I finished Don Miller's "To Own a Dragon: reflections on life without a father". This is undoubtedly a book I will read many times. The book is fourteen short chapters, each dealing with a specific area that Miller felt was impacted by the lack of a father in his life.
A recurring idea in the book, is the God-as-Father metaphor with which every christian is familiar. What Miller gets at is not what that metaphor says to The Church as a whole, but what that metaphor should mean to every christian father. When a child first hears "Our Father which art in Heaven", that child's father is responsible for how that child perceives that relationship.
Before I started to read the book, I was a worried that I might be tempted to over-empathize with him, to let myself think I could relate to everything he went through because my relationship with my father wasn't that great. But, that's not an option here. This isn't a book about how not having a father around can affect some boys. This is a book about how he was affected, personally. He illustrates his points with specific, personal examples from his childhood. Like "Blue Like Jazz", Don's writing feels genuine...without affectation. While the prologue includes a tongue-in-cheek warning for "women who attempt this book", his writing can speak to fathers as easily as the fatherless.
