"Father's Day"
Jerry Pope
Sunday, June 18th 2006

OPEN
Good Morning! I can’t believe there are any fathers here at all today. Normally on Fathers Day, right about now, I’m getting ready for my first nap.

Both of my kids are in High School Speech and my son, Charlie, told me the other day that one of the ways of controlling nerves when you’re speaking in front of a large crowd, is to eat yogurt and nuts before you go on. Something about the protein. So far it’s not working too well. I’m still kind of nervous…and now I have nuts stuck in my teeth.

THEME
I was playing catch the other day in the front yard with my daughter Ally, whose home from her first year in college. We played catch a lot, my kids and I when they were younger, and I asked her if she remembered that. “Dad, of course! We played catch all the time. Don’t you remember?” Do I remember? Remember standing in the front yard at our old house on Monterey, showing you how to release the ball right when your arm lines up with my head, chasing the wild throws into the Shapiro’ bushes, while you did cartwheels, all the while talking, talking, talking, talking? Mostly you talking, but sometimes I would get to talk too? Yup. I remember. But I wanted to see if she remembered, because as a father, that’s one of the gifts I wanted to give my kids, a memory of playing catch with their dad. It’s something I set out to do. And I realized that I’ve spent a lifetime with my two beautiful children actively creating memories of their childhood. So that sometime in their future, they’ll have the possibility of looking back on an amazing past.

ANNE SEXTON
Anne Sexton writes, “ It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.”

I think that sometimes it’s hard to keep in perspective, that everything we do with our kids, or to them, has the possibility of transcending the moment, whether a profound moment or a casual moment, and becoming a childhood memory.

MY REMINISCENSE
I grew up in this little bitty house in SLP, we had six kids in our family, just a big brood jammed into this little house. I have no idea how my folks did it. I mean it, six kids, four of them IN TWO YEARS! Jammed into about 800 sq. ft. And my dad was a barber, so things were tight. There were many meals where we had powdered milk. Powdered Milk! You know, “Honey, can you get on your bike and go get us some milk? Sure, mom how much do we need? Uh, a pound…?” Then we’d have the powdered milk for dinner… Well, I mean, she would add water to it, it wasn’t like, “Here, eat this scoop of milk powder.” You know, she could cook…she wasn’t a good cook, of course, cause she’s Irish…

My dad wouldn’t get home until 8:00, well after we had all been fed. And as he opened the back door, we would all hide under the kitchen chairs. And he would come in and set down his barber case, and play “Honey, where are the kids?” And my mom would stand there with her arms outstretched, and exclaim, ”I don’t know! They were just here!” Then, while she was fixing him a highball, my dad would start to look around, and he’d make a lot of noise, and soon he would reach under the chair, not far enough to touch us, but far enough to just barely miss us …And you’d see that huge hand coming at you, inches from your face, just out of reach. And we’d be underneath the chair, snickering because once again, we had the old man fooled. But the strongest part of that memory is the great and powerful smell of his hands, a barbers hands, hands that would cut hair all day, then come home and massage my mom’s neck, and shoulders, rub away the stress of six kids. His hands smelled of Brillcream. Brillcream. That’s what Dads smelled like, back then.

Forty years later, I can still see us all snickering underneath those chairs. It’s an odd thought that of the thousands of moments that occur every week between us and our children, any one them could become the one that defines their childhood, and for them, defines you as a father. And you never really know which moment that will be.

CREATING MEMORIES
Now I have two children of my own, the intensely powerful Ally, and the very intelligent and sensitive Charlie. Yeah, I know, their birthnames are a little long....

But from the moment those two kids were little babies, my wife Julie and I have been keenly aware of the passing of time, and how precious is each opportunity to create memory. – The common wisdom is to live in the moment, but I hardly ever live just in the moment- almost everything I do with my kids, is done with the idea that I am not just participating in a moment, but actively creating a memory. I watch us living, and try to create events that have a chance of transcending the moment, transforming it into something they could look back on and describe in detail; what it looked like and how it smelled. As humans, we have the ability to watch ourselves as we create what in the future, will become our past. Which means we can create memories for our children that eventually will become their childhood.

GOSPEL
The transformation that Jesus made in today’s gospel, when he changed the bread and wine into his body and blood, was the fulfillment of God’s covenant with us, and the ultimate sacrifice. In fact, the next day he GAVE HIS LIFE…. for us. I think of that transformation as the moment he went from being a bachelor, a single man having dinner with friends, to a being a parent. When he changed from Jesus, the man, into Christ, a father.

