The Fatherly Heart | June 15, 2025 | Rev. Dr. Kathryn Benton

After the last time we were together, at the ordination of Rev. Jones-Bey, I was reminded of my own ordination at Fellowship Church 21 years ago. The speaker for that event was Dr. Matthew Fox, who was, at the time, in the midst of writing his book on the “Sacred Masculine”. One of the archetypes that he put forward in that book was the spiritual warrior - warrior being one who offers service to the world, unlike a soldier who is coerced to serve. A spiritual warrior is ready to step into their responsibility as a human being on this Earth…ready to step into their unique significance in the universe…ready to step into the inheritance given them at birth…the inheritance of the stars, the earth and of all of our ancestors who are counting on us to transform injustice and bring about a new heaven and a new earth. In his sermon, he outlined my responsibility to be a spiritual warrior, in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., Sojourner Truth, and others. Fox came again to Fellowship Church several years later on Father’s Day when he spoke about his new book, The Hidden Spirituality of Men, Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine. In his book Fox stated that the divine masculine needs redeeming…

I’m not sure if he could have envisioned then what we are seeing today. A military parade on the streets of our nation’s capital in apparent celebration of our warring nature, the assassination of a lawmaker and her husband in the guise of a police officer, ICE raids on working families, human rights being threatened at every turn. It is horrifying, sickening and heart-breaking. And we know similar things are happening all over the globe. We are in dire need of new visions…more compassionate, more nurturing visions of what it is like to be a human being…of what it is like to be a man and of what it is like to be a father.

Fox explored these visions in the form of the archetypes of Father Sky, the Green Man, the Blue Man, the Spiritual Warrior, and the Earth Father or Fatherly Heart. These are rich traditions that have been pushed aside to make room for the boss…the king…the fascist leaders…the strict authoritarian model of masculinity that has robbed us of a more loving model for fathers and those that could be fathers.

One vision of the sacred masculine Fox speaks of is the Earth Father or the Fatherly Heart. This is, he says, the heart of intimacy, love of life and introspection. It is a nurturing and loving, yet fiercely protective model. Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women Who Run with the Wolves offers this poem about Father Earth:

There’s a two-million year old man

No one knows.

They cut into his rivers

Peeled wide pieces of hide

From his legs

Left scorch marks

On his buttocks.

He did not cry out.

No matter what they did, he held firm.

Now he raises his stabbed hands

and whispers that we can heal him yet.

We begin the bandages,

The rolls of gauze,

The unguents, the gut,

The needle, the grafts.

We slowly, carefully turn his body

Face up,

And under him,

His lifelong lover, the old woman,

Is perfect and unmarked

He has laid upon

His two-million year old woman

All this time, protecting her

With his old back, his old scarred back.

And the soil beneath her

Is black with her tears.

Fox points out that this we have clung to the metaphor of Father Sky so long, we have forgotten to bring him back to Earth. So often in our society fathers have struggled to be the fathers they want to be. They have fled to the sky, sometimes even abdicating their responsibility as fathers. There have been many reasons for this, but the vision of the cold, distant father in the sky is one reason. The vision of Earth Father or Fatherly Heart could help redeem him.

We know the qualities of the Fatherly Heart. This is the father that is caring and loving, generous and encouraging. He gives courage to his children to face an often harsh and uncaring world. He listens to his children and guides them to see the big picture in life. As we witnessed in Dr. Estes poem, he is also fiercely protective. This is the image of the spiritual warrior that Fox spoke of at my ordination service. The warrior is in touch with his heart…so much so that he is able to give it not only to his children, but to the world. Listen to the words of Hafiz:

The warriors tame

The beast in their past

So that the night’s hoofs

Can no longer break the jeweled visionIn the heart.

The intelligent and the brave

Open every closet in the future and evict

All the mind’s ghosts who have the bad habit

Of barfing everywhere.

For a long time the Universe

Has been germinating in your spine

But only a Saint has the talent,

The courage to slay

The past-giant, the future-anxieties.

The warrior

Wisely sits in a circle

With other men

Gathering the strength to unmask

Himself,

Then

Sits, giving,

like a great illumined planet on

The

Earth.

