Honour Your Parents?

The Bible ordains children to honour their parents (e.g Exodus 20:2, Deuteronomy 5;16 and Ephesian 6:10). In every day living, there are many guides on how to bringing up children but rarely books on how to honour parents.... to be courteous and to provide assistance when they are in need, perhaps. For the Chinese, filial piety is one of the virtues expected of each generation. With globalisation and cross cultural interactions, this tradition is no more a guaranteed virtue.

Parents are never perfect and even though their love for the offsprings is often unconditional but sometimes misguided or overwhelmed. Over the generations, love always overflows downwards.... seldom upwards.

How do you expect in the case of Chip St. Clair, who as a child was constantly abused by his parents, who were fugitives (without his knowledge for over 17 years) of serious crimes? Chip's father, Michael Dean Grant was a child murderer of several counts. In fact, Chip was nearly killed by his father - when he was 8 years old, was thrown out of the rowboat into the ice-cold water of Lake Michigan, to swim few hundred metres onto the shore, whilst his father rowed the boat ashore; and on another occasion of being forced by his father to stand on the balcony of his 28th floor apartment, pretending to commit suicide, to shock his mother. The fears and mental torture on this growing child must be beyond the imagination of other children with seemingly normal childhood.

The book, The Butterfly Garden (2007) by Chip St. Clair detailed his ordeals as a child and how he survived living with his dysfunction parents. He found solice and inspiration from this poem by William Ernest Henley (1849-1902):

Out of the night that covers me
Black as the Pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the bludgeionings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me , unafraid

It matters not how strait the gate
How charged with punishment the scroll
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul

Chip is now the Regional Director of the Justice for Children (Michigan Chapter), a NGO set up to help abused and neglected children. Chip had found support from his love, his friend and his wife in Lisa, who helped him to overcome his unpleasant childhood and turn it into a strength.

Quoting Chip, "To open up to another to make yourself vulnerable, is the beginning of introspection, the transformation into a butterfly... a butterfly which brings forth our colours from within, not hide them from the world - for they are part of our very being - the pelette of our life's experiences. We must not be afraid to reveal the rainbow buried deep within us to spread our wings and help make the world flourish."