Three generations. Grand father, father and daughter. Photographed by Almut Furchert
Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish poet and spiritual writer, has struggled all his life with his earthly father. Much of his writings are inspired by his attempt to cope with the tragedy he inherited. Some scholars think that would diminish his work. I have always thought it gives it its heart.
Here is some one who shares his vulnerability, and who turns it into poetry and existential insight.
As a therapist I do not know many people who have never struggled with their earthly father. I think it is part and parcel of our human journey. Having grown up with a perfect father might not be much easier. Too big the shoes to step into. Too big the loss to go on alone.
Then there are absent fathers, cold fathers, overwhelmed fathers, and unfortunately also willingly abusive fathers.
They have shaped family journeys, individual biographies and history. If you want to know about a leader, you might look how he is as a father and how he deals with his own father.
As Kierkegaard reminds us, its is not so much the objective situation which shapes our experience but how we come to relate to it. Thus there are children who go on imitating their fathers, in good and in bad, and those, who have come to a decision to do differently by finding their own way. This individual relationship to our psychological inheritance is at the heart of Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy. It is also at the heart of his Gospel of Suffering, the good news, which has also inspired the Jewish psychiatrist and holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl: We do not need to suffer for ever, we can look at it anew and retell our story.
Such redeeming stories are often the work of a life time. They do not come easy and they require us to revisit the past in order to redeem our future.
But as Kierkegaard’s philosophical and psychological work stands witness: It is possible. We can turn our father wound into fertile ground for our deeper self.
I have always found it difficult to call God a father. The “heavenly father” had lost its child like innocence for me at some point. And I see my clients struggle with it dearly. Exploring the sacred feminine and reminding us of the many feminine God images, as we find it e.g. in Hildegard of Bingen’s writings, can be very healing.
But at some point our father wound calls us back.
Kierkegaard has found a way to redeem both, the theological image of our Divine father and his traumatic experience with his own father. Because what makes the difficulty for many is that the “Heavenly Father” (and an overly paternal church) triggers their own father experiences and if they are heavy and painful, we project the same qualities into our God image. Which might explain the cruel and power hungry, judgmental, punishing and abusive God images so many people come to hold.
Kierkegaard invites us to turn it around: We only arrive at the Divine father when we no longer project our own father into God but they other way around:
“…it is not because you have a father or because human beings have fathers … that God is called Father in heaven, but it is as the apostle says [Eph. 3:14-15]—from him all fatherliness in heaven and on earth derives its name.
Therefore, even though you had the most loving father given among men,
he would still be, despite all his best intentions, but a stepfather, a shadow, a reflection, a simile, an image, a dark saying about the fatherliness from which all fatherliness in heaven and on earth derives its name.”
And dear friend, here is the good news: Even when your father wound is to deep and too violent to revisit, it must not break the sacred father image for you. What Kierkegaard describes here in almost archetypal terms is that every one, you and me, has an idea of the original father, of the divine origin of what a father is supposed to be. And because of that image we carry we suffer the discrepancy with our own fathers, or your own attempts to be a “good” father.
The good news is that we all have that holy image deep within us. Therefore we can see clearly where our own fathers failed us, unintentionally or intentionally. The sacred father image is the remedy for our father wound: We no longer need to let our injuries blacken the sacred experience. We can redeem our pain in the eternal love of a Divine “fatherliness,” which transcends our injuries and also our gender stereotypes.
For Hildegard of Bingen (as for CG Jung) the Divine always holds both, the sacred masculine and the sacred feminine. Divine fatherhood incorporates motherly embrace, and Divine motherhood offers fatherly care.
Therefore, dear friend, take courage. You are not alone. The deepest thinkers and composers have let their father wound inspire them to reconnect to Divine mercy and take refuge in the “heavenly father” and her motherly embrace, not because but despite their stories.
And if you miss your father, because you dearly loved him, or because you remember him as a loving parent, or because you never met him, or because he was not there, or because he was never a father in what the word truly means, hold all of this lightly to your heart. It is the place where the deepening happens.
Peace and Blessings to you, Almut
PS: Feel free to email me about your experience. And also if you would like some professional companionship on your journey redeeming your father wound.
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