Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there, blood and spiritual.
The Proto-Indo-European root
*pah- gives us words like father, paternal, and pastor, and the root meaning is
protect—the
pater is the
*pah-tḗr, the protect-or. At its most fundamental, this is what it is to be a father: a shepherd, a guardian, a warrior, a protector.
I think about Bridger Walker often in this connection. You may remember him as the boy who jumped in front of his sister to protect her from a dog attack that would probably have killed her. When asked why he did it, he answered "If someone was going to die, I thought it should be me."
That sums up what it is to be a father.
Happy Fathers Day to all the fathers out there.
