Something one of our priests said in his homily a couple of weeks ago got me thinking about a way I could exercise my spiritual duties as father and husband. Father told an anecdote in his homily about a friend of his who set his cell phone to beep on the hour every day to remind him to pray for his wife and kids, wherever he happened to be.

I like that idea. I would like to be able to pray the Liturgy of the Hours every day, marking each of the hours of the day with readings and prayers, like religious and priests do. Unfortunately, there just isn’t the time for it. I’m often in meetings or deep in a project and by the time the end of the day rolls around I can’t believe 8 hours has passed.

But this I could do.

So I set up a series of reminders using my favorite to-do web service at RememberTheMilk.com that are timed for each hour. Starting at 9am, RTM sends a notification through their iPhone app to my phone to pray for Melanie. I stop for a moment, say a quick prayer for her needs and intentions and that I would be the husband she needs me to be. Again, at 10, I pray for Isabella, her needs and intentions, and that Melanie and I would be the parents she needs us to be. Then at 11 for Sophia, 1pm for Ben (noon being too distracting with going to lunch), and 2pm for our unborn baby.

Occasionally, I’m talking to someone, or on the phone, or in a meeting when the top of the hour rolls around, but as soon as I can after the hour, I take a minute to pause and pray.

I can’t be with Melanie and the kids every day, all day like I would want, but it’s a way for me to be present with them and to be caring for them even as I go about my workday. It’s a kind of father’s Liturgy of the Hours.

Update: Something I forgot to mention: Last week, Melanie told me that during her weekly trip to the grocery store, she lost track of Sophia at the checkout. Our little 2-year-old had wandered out the doors of the market and a kind woman had come back in to find the mother of the crying little girl outside. I was shaken up hearing about it and Melanie was quite shaken up at the time too. But when she she told me about it later, she mentioned the time of day she got home and got the kids lunch and put them down for naps. I realized then that the incident at the checkout happened at just about 11am, right when I was praying for Sophia. The Holy Spirit moves in mysterious ways.

[Cross-posted from Bettnet.com]

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“The Council of Dads” by Bruce Feiler is a memoir of his “Lost Year” in which he underwent treatment for bone cancer and his quest to ensure that his twin 3-year-old daughters would have men in their lives who embody all the best traits of their dad in the event he died.

The book’s chapters alternate between periodic letters he sent to friends and family updating them as to how he and his family were dealing with the cancer and treatment; chapters about the six men from his life he chose to be on his council of dads; and chapters about the other men in his life: his father, his grandfathers, his oncologist.

Feiler is in his early 40s, Jewish, grew up in Savannah, lives in Brooklyn, and is an author and traveler. He wrote the book “Walking the Bible: A Journey By Land Through the Five Books of Moses”, which was later made into a TV show. In 2008, he was diagnosed with a rare cancer in the bone of his left leg. Confronted with his mortality, he asks six men from all phases of his life, each of them embodying one aspect of his “voice”, that they could pass on to his daughters: Jump into life’s experiences; always be true to yourself; believe you can succeed; stay rooted in the places you’re from; passionately search for the answers to your questions and always find new questions; find the beauty and miracles that are always around you.

The details of how this council would work are left unwritten. Would there be a formal arrangement of visits and trips or would they just be available for the girls as they needed each man’s presence? How would a man who lives hundreds of miles away be a surrogate dad? The details are actually unimportant. Deciding them ahead of time does a disservice to the idea because no one can know how the girls’ needs would arise, especially if Feiler himself lives for years past his remission. Or if he doesn’t die during their childhood, but lives a long life. Even then their advice could be helpful.

Being in a similar state in life—early ’40s, young children—it was natural to reflect on how I would react to a similar situation. Who would be on my Council of Dads for my kids? My brothers, certainly. A few close friends. Some mentors I’ve had. But I don’t know that I could say that I could identify six men who would embody my “voice”, so it was a little hard to identify with that project. But in a way it’s similar to the classic idea of the godfather, a man who would be there for your kids if you couldn’t be for some reason. You would choose this godfather because he would raise your kids the way you would.

