Donald Miller and John MacMurray. To Own a Dragon: Reflections on Growing Up without a Father. Navpress, 2006.
If you have ever picked up one of his previous books, particularly Blue Like Jazz, you know that Donald Miller has a style of his own. He is always interesting and always has a different slant on things. That's one of the reasons I picked up this book. The other is because of the title; because I identified with the subtitle, and I was curious about the main title.
He has his own musings about what it meant to grow up without a father. Sure, there are all the adult rationalizations about it not being the child's fault, but solely the failure of two supposed adults. But practically, those who have been in that position know that that is intellectual comfort, but not very emotionally satisfying.
How about the desire to ask "Why?" Particularly when absence was accompanied by great distances and long, long absences. Or, when visitation did take place, you were farmed off to something you might find "more interesting"?
We inhabit a world made by other people. Many times we are reluctant to challenge the powers that be and to ask those important questions which help us to define, and then to redefine, ourselves. When we don't ask them, we are left with the regret of not knowing. Sometimes we may try to recreate the answer by asking those who were around our missing fathers, and then try to reconcile their answers with what we felt and know about the situations.
Unfortunately, we males are just as likely in this culture of ours to find ourselves in the position of becoming the absent father. It is not always what we want and our means of compensating for it are sometimes just as destructive as the absence itself.
The question that remains is how we do own the dragon that becomes us?
Hopefully, in the absence of a father, someone else will provide the mentor that we need in order to grow to healthy maturity. If not, the possibility is that we may become rogue. With the question of why? ringing in our ears, we have to deal with deeper than usual feelings of inferiority. Also, the tendency to rebel against authority is amplified by indifference that authority usually manifests, an indifference too reminisce of our absent father.
And how does this relate to the God we call Father? How do we learn to accept life as a gift that is growing us toward maturity? Unfortunately, we may not. That is part of the profundity of grace. But that is another chapter (in life).
7/30/06