I am up before others this a.m. preparing for the day.  Morning prayer has greeted me and light reading provided some insight and perspective from which to view the day.  The sun is shining, my cat is snoring, and the birds in the backyard are singing, I kid you not, this is not just a cliche.  The birds are truly singing.

My daily ritual includes gratitude for the gifts I have been granted.  On this Father’s day, I am blessed to have three wonderful children, each of whom I am equally proud of their uniqueness, and individual accomplishments.  Each child has had their own share of adversity and each is truly paving their own path.  Of course, they have been blessed with being raised by a literal “Mother Theresa” for a role model, my wife.  The gifts that I have been given in addition to my priceless family are too numerous and dare I say onerous to write down here.  They include the magnificent and impossible, promises unnamed here, adversities and pain, and the mundane everyday gifts that life presents.  Yes, adversity and pain are gifts, and perhaps the greatest gift of them all minus one.

Tielhard de Chardin reminded me of the greatest gift this morning, despite his having passed decades ago:

“In the life which wells up in me and in the manner which sustains me, I find much more than Your gifts.  It is you Yourself whom I find, You which makes me participate in Your being.  You who molds me.  Truly in the ruling and in the first disciplining of my living strength, in the continuous play of secondary causes, I touch as near as possible , the two faces of Your creative action, and I encounter, and kiss, Your two marvelous hands–the one that holds us so firmly that it is merged, in us, with the sources of life, and the other whose embrace is so wide that, at its slightest pressure, all the springs of the universe respond harmoniously together.”  Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, 1881-1955

I have needed much-disciplining in my life, much sustaining, and on-going molding – may God’s creative actions continue to be prominent in all of our lives.

Happy Fathers day and may we all strive to be like the original creator, the original father, in all our thoughts, actions, and deeds.