The wisdom in this book became for me an opportunity to reflect on my philosophy as a dad, making me a better dad for having considered what I would do in his place; what Melanie would do to ensure the father influence that would reflect who I am would remain in our kids lives. Certainly, Feiler and I don’t agree on everything, but the roots are there. So often I had to stop to read a passage to Melanie because it either was so profound or it is so closely reflected our own experiences with our kids that it could have been our own children. For example, they had a game they played before bed where they related something good or bad in their lives.

Eden’s good was, “Daddy is using one crutch now, so I can hold his hand.” Tybee followed with this bit of wisdom. “I have so much love in my body for you, Daddy, that I can’t stop giving you hugs and kisses. And when I have no more love left, I just drink milk, because that’s where love comes from.”

It’s so perfect because that’s something Isabella would say.

The book ends with the letter from Feiler to his daughters that he hopes they will never have to read, in which he tells them about the Council of Dads, but then gives them his fatherly advice and wisdom. It’s the sort of letter all of us should write to our loved ones, because none of us know the day or hour. Feiler had the gift of having his attention focused on this possibility. So I think I will write a letter to each of my kids and then make a habit of updating it every year. And maybe that will become my “Counsel of Dad” (sic).

[Crossposted from Bettnet.com]

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Crossposted at Bettnet.

We’re just about six weeks away from our delivery date for our new daughter, Sophia Therese. It’s funny that what worried me last time–labor, delivery, and what to expect being a new dad–is not what worries me this time. In fact, the actual delivery of the baby is hardly on my radar screen (sorry, Melanie).

No, what most fills my thoughts right now is how we’re going to deal with Isabella (20-months-old now). More specifically, how am I going to deal with her in mommy’s absence? When the time comes do we take her with us somehow or do we drop her off with my sister? What if it’s the middle of the night? How will she cope with the disruption and not being able to see mommy for some period of time? (She’s never been away from mommy for more than a few hours.)

What do I do with Isabella after Sophia is born? Will I be able to get her to bed and how will I deal with the inevitable calling for mommy? What if Melanie has to have another C-section and is in the hospital for four days? What about after, if she’s not allowed to lift Bella?

It’s not like I’m incapable of doing these things. As it is now, I’m an integral part of her routine. At bedtime, Melanie and I switch off bathing her, but I’m always the one to take her to her bedroom and dry her off and play with her while getting her ready for bed. I brush her hair and her teeth and get her new diaper and her pajamas on her. But it’s Melanie who rocks her to sleep and puts her down.

I wonder what other dads have done, when faced with the dilemma of the birth of their second child. If you didn’t have ready help–your mom or your wife’s mom, for example–how did you cope?

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This isn’t meant to be a slam on anyone in particular, but I wonder if the Catholic Dads blog has lost its way. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of blogging about being a Catholic Dad anymore. Instead there are a lot of posts about the sort of random stuff people should probably put on their own personal blogs.

Am I off base? Have I misunderstood what this blog is about? If so, I’ll just shut up and move along. But for a while there seemed to be a lot of good posts along the lines of what I’m thinking.

Maybe there should be guidelines that more explicitly outline what type of content goes here. I know the short summary there on the right gives a pretty broad description, but I don’t know if that works.

Anyway, I thought I’d bring it up for discussion if anyone else wants to talk about it.

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Crossposted to Bettnet.com

Next to a man’s love for his wife, the other great joy in his life is his love for his children. So says Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa in homily for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, which was almost a week ago. The title of the homily is “The Joys of Fatherhood.”

Father Cantalamessa, who is the preacher of the Papal Household, reflects on a little remarked-upon aspect of the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, that of the relationship between fathers and their children. He notes that while society and culture seems to speak endlessly of the erotic and romantic relationship between man and woman, it has almost nothing to say about a father’s relationship with his children.

If we serenely and objectively look into the human heart we will find that, in the majority of cases, a good, understanding, and untroubled relationship with his children is, for a mature, adult man, no less important and fulfilling than the relationship between a man and a woman. We know how important this relationship is for both sons and daughters and the tremendous void that is left by its disintegration.

He notes that what is most destructive to a man’s relationship to his children is “authoritarianism, paternalism, rebellion, rejection, lack of communication,” just as there is nothing more destructive to the relationship between a man and a woman than “abuse, exploitation and violence.” Yet men bear suffering in these relationships as much as they originate it.

There are fathers whose most profound suffering in life is being rejected or even despised by their children. And there are children whose most profound and unadmitted suffering is to feel misunderstood, to not be esteemed, to be rejected by their father.

