JANUARY, 1997. Volume XXII, Number 4

The Father Quest

Bud Harris

1995: Alexander Books

If you enjoyed Guy Corneau’s Absent Fathers, Lost Sons, you will be fascinated with Bud Harris’s The Father Quest. He begins with a summary of The Odyssey, with Odysseus and Telemachus questing for maturity and wholeness. Their turbulent journeys are through the troubled waters of our own psychological development.

Harris then moves into what he calls “Cornerstones”: the fragmented image of the Father in our culture and the consequences of a fragmented society. He cites Parker Palmer’s view of the “collapse of community and accountability between the knowing self and the known world.” The institutional structures of education, government, religion and entertainment come under attack. Developed to improve our society, these institutions are now out of balance and lack humanity. (Government depersonalizes the very people it is intended to help and churches have little sense of the individual needs for the human soul.)

Harris refers to the initiations of primitive cultures which allowed tribe members to be separated from childhood dependency by maturing psychologically as they matured physically. Having transformed consciousness individually, they could go out into the world and face its mysteries and dangers. From the ordeal of initiation came a courage and self-confidence that no one could take away from an individual. Harris maintains that our society pushes fathers in a drive for pragmatism, material success, security and conformity, and that this society shrinks from developing self-responsible adults.

In our culture, he says, images are not internalized. A spiritual crisis often emerges in mid-life, when individuals feel a sense of failure and loss.

Life is a touchstone for the truth of the spirit, and Harris says it is our challenge to find a way to teach our sons and daughters of the transformative powers of the spirit, giving purpose to life. With spiritual self-reliance, we can strive to wholeness and learn to take our place in the community. He talks to the value of struggle and the creative energy that flows from encounters. Building the case for revitalizing ourselves, the author moves to the second part of his book and what he calls “Touchstones”.

Harris identifies the difficulties inherent in (1) single parent situations, with the absence of one kind of love; and (2) traditional families, with the presence of a father who lives a persona while the son vainly looks to him as the model of how to be authentic. The son’s search for identity may often result in incomplete relatedness, with the risk of becoming unconsciously trapped in the shadow and the danger of being seduced by satanic cults and heavy metal music. Adolescents are bonded to the outer world, because there is no recognition of the inner world. They want validity in life.

Finally, Fatherhood in love is addressed in the context of Jesus Christ, Carl Jung, Solzhenitsyn, Eric Fromm, King Arthur, the movie Dead Poet’s Society, and Adler to bring us to the transforming courage that makes the difference. The father can help, with a spirit of adventure, the development of love of life as a principle, and the search for truth and wholeness.

Harris addresses the transformation of the transcendent father in terms of Beowolf, the Cherokee Indians of North Carolina, Christ the teacher, and Abraham. The Transcendent father embraces paradox, lives with contradictions, and is aware of dualities in life. Plunging into paradox requires courage and allows him to find transcendence, the Self, individuation and rebirth.

He closes with a reference to the grandfather, “The Wise Old Man”; and with his views on the human condition of suffering and of the difficulty of and the need for grief. The “longing for home” rests in the heart of all of us. We feel an urgency of the heart for wholeness and it sends us on our odyssey—the individuation process. Our journey brings us to higher consciousness, to listen to our inner voices and to be aware of values greater than ourselves. By holding the tension between our practical and spiritual identities, we will eventually know wisdom. Through reading Bud Harris’s The Father Quest, you will gain an understanding of how the father quest can empower Fathers and those around them.

–Jim Tremain