Usually I disdain movies. But aesthetics can seduce, and I am a sucker for dystopia, and, well, last night I was beat. So we went to see “Ad Astra.” I had heard of the sublime art direction and the contrast between the full-on space travel and the intimate subplot of the father/son relationship. You may […]
A Gift on Father’s Day
This Father’s Day, my three children gifted me a bird feeder in the shape of a log cabin. Now, as they joyfully run amok in the playroom, I am reflecting on the gifts of fatherhood itself. Fatherhood has taught me that children are actually verbs. Also, that Legos multiply through their own procreative process. Yesterday […]
Mary Definitely Knew
They brought the baby to our doorstep. Five days old. Directly from the hospital. One outfit. Four pre-made bottles. A handful of diapers. A package of wipes. And a packet of papers that offered no definitive judgment on the proper pronunciation of her name. “I think it’s…” the social worker said. “I’m pretty sure.” A […]
Healing in the Middle
When I say Asa, I sing Asa – Bry Webb, “Asa” Our middle child is named Asa, which means Healer in Hebrew. His biblical namesake was the fifth ruler in the House of David, the third king of Judah. In his two and a half years, our Asa has had more days with a royally […]
Catch Me
A new friend, who is joining the church I serve, offered a Rumi reading to me from his morning devotional: Hold up a mirror to your worst destructive habits, for that is how the real making begins. ~ 1995 was my first year of high school. That spring, my baseball coach announced to the entire […]
The Weight of Masculinity, Toxic or Otherwise
In our house, emotions were embraced. I was never told that “boys don’t cry;” it was never implied that men hide their emotions. When your dad is a professional opera-singing pastor-psychologist, and your mother a high-powered hospital executive, you get different messages about gender norms than most. As if you needed proof: my parents let […]
The World’s Greatest Dad
My wife is pregnant with our first child, which means that soon I will become the World’s Greatest Dad. I know this because I have done all the self-work necessary to understand how my parents failed me in my childhood. Using this self-knowledge, I will not make any of the mistakes my mother and father […]
Let’s Have an Uncomfortable Talk About Infertility and (I Guess) Grace
This moving reflection comes to us from Ben Maddison. Sitting alone in the doctor’s office at a quarter past two on a Wednesday, I held out hope that I was still in control of my life. After a year and a half of trying—of home tests and office tests, and pills and vitamins and online […]
Let Us Now Praise Fathers: On Taking the Patriarch for Granted
A few weeks ago one of my girlfriends asked me to pray for her husband. They were getting back some major test results and she was worried he might be critically ill. He wasn’t. Thank God. But what she said on the phone about the possibility stayed with me. She said, “I feel bad for […]
Grace with Daughters and Sons: A Breakout Session
Father-son and father-daughter relationships are among the most influential and emotionally fraught relationships for just about everybody. When it comes to their relationship with their father, no one is emotionally neutral. In this breakout session we’ll look at these relationships through the two lenses of law and gospel with examples and illustrations from movies, life and ministry experience, with some scripture as well.
What this session is not is “10 Principles to be an Effective Father” or “5 Ways to Fix Your Kids.” What it is instead is a look at the effects of law-based relationships with daughters and sons versus the effects of grace-based relationships with daughters and sons. Even though it’s a pretty heavy topic, we have a lot of fun with it.
Here’s the audio recording from the session.
[audio https://mbird.com/resources/?show&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mbird.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F09%2F02-Grace-with-Daughters-and-Sons.mp3]Click here for a copy of the handout used.
