FATHERHOOD TEACHINGS: TRIVIA

Tiger Woods in 2010 commercial

Trivia is the food of national news, and chief among its topics are famous people whose lives are picked apart to find trivia to support an industry wide commitment to mediocrity. There is an enormous amount of trivia about famous people who employed impeccability, and skill to become top professionals in their crafts.  Getting to these levels is not a trivial series of actions.  Most people will not ascend to the heights of their craft, or better self for all the reasons that the Lady GaGa's, and Michael Jackson's shirked to become the best. 

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In plain English what is required to become the best is a core, a belief-system, a work ethic, a dream, and a drive that leads a small group of people, famous or not, to the right people and the right combinations of tools that ushers them to the birth canal of creative freedom, success, and work they love.  If asked to give up pizza, or turn off their TV's to begin a journey on a succes track for their children most parents, we have found, will not turn off their TV or stop eating pizza. 

Paris Hilton is an exquisite beauty, and the emphasis on her business acumen is of little concern to the public. Revelations about her business, and wealth creating enterprises don't provoke conversations or research into the how of her life's work, or the inner workings of her family, and their value system. Paris Hilton comes from old money built up by hard work, skill, and shrewdness. These are some of the fundamental things missing from the educational process of our children: how money works, what is currency, and how to create wealth, etc.

Yesterday, I was asked to be a part of a small team of conflict resolution facilitators. There were three locations in Maryland and Washington DC visited. One of the sites had many problems that were traditionally approached with the wrong questions, and the wrong people in place to help boys transcend a life of crime into a better life. Three of us listened carefully to a story of two boys who have been on the streets since 9 years of age doing whatever it took to survive. Survival to them was breaking laws, being violated, dancing between life and death situations, and taking risks beyond their years to eat something, and sleep somewhere. The trigger words and actions we employed got them talking honestly as we listened. The story was painful. One of the most painful things, to me, was a boy explaining his actions.

“I wasn’t being disrespectful not shaking your hands. I don’t know how to relate to men. I am used to women. Men don’t come through. I am tired of being let down.”

“What about your father?”

“My mother died when I was two, and my father is a bitch. Fuck him!”

That was just one paradigm in need of a shift. There is a deep responsibility to parenting other people’s children. The walls to scale that defend boys from the weakest men’s terror over young lives in the streets distorts, and kills. Imagine a child, a boy making decisions between killing and robbing just eat, buy a pair of shoes, to sleep somewhere safe for one night.

All day from one conflict to another we, from the Empowerment Center, had to connect every issue to the prison industry. The relationship between disempowerment, family dysfunction, death, abandonment, poverty, and fatherless children is connected and strung together by the business of incarceration. Development in the black community of our children’s path to adulthood begins here. Unraveling the confusion begins here. Work within the gang culture begins here. Rape adjusts itself within boys at young ages as an aspect of their manhood that hardly ever makes it into the conversations between professionals in government programs, or faith-based initiatives. Incest marks the lives of countless African-American families who cannot see beyond the confusing emotions, and the altered sense of place, and being that becomes their legacy. How do you break these lines, these ancestral lines that barely recognize the power of African spirituality?

From the healer’s perspective the developmental process begins in the private ceremonies between the healer and the Creator. Ceremony is a tool, but it is not the solution. It is the listening that opens the eyes, broadens the world, and tussles with the demons haunting the chambers of one’s souls. I looked deep into their souls. The telling was strenuous on the soul of the fathers listening to ‘sons’ talking freely about their pain, and their understanding of manhood at 9, at 15, and 18 years of age.

In the end of our one session my ‘medicine’ took over and gave us the direction to move their lives forward. According the Manhood wheel I used to interpret their lives a practicality settled into the spaces between us, and we agreed to help them build a structure based upon a re-education about finance, money, and currency. From the space of practicality new life will form and build itself until we can return to their childhoods and restore their childhoods unto them. Giving their childhoods back is crucial. It is fundamental. It is basic to the tenets of the transitional ceremonies they have entered by moving into relationship with us.

The boy’s first homework assignment: buy a notebook, and pen and begin to simply write their thoughts down on paper. Why paper? Because they need their privacy, and computers are not necessary for childhood development. Computers have nothing to do with the raising of a child. The adults who do not understand are weak in their assessment of strength, power, and accountability in the process, the game of developing a child, or touching his/her spirit to better gauge the intended path of a child’s life journey. Parenting by thought, intuition, power, and conscious awareness take precedence over technology.

These are the insights of the first-born of my parents, and the second grandchild of my maternal grandparents. –Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of the Sacred Medicine Wheels (May 6, 2010)

Father & son - Jon Chandler & son Jon 2

father & son - Jon 2 & his son