Our Lorax Moment

I became a father four years ago on the eve of Father’s Day. I’ll never forget the first gaze into my daughter’s eyes, with her look of recognition at this man who had sung to her for months in momma’s belly. The feeling that filled my being in those first moments of her existence was the power of love on full throttle.

In those first days, I quickly came to understand that these feelings are universal, shared in equal measure by parents for countless generations in every corner of the globe and in every circumstance. I felt kinship with fellow fathers and mothers in Iraq, Israel, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Spain. Whatever our differences, I understood that the depth of love for our children is a stronger unifying force than all that divides us.

Our daughter Rosie was born at a time when stories of families anguished by the effects of wars, torture and depravity supported by our tax dollars filled newscasts on a daily basis. The notion of creating a more peaceful, humane and healthy world for our children became imperative, urgent. If only we the parents (and grandparents, aunts and uncles) could link up, in honor of the love we have for our children, to insist on a world where no child is bombed or left to suffer, a world where every child is honored and treated with care and compassion, a world where the natural life support systems that sustain all children are restored.

By the time Rosie turned one, we started listening to a candidate for President who was saying things like this: “Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.”

Campaign rallies were populated with new parents and our children, all of us feeling I sensed that “hope” and “change” were not glib slogans but connected to our deepest yearnings. I made “Babies for Barack” buttons and got elected delegate to the national convention in Denver, where I organized a “Families for Obama” rally. Moms and Dads spoke from their hearts about what was at stake for them in the election. This feeling crested in the hopeful tide of humanity that descended in record numbers in Washington, DC to participate as we the people in the inauguration of President Obama.

Now, 18 months later, hope has given way in many instances to anxiety, despair or cynicism. We’ve seen bombs continue to explode in wedding parties in Afghanistan, Wall St. bailed out to reward greed and avarice, and another hottest year on record, with action to confront climate change not keeping up with the speed of melting glaciers.

Then the Deepwater Horizon exploded, putting the effects of our collective addiction to oil on full gory display in the Gulf of Mexico. The stakes for life as we know it have just been raised. Water is life, polluted water is death. We are fouling our nest. We’ve reached a crossroads where we either respond to this catastrophe by transforming the way we live on the planet, or we leave a ravaged world to our children.

The poet Drew Dellinger put it this way, “My great great grandchildren won’t let me sleep: what did you do while the earth was unraveling?” We’re having a “Lorax” moment – Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.

The forces of violence and greed are formidable, but they can be overcome by a much more powerful force -- the combined power of love for our children. At the moment we choose to act on that love, everything changes.

The change we believe in and need is not going to be done for us by President Obama. It’s not going to be done for us by anyone else. Your knight in shining armor is looking at you in the mirror, begging for action.

Can we the fathers and mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, summon the commitment and courage to do what is necessary for the well-being of our children, and all those children yet to be born? Yes we still can, and yes we must.

Father's Day for Peace

For too long we men have used violence and war to settle our scores, leading to more violence and war.  We look away while bombs dropped in our names kill the children of fellow fathers and mothers in far away places, increasing the odds that our own children will one day be the victim of revenge attacks.

Imagine just for a moment how you would feel and what you would do if your own children were the “collateral damage.”  After all, the mothers and fathers of the world love our children and grieve their deaths in equal proportion.  We may shield our eyes, but if you listen you can hear the anguished cries.

In the wake of the Civil War, Julia Ward Howe called on the women of the world to unite against war, saying in her 1870 Mother’s Day Proclamation: “We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

But the men didn’t listen. Instead, our gender has led the charge in a parade of brutal wars, killing millions upon millions of beloved sons and daughters in every corner of the planet. Just last month, 65 children were killed in one strike in Afghanistan by U.S. bombs, according to a report by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. Children in Pakistan live in constant fear of being the next victim of an unmanned U.S. drone.

Enough. It’s time to put an end to war for the sake of our children, for the sake of all children.  The Mothers of the world have been ready to move beyond war as a means of resolving conflict for a long time.  It’s time for Fathers to hear the call and to do our part.

The term warrior has two definitions. The first is "a person engaged or experienced in warfare." The second is "a person who shows or has shown great vigor, courage..”

It’s time for Fathers to stand up with courage and vigor to the war-makers and demand that no more children are bombed in our name in Afghanistan or anyplace else.  Let us vow to do unto the children of other fathers and mothers as we would have done unto ours. Let’s drop books and bread instead of bombs, and use the money saved to restore the planet that is the common inheritance of our children while we’re at it.

Jimi Hendrix once said, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the people shall know peace.”  We have that power, Dads, in the love we collectively feel for our children.  Let’s make Father’s Day a day to begin realizing the full power of that love. Our children are counting on us.