, Washington

My very dear Sarah:

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days—perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more . . .

I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the Government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution.

And I am willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt . . .

Sarah my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistibly on with all these chains to the battle field.

The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them for so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grown up to honorable manhood, around us.

I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me—perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name.

Forgive my many faults and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have often times been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness . . . But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights . . . always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah do not mourn me dead. Think I am gone and waiting for thee, for we shall meet again . . .

*****

Sullivan Ballou was killed a week later at the first Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861. The above letter was found in his pocket.

As the picture above suggests, it was a big weekend around our house. Our first-born, known in this blog as Female Offspring Unit #1, graduated from Baylor University.

She did us all proud. She finished in four years (an increasingly rare feat). She finished with distinction. And she passed the most important test of all. That is, she handled the autonomy and freedom that college provides with wisdom and prudence. Without us there to provide parental accountability, her faith, her morals and her reputation remained fully intact.

Four years ago I wrote a weepy blog post in anticipation of dropping her off for her Freshman year. It is almost inconceivable that this chapter of her journey is now complete. Back then I wrote:

Of course, she’ll be back. But we all know it will never again be quite the same. But that’s okay. What has been, has been very, very good. Far better than I deserve.

And indeed, we moved her back in on Sunday. She’s going to live at home for a while, pay down some school-related debt, and look for a job.

If you know of an employer looking for a smart, outgoing, energetic young graduate who can both write and present, I know where you can find one.