Scripture

Psalm 68:32-3

And God said, "Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water." So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning-the second day

Genesis 1:6-8

And God said, "Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water." So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning-the second day

Let's Stop Suffocating our Fathers and Embrace Life as Father Sky Does

by Rev. Cory Bradford-Watts

Read the message below. Video premieres today at 8 pm EDT, click here to watch on YouTube with live text chat

Greetings! An enlightening and peaceful Fathers' Day to you, particularly as we as a society continue to slowly open our eyes to the burdens we've placed on the necks of all too many fathers and families for the last 400+ years. Although seemingly inconvenient, acknowledging both the light and the darkness associated with a celebratory day like today is called for if we hope to continue to grow into health in our various cultures, transforming our lives towards receiving the heavenliness that Divinity offers all peoples in all traditions in every moment. Indeed, some may choose to ignore the writing on the wall when it comes to the continued horrors endured by blacks, the indigenous, women, and other marginalized and oppressed groups, which serves to further the issues - so may we be willing to see and accept reality with a clear mind that's as open as the sky, and find that this Divinely given awareness draws us toward embodying justice, love, and peace.

As our open, mystical Christianity repeatedly reflects upon, God is the source of all goodness and life - including what we might call all the truly Fatherly attributes: the seeds of life, wisdom, patience, care, love, insight, preparedness, justice, support, and on. And so, one of the greatest ongoing tragedies is the suppression and destruction of fathers and fatherly traits in our marginalized communities, especially with blacks and indigenous peoples in North America. As you may be aware of, today's current social uprising calls on us to non-defensively reflect on the rationally-undeniable history of the continued racial oppression and suffocation of lives. One example of this being the prison-state of the U.S. categorically and systematically working to subjugate and hurt blacks due to the greed, racism, and lack of higher awareness our society has cultivated (even in religious groups that say they are about Divine Love).

It's especially this lack of widespread cultivation of the West's (and the world's) higher mind, also called Buddhahood, cosmic or Krishna-consciousness, and Christ-like perception, that has allowed such atrocities to fester in our hearts and manifest around us - suffocating instead of celebrating our fathers. Funny enough, the "father" of this type of Divine perception and love is available to each of us as a type of present moment awareness and acceptance, often painted as an image of the sky. When we allow past thoughts and ideas to dissipate like clouds, becoming clear and weightless, and future thoughts to be fresh and unconditioned by the past (as the ancient sage Padmasambhava points out), our current moment becomes clear and illuminated, and we naturally become aware of our own internal, peaceful light and the interconnectedness of all life. Many traditions point to how this type of open awareness allows us to start to truly grow beyond our stunted selfishness.

I think that the symbolism of Day Two of the Creation Story uplifts something similar, when it describes how God formed waters above and below, creating the sky. As we explored recently in our first message about Day Two, waters tend to represent truth in scripture, and it's when we allow higher truths (higher waters) to take shape in our minds (instead of just the drudgery of our past dominating and selfish ideas) that we start to allow the clear and peaceful awareness of a mindful "sky" to form, which allows the spiritual growth that we see in days three to seven. This ultimately means starting to accept how things truly are, as well as the present moment, and not grasping too tightly to either our sunny days or our cloudy ones. Further, allowing a real love for truth to rise into a higher place in our thinking dispels our tendencies to embrace lies and ignorance, and further develops an ecosystem that is the father of all the life that sprouts in the later days of our own spiritual creation story.

The suffocating aspects of our societies' lack of "sky" range from the heavy lack of life-centered awareness throughout our justice systems - with each level of it in the U.S. needing vast reforms centered on community health, non-violence, and rehabilitation - to the nature of our economy and the atrocities of the past. These include welfare systems that intentionally broke up families with their policies in the past (as with my grandparents - causing my grandfather to leave the house), handouts for the rich, and other "handouts" that exempted minorities (such as the G.I. Bill or the grants given after the Civil War), historic exclusions that are by-and-large ignored.

To truly celebrate fathers' today, I believe that we must point out all of the places we are failing every single one of them and get active for change, because even the wealthiest, most privileged of us don't truly benefit from a system that promotes our dominating spirit and that manifests as a highly inequitable dystopia where suffocating fear, lust, and pain reign. Being oppressed by our own spirit of oppression is often a tale told in scripture, and serves as a foot on the back of our collective necks - dispelling our ability to raise up life, to care for others, and to bring that loving justice and warmth that a father at their best brings. Today we celebrate our fathers by fighting for their lives and working for justice in remembrance of so many of their families destroyed.

There's a reason that Divinity is so often-called Father in scripture, and it goes beyond the patriarchy of that day (although that is probably why God is only rarely called a Mother in Hebrew and Christian scripture). God is the source and root of each of us, particularly in all of our loving and good manifestations, and cares for us as a wise father in our spirit and through all things. Even in our worse states, Father God is with us as our underlying life and consciousness, always seeking to uplift, teach, foster compassion, and empower us to greater life.

We are called to open ourselves to the One who many Native American spiritualities (including my mother's) call Father Sky and allow him to do his job raising us, listening with sky-like present awareness so that he may help us embody and empower true fatherliness for all peoples. Divinity seeks to help us embrace others like a sky: fully present, with flexibility and dynamism like a good dad, seeking others' best interests with love. Clear, patient, non-defensive, and honest, we're called to get active and shed compassionate truths like rain, fostering and watering each person's healthy originality and spirituality. Allowing our fathers and their families more breath to rejoice and be the Divine Creation that we all are, ultimately celebrating our unending creation story toward greater diversity of life, Sabbath, and Divine Fatherhood.

Peace and blessings,

Rev. Cory