Narratives of Silence: Availability in a Spirituality of Fathering‪.‬

The author takes a narrative approach to the spirituality of paternal availability. In all of the stories that are investigated, the theme of silence is prominent. Silence manifests itself through the modalities of restraint, loving action, and listening. These three modalities express quite comprehensively the Marcelian concept of personal availability. Marcel relates availability to both receptivity and belonging. Further, he identifies Christ as the ground of these commitments. Using these concepts, a Christian perspective on the spirituality of fatherhood is developed. The research that social scientists have carried out on fatherhood over the past thirty or more years has indicated a small but significant increase in paternal participation in the care and nurture of children. While this constitutes a positive development in fatherhood, it is important to recognize that there is a deeper level of paternal relationality than basic care for the needs of the child. "Caring for" a child is not necessarily the same as "caring about" her (Rohner & Veneziano, 2001, p. 392). When a father cares deeply about his children, there is a spiritual dimension in his relationship with them. The spirituality of fatherhood, I contend, is grounded in a father's capacity for a loving disposal of himself for the sake of his children. It is this disposability or availability that I am interested in here. In my view, the best treatment of the meaning of personal availability is provided by the French philosopher and Catholic Christian, Gabriel Marcel. In Marcel's (1964) approach, availability means both openness to the other and forming a covenant of belonging with her. This covenant of belonging, he contends, is ultimately grounded in the love of Christ. The aim of this paper is to explore the way in which fathers express their love for their children through these spiritual dynamics.