Sea Changes

I was brought up short the other day when a new found friend gave me an article which I have parsed and posted below. I don't know about my new friend, but the author of the piece below seems to have been 'feeling' my thinking.

Except in respect to my 'day job', I have always been a very competitive person. My workaday life has never  been professional, really. I never paid my dues in terms of a professional preparation. I started a few programs of study and completed none. I always came in through the back door. Oh, I may have scored enough credentials that allowed me to become a great pretender in order to earn a salary decent enough to sustain my recreation. But I never thought I 'belonged' where I worked. I was always thinking I was faking it and worried about when would I be discovered! Still am, even in my semi-retirement.

My avocational world has always been the opposite of my vocational roles. I have always been competitive as an adult in table games, slo-pitch, soccer, tennis, sailing, politics, etc. And blogging. As far as this site is concerned, this is only the tip of the iceberg as to what I've been up to elsewhere on the Internet: protracted competition and conflict.

I have always wondered why that was. For example, Why - as I have acknowledged in the past - have I always seemed to have difficulty moving over the threshold from acquaintance into friendship with other men without having first shared some conflict or competition? Winning or losing did not matter. Why is that?

Well, Fr. Richard Rohr speaks to me in this context. Here below, with permission pending, I have parsed his Boys Don't Cry from the July 2010 issue of Sojourners magazine. Rohr discusses how,

.....the typical Western Male feels. He is trapped inside with almost no inner universe of deep-meaning to heal him or guide him …..

For centuries, males have been encouraged and rewarded for living an "outer" life of performances which are usually framed in terms of win or lose. Just listen to boys talk - they have already imbibed it …The world of sports, contests … video games and proving oneself is most males' primary "myth", through which he frames all reality …..

In such a worldview there are only winners and losers, no in -between, and little chance for growth and redemption once you are deemed - or deem yourself - a loser. In the West, even the gospel is largely taught in terms of a giant reward/punishment system which I guess made sense to a largely male clergy. It is the way we prefer to frame reality. Here there is little talk or concern for healing or growth or inner spiritual development. "Why would I need healing?" I have heard men say outright. The word is even strange to many men; it sounds "soft" and "needy" - and this rejection is a surefire plan for having an absolutely huge shadow world and unconscious agenda that largely calls the shots ….

By "shadow world", I simply mean all of those aspects of our own memory and hurt that remain in our unconscious, those things that we are not prepared to deal with at the moment. They highly influence us, but we have no conscious control over such feelings, motivations, fears and agendas, so they tend to do more bad than good. Spiritual healing is precisely about bringing those issues to consciousness, which is often quite painful and yet also deeply consoling …..

Take a typical woman, educated or uneducated, of almost any race or ethnicity, and give her this agenda:

You are not to have any close friends or confidants, you are to avoid any show of need, weakness or tender human intimacy; you may not touch other women without very good reason; you may not cry; you are not encouraged to trust your inner guidance, but only outer authorities and "big" people; and you are to judge yourself by your roles, titles, car, house, money and successes. People are either in your tribe, or they are a competitive threat-or of no interest!

….. Very few women would choose that kind of agenda. Feminism and social engineers were right when they said that the typical male in most cultures has many more options and chances for advancement. But few pointed out that they were largely talking about outer options …. Women have many times the vocabulary that men do. They have a much more nuanced emotional life in most cases, and in general they are more skilled at relationships than men …. makes me wonder about the relational capacities - even the relational interest - of the typical American male.

But how else would a man be expected to act if he does not know how to identify, much less know how to share, his sadness, his anger, or his endless grief - often about his own love and losses, or the world that he once dreamed would happen? … one of the most surprising but revealing discoveries was that much male anger is actually male sadness. Men often have no way to know this themselves, and many would probably even think of themselves as "angry men". They are often very sad men, but they have no differentiated feeling world, no vocabulary, no safe male friends, no inner space or outer setting in which to open up such a chasm of feeling - not even in their churches or with their partners.

I know I am walking on sacred ground here, but I am going to say it: the church often does not really encourage an inner life. It substitutes belief systems and belonging systems and moral systems for interior journeys toward God. As a result the outer behavior is pretty weak as well …..

In fact, the reason that such external hierarchy and dualistic readings of scripture, and heady fundamentalism exist at all is primarily because of the male unwillingness to feel, to suffer, to lose, and to stand in place of the outsider with even basic empathy. Which, of course, is exactly where Jesus stood and suffered …..

So what do we do for our men, our husbands, our fathers, sons and brothers?

First of all it's important to note that throughout history many varied cultures, all over the world, have recognized this problem. These cultures saw that men would not go inside themselves until and unless they had to - and then it was often too late. So they guaranteed and structured an inner journey for the male somewhere between the ages of 13 and 17, and it was called "initiation". It didn't even work in most cases, but cultures knew they had to do it for the social survival of the tribe. Initiation was effective for enough men to guarantee eldership, wise men, men who moved beyond ego, control, and power into the "second half of life", the non-dualistic mind that we call wisdom.

Initiation in most cultures was done largely through two methods: extended solitude and silence, and ritualized sacred suffering. That was the caldron of transformation for the male. Many cultures, in a wide variety of times and places came to the inescapable conclusion: There was no other way.

If our churches do not find way us to validate, encourage, structure and teach men an inner life - as opposed to mere belief systems, belonging systems, and moral systems-- …I am not sure what the church's reason for continued existence might be. We are failing the test with one half the species, which means we are failing for the other half too. Organized religion is not doing its inherent job of transforming people at any deep level.

In short, we have substituted an intellectual life for a symbolic life, a largely mental life for a life of inner meaning, a nice Christian club for a call to a journey that males could actually respect. We can live without success, but the soul cannot live without meaning.

…..we need to help our men move beyond the self-defeating game of either or, and to find the open and gracious space of the limitless, alive, and God-given world that is in-between. Where all of us live anyway.

I am glad to have found a church that encourages me in making that affirmation. After living un-churched for the last ten years in this new community, I have finally re-churched myself. And I have to say I have never felt better churched. My new church is

...validating, encouraging, structuring and teaching me an inner life - as opposed to mere belief systems, belonging systems, and moral systems.

I have always felt comfortable in my skin. Make that "complacent". I have liked myself. And At the same time, something has been missing. I am feeling encouraged to dig deeper under my skin to find out why I do what I do, and why I think what I think. Previously, I was content without posing these questions. Now, things seem to be more urgent. I sense my curiosity becoming increasingly intense. I am excited. I think I might come to liking myself even better in the days to come.