Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Richard Rohr: What is Masculine Spirituality?

At Greenbelt 2003 Franciscan Priest Fr. Richard Rohr OFM delivered an interesting talk under the rubric, “What is masculine spirituality?” One of my person highlights was having a coffee and conversation with Richard a few years back and one of the topics we talked about was centred on a very similar question, “what are men looking for and/or needing in order to increasingly live more deeply, fully, and wholly into their humanity and into their relatedness with others?”

Rohr, not in this talk, describes the male's journey as a double-movement, downwards and inwards from “The Common Masculine” to “Shallow Masculine” and on to “Deep Masculine”. 

This lecture doesn’t get at all of these issues, but it offers somewhat of an overview of the terrain that could be crossed, and will suggest paths that the interested male could begin to explore if (and it’s a BIG “if”) they were so inclined to face into themselves, their woundedness, their pain, and their longings with a view to becoming freer, more whole and more fully alive, i.e. more who they most deeply and uniquely are. Indeed to become more wholly and healthily male, as much for themselves as others in their lives. 

You can find Richard’s talk here. 

“…There are two ways of being a prophet. One is to tell the enslaved that they can be free. It is the difficult path of Moses. The second is to tell those who think they’re free that they are in fact enslaved. This is the even more difficult path of Jesus.”

- Richard Rohr, from The Wild Man’s Journey: Reflections on Males Spirituality, p. 41.  

 

“You must Love in Order to be Happy!”: The Tree of Life

I recently had the delight of watching Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life for the first time. Given it’s theatrical release was some time ago, I’d had plenty of feedback on the movie from friends and such like, so I must say I went into it with mixed feelings. I was however pleasantly surprised – yes, you could say it was self-indulgent, pretentious, lacking as an attempt at story-telling, and I must say I was frustrated by not being able to hear a number if the voice-over reflections. But, negatives aside, you could also say a lot more about The Tree of Life. At one level it’s a film about spiritual-searching; a reckoning with the nature of God, and the perennial relationship between God and suffering. 

The story is set in 1950’s Waco, Texas, one of the cities in which Malick himself lived in his earlier life. Indeed there is a strongly autobiographical dimension to this film if you know a little about Malick and family and upbringing. 

It was evocative at so many levels. As one friend reminded me, and this was my experience as I watched it, “its very meditative”, i.e. there’s something wonderfully rich to be gained from engaging this film contemplatively – a kind of film-divina – a kind of divine seeing; a way of engaging what was most alive in me; most in need of being held by me; of being opened by me – of being entered into. Malick’s fusion of visual image, sound, movement, symbol, narrative, and humanity deeply nourished the journey, particularly once I was able to sink beneath the surface of my life and sit with its deeper and altogether frail realities. In this sense my experience of The Tree of Life was a deeply sacramental one; an experience enriched by the wonderful film score. 

A number of commentators have described it as a “mytho-poetic” work. Others have rightly commented on the fact that Jack’s character(s) (played by Hunter McCracken & Sean Penn as the adult Jack) grows along classic Oedipal lines, i.e. a strong attachment to his mother, and conflict with his father which is eventually resolved, both as Jack makes peace with his Father (whom he’s more alike than he imagines) and with himself in midlife. The central narrative / visual-symbolic thread that tied it together was the altogether natural human instinct to create a polarity between grace and (human)nature / natur(al) law. Or perhaps between love and law – “you must love in order to be happy!” These dualisms are embodied in the characters of Mr and Mrs O’Brien. Yet, against the backdrop of creation these polarities need to be understood as two sides of the same reality. There is an intrinsic unity between grace and nature. 

Key themes: 

• Grief and death.
• Grace.
• Love.
• Healing and meaning-making, and the importance of nature in the healing process.
• Relational and family dynamics.
• Disappointment and the loss of dreams.
• Crisis & awakening. The personal invitations to face into reality, the invitations to change and to growth, especially directed at males (cf. Mr O’Brien – who by the way falls within very normal limits as a father, particularly one in the 1950’s, but equally likely he’d fit in respect of some of his behaviours in the 21^st century as well. For me the film highlighted very natural and acceptable differences between males and females and the ways in which they embody and enact their various roles. As one commentator has written, and I read myself into his words, the portrayal of Mr O’Brien is “less the stuff of Dickensian nightmare than a portrait of a well-intentioned but all-too-human man who falls short of his own standards in any number of departments” (PDF of the review here). Mr O’Brien’s is a journey into a deepening sense of his humanity, both its brokenness and its profundity. His is no less a journey than any of ours, and he appears no less open to that than anyone else; perhaps his experience of crisis and grief predisposes him more than others? As a male I both cringed at and delighted in his character, played so well by Brad Pitt, and ultimately I found him a misunderstood (by Jack in particular) but ultimately hopeful character). His, like all of our humanity was a broken and wounded one, but they were realities he appeared willing to face into redemptively and transformatively. 
• The role Mystery in human living and relating.
• The importance of Beauty in human living.
• The importance of Nature and Creation / reverence and awe. 

