Monday Musings for Monday June 21, 2021
Volume XI. No. 25/545
Pieter Jozef Verhagen. Hagar and Ishmael Banished by Abraham, (1781)
Father’s Day
By Assad Meymandi, MD, PhD, ScD (Hon), DLFAPA*
This coming Sunday, June 19, 2022, is Father’s Day. A few reflections:
Brief History
Arkansas has not only given us the Clintons and the perennial presidential contender, the Reverend/Governor/evangelist/guitar picking/author Mike Huckabee, but it has given us Sonora Smart Dodd who literally created Father’s Day back in 1910. She celebrated the first Father’s Day in Spokane, Washington to honor her father, the Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, a single parent who raised his six children single-handedly in Arkansas. Sonora was moved to recognize her father’s contribution by proposing a day to honor all fathers. However, it was not until 1972, 58 years after President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day official, that the Father’s Day became a nationwide holiday in the United States.
Father vs. Dad
It is so easy to be a father. All it takes is a willing partner and nine months later a child is produced. But it takes a whole lot of preparation and commitment to be a dad. One of the main reasons we have more per capita prison/jail inmates than anywhere else in the industrial nations is this very simple notion: plenty of fathers who bring children to the world have no preparation or commitment to be or become a dad. Recent statistics point to the fact that the rate of imprisonment in the United States more than quadrupled during the last four decades. The U.S. penal population of 2.2 million adults is by far the largest in the world. Just under one-quarter of the world’s prisoners are held in American prisons. The U.S. rate of incarceration, with nearly 1 out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, is five to 10 times higher than the rates in countries of Western Europe and other democracies. The reason is simply too many men, like sex machines, reproduce and abandon. Most prisoners grew up without love, care and devotion of a dad. And our government seems to reward this delinquent behavior by giving incentive in expanding the welfare state. It is an abomination that so many single mothers of four or five, and so many children who have never met or known their fathers…
Dads love, care, provide, and offer moral leadership to, and role models for their children. Dads are selfless, giving and loving. Dads offer security, permanence, and they are there for their children forever. To be a dad is the most responsible job on earth. No, I am not suggesting to cut resources of, and services to, the children. On the contrary, we need to pump in love and all resources necessary to make sure the children who are already here have what it takes to become responsible citizens. I am saying that family planning should be emphasized and through education and information, sex machines dismantled. If we could spend the corrections budget on education, eventually we will decrease the prison population drastically.
Historically, the roots of the Arab Israeli conflict go back to the days of Abram (before he became Abraham–Genesis 17) of Ur. The two biographers of Abraham, Zakaria-ye- Massuyeh, and Honein Ibn Ishagh ably trace the origin of the Arab-Israeli conflict to Abraham and his two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. The two brothers were fighting as most children do. Ishmael gathered his friends in one camp which became the origin of Arabs, and Isaac doing the same, naming his camp and entourage/followers the Israelis. Two brothers and their progenies, blood related cousins, have been killing one another for more than three thousand years…I guess one might say that Abraham was a faithful and superb prophet, fathering Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but did not know how to be a daddy to his own sons.
Personal Memories
Speaking of children fighting, I remember as a small boy being the youngest in the family. I used to argue and fight all the time with my sister next in age to me. We used to go to my father with our stories as to how we were victimized, expecting father to intervene on our individual behalf. My father would sit patiently and dispassionately listen to us carefully one at a time. My sister and I would anxiously await a judgment and a disposition. My father would hold both of us in his arms and say something like “I see you two have a disagreement, and I have faith in both your abilities to resolve the disagreement by understanding and talking and not fighting…” He would kiss us and let us go. My father was an esthete. He was a poet and a calligrapher. He flooded our home with books, and books and books… We had music, poetry, and flowers…Next to God, love and family, education was most revered by our father.
What to Do?
What do we need to do to correct what Abraham failed to do? How do we bring peace and reconciliation to Jews and Muslims? All major religions and their Holy Books including Bhagavad Gita of Hindus, Avesta of Zoroastrians, Torah of Moses, Quran of Islam and Bible of Christians recommend forgiveness and conciliation. As one exposed to all these Holy writings, I am most impressed by Christian love and the Pauline theology of hope, possibilities, forgiveness, and redemption. It is the unique attribute of Christian teaching to transform one’s enemy through the act of love and turning the other cheek. What a magnanimous feat of humanity and Godliness. I am for establishing dialogue, learning the enemy’s language, pressing flesh and showing acts of love and mercy.
Happy Father’s Day to all.
The Meymandi touring Exhibition Gallery, North Carolina Museum of Art, is named for my late father, Farajollah Meymandi.
Dr. A. Meymandi's Monday Musings 