I have been a father exactly for 9 weeks. A highlight of this experience has to do with ways in which I have re-claimed what fatherhood means for me--these are ways in which I have consciously attempted to deconstruct the skeleton of patriarchy in my closet. As a father, I have learned to integrate and claim the mother in me: the one that nurtures unconditionally to a sacred human being. I have learned to embody one of the most sacred callings: to be nurturer, to be a care-giver, to be proud of the feminine spirit inherent in all of us.

On a spiritual level, I find this re-claiming of fatherhood significant. Vincent Van Gogh considered the icon of Mary and the baby Jesus to the most sacred human images. When he painted La Berceuse, he reflected the the two attributes of the Sacred coexist: the caring nurturer, and the vulnerable child. Somehow the Sacred gives and receives simultaneously.