I often have talked about this as my experience of my own father. He was a father to his own children, numerous nieces and nephews, and then so many others that he encountered. He was a man that took his call to spiritual warriorhood seriously, not only as a father, but as a leader and a teacher in his work and in the community. He embodied the Fatherly Heart. And in the true meaning of spiritual warriorhood, my father not only helped all these people, but he taught them how to find their own way to spiritual warriorhood…he taught them how to find their own inner compass…their inner teacher…their inner warrior. He did this by mirroring their own soul…their own identity at a time when many of those young people were lost.

Another person who exemplified the Fatherly Heart was Dr. Dorsey Blake. Many have remarked that when you were in his presence you felt both seen and heard. He embodied the Fatherly Heart in all that he did. I am finding, since he has died that I have felt untethered…unsure of myself in some ways. I miss deeply his warmth and guidance…the love and care with which he moved in the world. In a sermon from 2021, Dr. Blake discussed a Bible verse from Matthew 18:3 which reads, "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven". Dr. Blake pointed out that Jesus was speaking to the disciples, telling them that his ministry represented a radical indictment of the current status quo. He encouraged them to develop a sense of humility that could help them gain an understanding of their place in the universe. Jesus was encouraging his students to become explorers, seekers of life. We know that Thurman himself took this advice, even as a young child he remembered…

When the storms blew, the branches of the large oak tree in our backyard would snap and fall. But the topmost branches of the oak tree would sway, giving way just enough to save themselves from snapping loose. I needed the strength of that tree, and, like it, I wanted to hold my ground. Eventually, I discovered that the oak tree and I had a unique relationship. I could sit, my back against its trunk, and feel the same peace that would come to me in my bed at night. I could reach down in the quiet places of my spirit, take out my bruises and my joys, unfold them, and talk about them. I could talk aloud to the oak tree and know that I was understood. It, too, was a part of my reality, like the woods, the night, and the pounding surf, my earliest companions, giving me space.  

Dr. Blake reflected that he thought that the oak tree talked back to Thurman…in cosmic communication, saying, I’ve got your back! 

This is the vision of the spiritual warrior that Fox was talking about at my ordination ceremony. He meant that to be ordained as a minister (or as a teacher, a doctor, a social worker, or anything for that matter) means that we have to get serious about life…serious about what we are called to do…serious about our responsibility. And we have the cosmic companionship of the oak tree, the ocean, the wind, the bird…all of creation, including the fatherly heart where heaven resides.

The sacred masculine is calling…Father Sky, the green man, the blue man, the fatherly heart and the spiritual warrior…calling us to step up to our responsibility to life. We need to heed the advice of the Fatherly Heart…the one that tells us to step into life fully…to step into the power of the divine available to each one of us…to step into our inheritance…the stars, the planets, the plants, the water, the rocks, the creatures of which we are all a part. We must make a radical indictment of the status quo…the current reality, using the imagination and creativity of a child. Ultimately, we must come to that place of power that each of us aspire to…that place where we can say with confidence that we are growing taller…that we are coming into fruition…we are growing tall enough to fit the crown that God has placed over our heads…we are indeed royal persons tied into the idiom of everything that lives. Through the strength and tenderness of the Sacred Masculine may we embrace our collective responsibility to build heaven here on earth.

You can look to the stars in search of the answers

Look for God and life on distant planets

Have your faith in the ever after

While each of us holds inside the map to the labyrinth

And heaven's here on earth

We are the spirit the collective conscience

We create the pain and the suffering and the beauty in this world

Heaven's here on earth

In our faith in humankind

In our respect for what is earthly

In our unfaltering belief in peace and love and understanding

I've seen and met angels wearing the disguise

Of ordinary people leading ordinary lives

Filled with love, compassion, forgiveness and sacrifice

Heaven's in our hearts

In our faith in humankind

In our respect for what is earthly

In our unfaltering belief in peace and love and understanding

Look around

Believe in what you see

The kingdom is at hand

The promised land is at your feet

We can and will become what we aspire to be

If Heaven's here on earth

If we have faith in humankind

And respect for what is earthly

And an unfaltering belief that truth is divinity

And heaven's here on earth

I've seen spirits

I've met angels

I've touched creations beautiful and wondrous

I've been places where I question all I think I know

But I believe, I believe, I believe this could be heaven

We are born inside the gates with the power to create life

And to take it away

The world is our temple

The world is our church

Heaven's here on earth

If we have faith in humankind

And respect for what is earthly

And an unfaltering belief

In peace and love and understanding

This could be heaven here on earth

Heaven's in our heart