He finishes by echoing then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s words about the crisis of fatherhood being at the root of all major social ills by saying that reconciliation between fathers and children is important to a new evangelization.

Perhaps this is why Satan is expending so much effort making fathers—both spiritual and biological—into objects of suspicion and fear and emasculating them so that their children and their wives no longer respect them.

(By this I’m referring to anecdotes such as the dad having lunch with his daughter in a mall food court being approached by police because an adult man being alone with a child is automatically a cause for suspicion. Or the nurse in the maternity ward waiting for me to leave the room so an in-labor Melanie can be grilled about whether I abuse her.)

Our society has become hostile to dads qua dads. The only good father is the befuddled milk sop who rolls over when his children demand money for the latest gadget and whose highest ambition is to be their pal. It’s a sad substitute for the fatherhood that ignites contempt, not love.

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Crossposted from Bettnet.com

Time magazine has an article “Fatherhood 2.0 on the “new” notions of what it means to be a father. They note that more fathers are spending more time with their kids and are more active in raising them than previous generations were. Or are they?

Here’s Times’s notion of what “traditional” fatherhood entails:

But what does it mean, exactly, to be a man these days? Once upon a Darwinian time, a man was the one spearing the woolly mammoth. And it wasn’t so long ago that a man was that strong and silent fellow over there at the bar with the dry martini or a cold can of beer—a hardworking guy in a gray flannel suit or blue-collar work shirt. He sired children, yes, but he drew the line at diapering them.

Something tells me the reporter has unresolved daddy issues. This may be what fatherhood and manliness looked like in the 50s and 60s, which goes a long way toward explaining the cultural issues we’ve been dealing with ever since. But it’s certainly not what fatherhood was for everyone or what it was like in a previous age. When most dads were stay-at-home dads, i.e. when they were farmers or workmen who labored in home-based workshops, their children labored by their sides. Boys and girls learned firsthand from fathers and mothers what it means to be a man or a woman.

It was with the rise of industrialization and the newly automobile-enabled suburban commuters that fathers began to be separated from their children (and wives) and eventually the mothers followed them out of the home.

Does changing a diaper or helping your wife through labor make you less of a man? Are you kidding me?

Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger famously diagnosed the world’s ills as boiling down to a single problem: a crisis of fatherhood. Look at every major social problem: Abortion, sexual immorality, homosexuality, gang violence, lack of work ethic, radical feminism, drug abuse. While it’s not the sole cause, the crisis of fatherhood is right there at the root of each one.

Time offers the Stuart Smalley ideal of contemporary fatherhood: “It’s not quite masculine, but … that’s okay.” After all, stripping men of masculinity is one of the major post-modern ideals. But fatherhood, properly understood, is the height of masculinity par excellence. A masculine dad offers love, strength, stability, drive, and—importantly for both sons and daughters—an example of how a man should love a woman by how he loves their mother.

Don’t underestimate that last one’s influence on current pop culture.

(And I haven’t even delved into the spiritual example of a masculine dad. That’s a whole other blog entry.)

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Cross-posted to Bettnet.com

Last week during his homily for the Mass at the Proud2BCatholic Music Festival, Fr. Stan Fortuna responded to people who say they don’t go to Mass or they don’t like going to Mass because “it’s boring.”

“You are deeply and profoundly bored before you walk into the church, and when you come into the presence of the Almighty in the fullness of love, it is then that the awareness of your boredom begins to bubble,” he said.

Many people merely distract themselves from their boredom by turning something on, changing the channel, upgrading or downloading. This constant activity only “feeds the boredom beast,” he said.

We often get remarks from people that Isabella is such a well-behaved girl, especially at Mass. It’s rare that she gets really fussy to the point where we have to leave nave and head for the chapel; that’s only ever happened less than a handful of times.

Part of the reason is just personality. Some kids are naturally quiet; while others are naturally boisterous. It has nothing to do with how the child is raised; it’s just part of his or her nature.

But I think there’s also an element of parent action involved. A common bit of advice we receive is to provide constant external stimulus for Isabella, whether it means bringing books or toys or snacks to Mass to keep her “distracted”; i.e. pacified. Other times we’re encouraged to get “edutainment” videos for her to keep her occupied and entertained. We generally don’t do either.