In the act of that moment, he gives us the unconditional love of a parent, and obligates us to act towards the universe as if we are the parents and all mankind are our precious children. To treat the world as if there is memory, as if there is a future. He transforms a mundane moment when he was just having food with his pals, into an extraordinary legacy of a father’s sacrifice: a collective and ageless memory, it’s a living memory, which he created for us. HE INVENTS A RITUAL FOR US AND ASKS US TO . . . REMEMBER. Do this in MEMORY of me…

KID'S MEMORIES
Julie and I have been lucky enough to be able to place our kids in some profound situations, and give them an opportunity to experience that kind of transformation. We were able to take both of them to Africa, at different times, and both CHARLIE AND ALLY returned with transforming memories that will be with them forever. For Charlie it happened this year, as he and Julie and the group were handing out stickers with cartoons on them. Kids like to put them on their foreheads. Kids love these stickers, even hungry kids. And they were handing out these little stickers to a group of desperately poor children in a little town called Tippit. There was a scramble and the older, stronger kids took multiple stickers for themselves. Charlie was left standing there with nothing left to give, and A little four year old girl saw him and came up to him, and pulled the only sticker she had off of her forehead…and stuck it on his hand.

Can you imagine, the most poverty-ravaged children, living in a garbage dump, and she gives Charlie the only thing of value that she has? WILL SHE EVER KNOW WHAT A PROFOUND AND LASTING MEMORY SHE GAVE CHARLIE IN THAT ONE MOMENT?

For Ally, and myself, it happened one early morning at a medical clinic in Gugletu. MY TWIN BROTHER GREG AND I ARE FILMMAKERS, AND WE HAD GONE TO AFRICA TO SHOOT A FILM FOR JIM CASSIDY AND SPIWO XAPILE. I TOOK ALLY, WHO WAS 13 AT THE TIME. IT WAS VALENTINES DAY…at Browns farm clinic. 200 People lined WHEN ONLY 75 CAN BE SEEN THAT DAY. …..I WAS LYING ON THE GROUND IN THE DIRT MAKING A SHOT OF the African FEET, AS THEY SHUFFLED SINGLE FILE TOWARDS THE CLINIC. THE saddest, most diseased and impoverished feet you can imagine, mostly barefoot. In many ways, the portrait of these feet were a more poignant portrait than their faces would have been. OVER my RIGHT SHOULDER I COULD HEAR ALLY, WITH A WHOLE SLEW OF LITTLE VALENTINE STICKERS. THEY CAN BE THOUGHT OF AS LITTLE PIECES OF LOVE. AS I WATCHED THIS PROCESSION OF POVERTY AND DISFIGUREMENT IN FRONT OF ME, I HEARD OVER MY SHOULDER, THE HAPPIEST, BRIGHTEST LITTLE VOICE, “HAPPY VALENTINES DAY! CAN I GIVE YOU A STICKER?” ON EACH FOREHEAD, SHE GENTLY PLACED A STICKER. HERE, in front of me, THE SADNESS OF THE HUMAN CONDITION, HERE, above me, UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. I finished making that shot with tears running down my cheeks.

ENJOYING THE MOMENT
God is Love. Love of light, LOVE OF music, love of people, love of sounds, LOVE OF wind, LOVE OF silence, LOVE OF life. Daily, there should be a moment when you are forced to say, ”How does it get better than this?!” “How does it get better than driving your kid to school?” Driving your kid to school!? Yeah, but it’s a sunny morning and you roll down all the windows and crank Dave Mathews and he’s singing a song called “Two Step. “CELEBRATE, WE WILL! LIFE IS SHORT BUT SWEET FOR CERTAIN. And it’s warm, and the wind is flying, AND THE SUN IS SHINING, AND THE MUSIC BLARING and you look over at your boy and you feel a massive amount of love for him, and it’s just a great moment that you’re sharing with your kid! And you are absolutely forced to say, “How does it get better than this?”

Is it the best moment of the day? Don’t know. Could be the best moment of his life. Or yours. But you felt it, AND IF YOU FEEL IT, they feel it. And maybe you transformed a great moment into a GREAT memory.

CLOSE
God is love. That’s the best part for me about being a father, that my children, and all children, are the most intense expression possible, of God. They’re the most fascinating and compelling, and powerful and passionate of God’s creatures. They bring out the best in me, the child in me, the one who loves unconditionally. What I give them, they give back. And then they grow up, and you let go and they make memories for their kids.

“IN A POEM ABOUT TEACHING HIS DAUGHTER TO RIDE A BICYCLE, WYATT PRUNTY IMAGINES HOW IT WILL BE:

. . . I will run behind,

Arms out to catch her, she'll tilt then balance- wide

Of my reach, till distance makes her small,

Smaller, beyond the place I stop- and know

That to teach her I had to follow

And when she learned I had to let her go.

That to teach her I had to follow

And when she learned I had to let her go.

Celebrate we will! Life is short… but sweet, for certain.