Growing up, my father was the parent  I wanted to go to town with.  He was the one most likely to give in to an appeal as we shopped.    As I got older, my father’s gift of humor delighted me. I enjoyed his love of stories and the twinkle in his eye whenever he was about to start one.  He was a gentle father.

On the day that my father was born, his father left home and never returned. My dad never knew his father, but the memory of that departure day and that which led up to it, impacted his life and the lives of his older brothers. It was a time so painful that neither of his brothers would mention their father.  Only with a great deal of prodding, could we get our uncles to tell  us anything about him.

My father, like many of his generation, kept feelings and emotions to himself. I knew him to be a person who enjoyed poetry – but doubt that any of his friends knew this about him. He loved the earth. From him I learned a love of nature and a responsibility to care for the earth and to protect our natural resources. When I was at an age that I might have gotten him to talk, he was already ill and no longer able to converse or tell the stories that I so enjoyed. The feeling and emotions of what I knew to be a painful childhood were hidden inside him. And yet, he was a gentle father.

Steve Garnaas-Holmes song, *O be Gentle” cries out for gentleness

“O Be Gentle
In all our living may we be gentle
so what is dear to us may also live.

“Have you been wounded
Oh surely you’ve been wounded
If you’ve been wounded
Then surely you will understand our cry

Oh be gentle in all our living
May we be gentle, so what is dear to us may also live”

In our woundedness, may we seek places of healing and nurture, where our wounds can be healed and we can  grow as the gentle souls God calls us to.   

“Let your gentleness be known to everyone.” Philippians 4:5

*Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Montana Logging and Ballet Co.