Bruce Springsteen’s father cast a long and mostly dark shadow over his life, said Michael Hainey in Esquire. Springsteen admits that his entire career has largely been a reaction to an attempt to free himself from Doug Springsteen, a hard drinking, blue-collar New Jerseyite who bounced from job to job.

“My mother was kind and compassionate and very considerate of others feelings," Springsteen says. “My father looked at all those things as weaknesses. He was very dismissive of who I was."

His father dominated the family home, radiating menace as he sat in the darkness in the kitchen, drinking and brooding. Later in life, he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.

After Springsteen became famous and wealthy, his father said to him, “You’ve been very good to us. And I wasn’t very good to you." When his father died at age 73, Springsteen stayed behind after the graveside funeral, taking a shovel to finish the burial with his own hands. “I wanted that connection,” he says. “It meant a lot to me."

Possible Preaching Angle: Fathers have tremendous influence in shaping the inner person of their children; some positively through love and support, and some negatively through anger, abuse, or abandonment. However, all who come to the Heavenly Father will find love, acceptance, grace, and healing from past injuries.

The Week, "People: Springsteen's deepest yearning," (12/21-28/18), Page 10