Isabella very rarely watches television. The only time it’s ever on when she’s awake is when I’m watching a sporting event or some kind of cooking show. (I flipped on the TV this morning and the Tivo was still paused in the middle of last Sunday’s NASCAR race.)

Craving stimulus

My sense—and this only a feeling, not some scientific rock-solid conclusion—is that this would only set her up with a need for constant stimulus. In other words, she would constantly find herself bored.

Instead, when she’s at home she keeps herself occupied, playing with her blocks and other toys, looking out the window, constantly reading her books. In other words, she amuses herself. At Mass, she does the same. She sits in our laps quietly, looking through the missalette, playing with my sunglasses, and so on, but all done very quietly. When we’re out, say at breakfast after Mass, she is the same way. She doesn’t insist that she be put down and run around.

Meanwhile, at the same restaurant this morning after Mass, another family had two young children and a huge bag full of coloring papers and crayons and scissors and various other implements of distraction and the kids could not be contained anyway.

I’m not saying that boisterous children are caused by parents artificially stimulating them or that TV for kids is bad or anything else like that. Every child is different and their personalities all require different handling.

Yet, I can’t help but notice that the kids who are most disruptive in public, who are most likely to be bored with what’s going on and with what their parents have brought to occupy them, are the kids who have the most “stuff” surrounding them.

Perhaps part of the reason why some children can’t sit quietly through Mass or won’t behave in public or will grow up to be bored by Mass is because, as Fr. Fortuna said, they are deeply profoundly bored because of the constant barrage of external stimuli. Something to think about.

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Gerald at The Cafeteria is Closed asks a good question: What’s so great about children?

Now, don’t misunderstand him. Gerald makes it clear that he understands the Church’s teachings on marriage and family and agrees with them and that he knows and understands the objective reasoning. What he wants is the subjective response: “Why do YOU love being a dad?”

Consider Gerald’s position : He is the only child of only children and admittedly has spent no time around children. How can he know firsthand about children except what he sees in the media?

My wife Melanie just sent me a link to a beautiful video of a song by Billy Ray Cyrus called “Face of God”, in which he sings about his love for his daughter and how, when he sees her, he sees the face of God.

What if–in a figurative sense–we catch a glimpse of the face of God when look into the face of our daughter or son? What if the love between father and daughter (or mother and son and all the permutations) is the purest form of human love and thus is itself the closest yet flimsiest essence of the Divine Love? (While married love is awesome, let’s face it that for all of us it is the love between two sinners, whereas in the love between parent and child, one of you is sinless and thus loves with a pure heart.)

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Crossposted at Bettnet.

My friend Paul sent me this link to a blog by A Catholic Mom in Hawaii, which gives “Easy Ways to Evangelize in Advent,” but most of the 30 different suggestions are good ideas for families any time of year.

We already do a few of these already, like “Pray every time a siren sounds” and “cross yourself when passing a church” and “say grace before every meal.” Others we don’t yet do, but sound like good ideas like “know your name-saint and celebrate his feast” and “check the liturgical calendar every day.” These sound like great ways for kids to become aware of the rhythm of the liturgical year and to become familiar with the rich tapestry of the saints.

Others are a bit more esoteric, like “eschew cultural corrosion” and “let your light shine before men.”

I’m going to save this and come back to it from time to time to add some of these points to our daily lives as Isabella (and our future children, God willing) gets old enough to appreciate them.

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“Leptunus Nex”, an active-duty US Navy Captain serving in the San Diego area, is not Catholic, as far as I can tell, but he’s a dad and a Christian and has a very interesting conversation with his teenage daughter about fatalism and free will (connected to the Va. Tech shootings).

Here’s a taste, but you should read the whole thing:

YHS: (Unpleasantly surprised) You mean it was “fated”?

ED: That’s right, it was fated.

YHS: (Frowning slightly) Do you believe in fate?

ED: Yes – I believe everything happens for a reason.

YHS: That’s not fate, that’s causality. (Brief discussion of causality ensues.)

ED: Then I believe in fate.

YHS: Do you mean fate as a kind of predestination, that every act and thought and result we have is pre-ordained? Or something recognizable only in retrospect?

ED: The first.

And if you like fast airplanes and other military stuff that breaks things, you’ll like the rest of his blog too.

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