Hold On, Loosely
A skeptic offers up a prayer for his son
I’m six weeks away from becoming a father for the first time.
My fingers hesitate to type these words because there’s a mixture of anxiety, excitement, superstition, and disbelief that give me a moment of pause. A couple of years of trying for children led my wife and I to positive tests and visits to doctors but ultimately a couple of miscarriages, so every bit of enthusiasm and hope that we experience now is tinged with some fear about what may be lurking around the corner. There’s definitively a sweet taste now but it still gets mixed in with a shot of bitterness. But over these last few months I’ve learned that there are so many factors outside of my control that I can’t help but let the words flee from my head and toward my fingers and onto the keyboard below. While I’ve always cherished the words of The Serenity Prayer, “to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”, those are sentiments that take time and practice to accept more fully and honestly. I’ve always been a little dubious about prayer in general, even at my most devout, but I can also tell you that during this period of ups and downs that I have prayed and begged that my wife might get to experience motherhood and that we would be able to raise a child together. And after all that time and confusion and hope and anger, here we are at the precipice making room in our hearts and in our home to welcome our baby boy. And no matter what has led to this moment, I would like to add that gratefulness is the aftertaste after all that we have walked through. Emily and I have grown closer with each other, trusted in our future more deeply, and have relied on the love of friends and family more completely.
I believe prayers are essentially a form of meditation. And while I may harbor large suspicions that they work to change outcomes and situations, I instead trust that these motions work to alter our perspectives during the processes of life. Perhaps our prayers, meditations, reflections (whatever you want to call them) help us to be more calm, focused, empathetic, peaceful, and intentional. They also act as personal confessions that we address toward ourselves, to reveal what terrifies us, mystifies us, what we dream for, and what we hope to come to fruition. Even as a skeptic at heart, I still have prayers for our son and perhaps by sharing those with myself and friends, our little village can surround and help build him into the person he needs to become. So I share this prayer, meditation, reflection with you as a hope and a confession as we raise a child into this simultaneously beautiful and tragic world…
“Arthur Thomas,
Your first and middle name are rich in meaning. We initially think of King Arthur, of course, that perhaps-historical-but-most-likely-mythological figure who was brave, courageous, a protector and leader of others. There are so many facets of that story that I hope for you, that you will see your life as a source of hope for others and that you’ll protect and care for communities that are vulnerable and worthy of focus. I want you to be strong, not so much that it points back to you but that instead you’ll refract that power in support of others to build them up as well. I pray that you’ll be a source of goodness, of love, and care for your peers and your environment. There’s something instinctual about the character of Arthur, trusting his intuition and knowing intimately who he was and I wish that for you because I spent way too much of my life not trusting my gut and instead went along with what others wanted for me.
I also love the second half of your name for a couple of reasons. First, you’re named after your great-grandfather (Tom) and he has spent his life caring for and pastoring others, some of it in the cause of civil rights as he walked the Edmund Pettus Bridge alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, and so many other brave women, men, and children who stood strong to advocate for their full existence in the South. But I also love your name because it invokes something almost opposite of the first part of your name. Your name is a juxtaposition, an oxymoron even, because I also think of the disciple Thomas from the Christian scriptures. He’s commonly thought of as the skeptic, the doubter, the mistrusting one. It may be an odd thing to wish for a child, but I pray that you’ll live a life full of questions, suspicions, and doubts. I want you to take everything you are presented, everything you think you know, and all the values that you hold, with what I’ll call a “loose embrace”. Or perhaps in the musical wisdom of 38 Special, I hope you “Hold on loosely”:
"Your baby needs something to believe in,
and a whole lot of space to breathe in.” - 38 Special
I don’t think we are meant to be bags tossed to and fro by whatever current wind is catching us, but I also don’t think we should be so staunch and solidified in any of our perspectives. We should always leave room for questions, for doubt, for the fact that we and others might have it a little wrong. We can hold on to things, for sure, but we should do so with not too tight a hold. Therefore I hope you question what is given to you, even when it’s coming from your mom and me. I think one of the largest vices that most of us carry within us is the desire for absolute certainty. It’s a drug, really, and its promises are empty. But there’s a fine line between fundamentalism and devotion, because we can devote ourselves to people, to causes, and to values without placing the entirety of our existence within any one of those things on their own.
Even as this meditation offers its own kind of expectation, I don’t want to create a yoke for you. We’ll be guides along the way but you must walk your own path. I’m simply excited to watch you grow and encounter this world. It can be a wild and mean place at times, but it’s so often filled with a beauty that catches my breath. In the end, I just want you to be kind: Kind to yourself, kind to others, kind to the world you meet. And please don’t ever see that as a weakness because it’s really a muscle that we all need to exercise more routinely. It’s a muscle that creates actual strength. In the wise words of Conan O’Brien (who you will definitely be introduced to), “If you work really hard, and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”
That’s my prayer for you, Artie. We’ll see you soon.
Enjoy this classic, folks…
really good words, brother. artie is luck to have you and emily. and i am too.
I am crying!!! I can’t wait to be an Auntie!