Jack Kemp

In a 5.5 min. Youtube talk religiously raised Dennis Prager interprets the Commandment to Honor thy Father and Mother. He talks of children needing this. And he also talks briefly of those who have troubling loving their parents, but notes that the Commandment, which religious scholars such as fellow writer Fay Voshell understand, says that we all should honor the role of our father and mother, even if we have or had problems with them.

When I was in mostly phone contact with hospice nurses during the last months of my dad's life - and reading about elder care at that time - I learned that hospice nurses had seen people who had fought with parents for years come to a deeper feeling that they, in fact, had love as well as honor for those parents. I found a deeper level of love for my dad while accompanying him on his weekday rides in a van to get radiation treatments in Florida.

Tim's 2c:

If nothing else, "honor thy Father and Mother" is a gift to us, to teach us forgiveness. Even if we have rotten parents, we should honor them for our own benefit. It serves no one to hold onto bitterness and anger. The best thing is to let it go - eventually we may come to understand their viewpoint. Even if we don't, and still think they were rotten we can at least forgive them. That is priceless.

Forgiveness is in short supply in the modern age. In fact, one may say it is the cornerstone of modernity, this lack of forgiveness. As I say, failure to forgive is ultimately a terrible cruelty to onesself, not some sort of weakness or altruism toward another.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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