Monday, June 22, 2020

Reclaiming Fatherhood to Heal the Family




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Late last month, even as the pandemic raged and our TV sets and smartphones were filled with dire news of death and growing civil unrest, something strange, and quiet, and beautiful…and heartbreaking went viral on Twitter.

 

It was a tweet by a woman named Gissel Carmona. She linked to a brand new YouTube channel, run by Chicago resident Rob Kenney. Carmona wrote: “His father left when he was 12, now he has a [YouTube] channel called ‘Dad, how do I?’ to help kids who’re growing up without dads”. She called Kenney’s YouTube project, “the purest thing.”

 

As I write this, Carmona’s tweet has been “liked” over 2 million times, and retweeted 650,000 times. Meanwhile, Kenney’s YouTube channel has garnered over 2.2 million subscribers, putting him in the stratosphere of Youtube influencers. Which is extraordinary when you consider the humdrum nature of the videos Kenney uploads: unedited, no-frills instructional videos about such things as “how to swap out a car battery,” or “how to use a stud finder,” or “how to tie a tie.”

 

So how does an unassuming middle-class American dad go from being unknown to an Internet sensation simply for showing people how to do the most basic of household tasks? Many of the comments below his videos leave little doubt about what’s going on. Comments like this one: “seeing this brought me to tears. My dad walked out on me when I was 11 and barely taught me anything. This is so d… sweet it’s overwhelming I want to give this man a hug.” Or this: “Oh, this makes me emotional. My dad walked out when I was 19 but he was gone emotionally LONG before that. These are the things my mum taught me instead because it was important.” . . .

 

(Click here to continue reading this article.)

 

Sincerely yours in Christ,

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Father Shenan J. Boquet
President, Human Life International


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