Article June 14, 1999 Issue

WHERE IS MY FATHER?

Don G. Soule

I asked myself that question many times after my dad passed away. I went through periods of sadness, loss, and bitterness over the missed opportunities to make his life a little more pleasant. In an effort to overcome these feelings, I reviewed what I had learned from Christian Science about fatherhood. This sentence from the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, stood out to me: "Father-Mother is the name for Deity, which indicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation" (p. 332). The phrase "tender relationship" set me thinking.

If my father was indeed the child of God, as we all are, I could in no way be separate from him. He was gone to the material senses, but to spiritual sense he had never left. I determined to focus more and more on the spiritual qualities that I remembered my father expressing. Through an appreciation of these qualities, which are eternal, I learned to recapture and enjoy each of the attributes that had made him father to me. This finally broke the bonds of mourning.

Proof that my grief was healed was not long in coming. A project I was working on brought home just how close my father and I were and would always be. I had set about building a narrow-gauge railroad around our property. It was an arduous task, and the thought came to me, "Gosh, I wish my dad were here." As construction proceeded, however, and I prayed for guidance, the answers were never long in coming. Whenever I got stuck I felt as though my dad were standing right behind me. His comments and suggestions came to my thought, though not as spoken speech; I would just suddenly know how to proceed. The more this happened, the more I realized that all along my own father had been expressing my Father-Mother God.

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