Remembering my father (4)
It is a common conception that marriage gives roots to a man. And I suppose that is true in certain senses (at least, if the man is worth his salt).
But if we’re talking about the taming of wandering feet, it certainly wasn’t true of my father. I recall that at some point our family did a calculation of how many moves we had made. I think it was something like 26 by the time I was twelve.
My father was no longer a hobo, but the travelling never stopped until he contracted ALS. When I was a kid, my Dad at one point figured he made about 100,000 miles a year. None by air.
I guess the moving can’t be blamed entirely on the preaching tours. It started before Dad really turned to preaching much, given the fact the preaching really heated up around 1969 (although I think he first started the year I was born)… and my sister was born in Victoria in 1964, and I was born in New Westminster in 1965, and only lived there for the first three months of my life. And in 1969 we were back in Port Alberni….
I have a theory that we’re all faced with different struggles and temptations and patterns, and there are many things that are almost never solved in one generation, never mind in one lifetime. God grants repentance, but the new identity in Christ doesn’t mean we simply stop being who we have been. That could be said of my father in many respects.
There are those who would say that how my father led his family was inexcusable. Constantly being dislodged, never settling in and forming long-term relationships. It’s not a recipe for building community and steadfastness and a whole lot of other character traits that are highly important. And then there’s the notion that a man is supposed to provide stability and security to his wife.
Perhaps my Dad did fail in that regard in key respects. But not because of the repeated travels. If that’s a crime against the family, there are some biblical nomadic characters that come to mind.
I know that not growing up in a community was a loss. But the life my father led us in also opened up things that few experience. Wherever I’ve gone, even to Baku, Azerbaijan, I have never really experienced culture shock. Even though I still think of my father as overprotective, the truth is that I saw a lot of slices of life as a small child.
Doubtless it was harder for my mother. We travelled, but not because we had a lot of money and could vacation anywhere we wanted. We only saw her family on rare occasions (we never saw Dad’s – I never met my paternal grandmother until I was 18), and there was plenty of financial stress which a child barely senses but must bear heavily on a wife and mother.
I’ve meandered badly here, but I won’t apologize. This is, after all, my blog.
I’m not entirely sure how my father began to preach. I suppose that his notion that God had taught him to read, and read the Bible specifically, had something to do with it. And given his circles, I’m sure there were some prophecies involved somewhere. He certainly had a burning in his heart about the Word of God.
In 1969, Dad rented a hall a couple doors down from our house. This went on for six months, 3 ½ months of which he preached every night. It was a very formative time for him. He explained later that throughout that whole period, he felt all day every day that God was distant, that his prayers were bouncing off the ceiling… until he got up to preach. Then, he sensed God’s presence, his heart was light and he spoke freely… until the sermon was over, and then it was back to the same. He came to say that what he learned was that you cannot rely on feelings; you need to lean on the naked Word of God. It placed the Bible even more at the center of his being than it had been.
It is perhaps the greatest legacy he left me.