A few weeks ago, I posted some thoughts pertaining to Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2, and some of the cruel realities of fathering in the last 40 or so years.
I wrote the following as part of that post:
“For those of you that have not seen Guardians of the Galaxy 2, you might not understand….but for those who have, father issues are some of the hardest to deal with…and for those of us who had messed-up interactions with our fathers who refused intimacy, and who had to attempt to make do with predators as fathers, until we embraced the Father of Lights as our Father or His Son as Father, this cut and the following posted segments from GOTG 2 are for you.”
Now, my sister, Dina, had pushed back to me, when I was remarking bitterly against the dynamic of spiritual fathering typically presented by most charismatic churches, that G-d does set the lonely in families.
So, in light of that remark, I continued in that post:
“And to Yeshua, thank you for the steadfast fathering you provided.
“He sets the lonely in families…” even if those families are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And the nature of those family units might range from place to place.
Well, there is a place in Guardians of the Galaxy 2, where Peter Quill is forced into a major fight with his father, Ego, in which one of them must kill the other. Earlier, in the prequel to this MCU film, we learn Peter’s mother died from cancer, and during the unfolding of events in the second film, Peter is drawn into the fight with his biological father because Ego was the one who implanted the tumor in his mother’s brain that killed her.
Well, throughout the film, there are a number of alternative-family themes that are presented. As we know that Gamora was the adoptive daughter of Thanos, the Mad Titan and genocidal maniac, and Rocket, the Guardians’ very-wisecracking genius raccon mechanic, was the product of experiments that resulted in him literally being ripped apart and put back together, making it difficult for him to trust anyone. So that when Rocket becomes vulnerable, it hits on things that many of us Gen-X’er’s, and beyond, have endured: Especially being thrown-away by many of our fathers, pastors, and “coverings”, which is why so many of us are suspicious of people purporting to be apostolic fathers and spiritual leaders.
It also helps show that many of us in my generation, because the Trinity Himself has sovereignly raised us, because we were fathered by G-d, there is deep compassion in many of us who survived the loss of physical family, and many of us developed hearts to father other throw-aways.
Dorothy, a friend of mine, remarked the following, and I want none of y’all to miss it, gang:
“The idiosyncratic broken-but-healing-and-unlearning-toxic-patterns found family in Guardians was the realest part of the movies, tbh. And it needed the comedy and the satire, because it hit pretty hard sometimes. We’re all in this broken scene, somewhere, however long or briefly… On a few levels, it’s about stopping and redeeming a multi-generational saga of dysfunction.
Also, it was a tiny bit cathartic to watch [Rocket] the raccoon vent so much semi-justified distrust and pain and rage in the “safe” context of a story with a happy ending. That kind of strong-coffee vicious bitterness doesn’t show up in cinema too often, but it’s very familiar.
Dorothy
My ex-spiritual father and mother did some things like this to many of us who were college-age in the early 2000’s.
The “father” preached a sermon one December evening in which he was responding to a group of us who had taken it upon ourselves, at the direction of the L-rd, to engage in territorial warfare against the major clowns that were over the college in our small town, and we were quite effective against them.
In said sermon, he remarked, and I quote, that:
“a bunch of kids were squirting at principalities with water pistols”. And he had said this in light of the reality that we refused to submit our ministry to his apostolic oversight and covering.
Further, practicing witches had infiltrated the church’s intercessory group, which was led by the “mother”, whether or not she realized it, and launched attacks against us, cursing us in a number of ways. All in all, by the time we all left the college after graduation that year, many of us were really beaten up badly. And many of us were trailed for years afterward by a network of antichrist spirits that had connected between every town where we each moved to. It made our capacity to hold jobs and buy property all but impossible. On top of that, other things were imparted to us because these believers perceived we were not submitting to their authority.
So, when you barf on me with “submit to my covering and apostolic oversight”, that’s a trigger that I am going to probably have trust issues. I don’t do covering, and I don’t mess with control or manipulation, one bit.
And when your covering proves to provide me no significant increase of spiritual protection or blessing, but rather constrains and constricts me with the threat of cursing if I don’t lick your boot or kiss your ass, then we are also going to have issues.
What follow are a few clips from Guardians that show what real fathering is like.
Once Yondu realized what Ego was doing with children, he resisted delivering Peter to Ego.
There are other places where this fathering shows up, and it provides solid impetus for us to model some level of fathering the best we can, as many kids are growing up without a solid model of earthly fathering, even if it means the only fathering we received was directly from G-d the Father; friendships with; or through books, materials, blog posts, composed by men and women with a fathering mantle.
And granted, Yondu was probably not what many people would describe as a model father, but he did intervene to protect Peter from Ego, and he did reconcile with his clan, the Ravagers, and made peace with Stakar.
There will come a time when we each have to accept the fathers in our lives, however imperfect the packaging is, and just allow them to love on us as best they each can. And I think this is why we need things like strong-coffee vicious bitterness to help us heal something deeply that we cannot possibly heal on our own, gang.
Be deeply at peace, precious friends, and know you are each loved so incredibly, and please, if you need to talk about some of these issues, my email is theparacleteshammer@gmail.com or the paracleteshammer@protonmail.com. I can also be reached on my cell at (413) 657-1887
Deep love and mercy and peace be yours.