(Not) The Male Gaze: An Interior Journey

Allie Eagle was a leading exponent of the Women’s Art Movement in New Zealand in the 1970’s. I had an interesting conversation with her in Dunedin earlier in the year about her latest body of work – the preparatory drawings for much larger scale works under the title “Insight: (Not the Male Gaze)”. It is intended that these paintings will partner her earlier series “Sudden Imperative” which represented some of the views and experiences of women. What struck me about Allie’s initial series of paintings was the way in which a large number of men looked downwards, and what effect that had of me as someone gazing at them. I wondered, given Allie’s journey, what she now saw as she as the artist gazed at and interacted with her male subjects. 

I had mixed feelings on what I saw as I looked at the paintings – what the downward look conveyed. I was struck by a sense of their vulnerability, their sadness, their sense of their lives and their human frailty passing before their eyes. There seemed to me to be a sense of brokenness; recognition that their lives hid much that as males they hadn’t been able to give voice to, or to name. Behind the impassive faces one sensed a lot of stories and not a few regrets. It was easy to imagine and engage my own male experiences of sadness, pain, regret, and powerlessness. Or, as Allie herself says, there was something much softer but strong that she wanted to explore in her encounter with her male subjects. She was looking for a repentant [and self-reflective] man. “… I saw a tender look… [I wondered] what is going on in the hearts of men? What process does a guy go through to “change” and “what does self examination look like?”…” Rembrandt’s painting of The Prodigal Son comes to mind.  

As Vanessa Cameron Lewis has written, in relation to Not the Male Gaze, that the men look down has the effect of drawing “the viewer to what is unseen, to feelings, thoughts, and internal depths.” And, as Allie states, “I was searching for a way to make pictures of men to show their vulnerability”. The work is seeking to engage with and get inside the male heart. Certainly that intention is experienced by me as a viewer. There’s an implicit invitation to engage with my own heart.   

In many ways the series represents the subverting of the male gaze: “women”, Laura Mulvey, writes “are always the objects of the male gaze… they are [typically] the objects while males are generally the subjects”. John Berger an English art critic, novelist, painter and author reflects in his book Ways of Seeing that “…Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves…” (1972, p.42). 

Allie’s is a “female gaze”; an exploration of the male. Her works seek to speak of relationships. They speak of a shift from seeing males as “dangerous oppressors”, which for Allie emerged out of her own “hurt, pain and fear of seeing them as vulnerable human beings who also need healing”. There is in the artistic journey and encounter a “searching for truth, love, and for redemption.” The latter much in evidence as I gazed at the portraits. The journey of artist, subject, and viewer are somehow woven redemptively woven together. 

Keep an eye out for the exhibition at some future point in time.

Meantime, Allie has produced a little fundraising booklet Insight: (Not the Male Gaze) – Can we Talk Now Daddy? (from which some of the content of this post was drawn). I couldn't find any images of her latest series of portraits online, but there are some in the booklet. 

For a cinematic take on something of the male reality I highly recommend the Australian film Men’s Group. 

 

Hauerwas, Rohr, and Myers: The Iconocast Interviews

Have been listening to three interviews from the Iconocast podcast series, made available by Jesus Radicals. 

“In this episode (aired Oct 28^th, 2010), co-hosts Mark and Jarrod interview Stanley Hauerwas. Dr. Hauerwas is a Christian theologian and ethicist. He has taught at the University of Notre Dame and is currently the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School with a joint appointment at the Duke University School of Law” – available here. 

In this episode (aired Dec. 21^st 2010) co-hosts Joanna and Mark interview Father Richard Rohr. Listen in as they talk about the Enneagram, the relationship between spirituality and activism, the relationship between movements and institutions, and more.Father Rohr is a Franciscan priest. He founded the New Jerusalem Community in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1971, and the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1986, where he presently serves as Founding Director.Through writing and speaking, Father Rohr explores issues such as Scripture as liberation, the integration of action and contemplation, community building, peace and social justice issues, male spirituality, the Enneagram, and eco-spirituality. You’ll find the interview here.

In this episode (aired Mar 18^th 2010), co-hosts Sarah Lynne Anderson and Eliacin Rosario-Cruz interview Ched Myers, activist, educator, and the author of a number of books – including the very good “Binding the Strongman” commentary. Available here. 

“…Ched: The book being referred to, Binding the Strongman: A political reading of Mark’s story of Jesus, was published in 1988. It is a really just a commentary on Mark’s gospel. I guess what gave it legs were a couple of things. One was that it was an attempt to brew, to take an approach to scripture that was fundamentally liberationist. And that is not unusual in Latin America and other pars of the Third World. It is however, and really was unusual twenty years ago. The other thing I think that was different was about that book was it attempted to speak from a context of radical discipleship communities in North America and it was very explicit about that social location and about the aspects of discipleship that were the lens through which we read the gospel. 

And so, I think that book was picked up by both those who were interested in the approach political hermeneutics, by which I mean a way of approaching the gospel that looks at the Jesus story in the context of a real world of power and privilege and domination. A real world that in first century Palestine was every bit as contested and conflictual as our own. For that reading of Mark really tries to highlight the social and economic and political aspects of Jesus’ life and witness, and again that was a little unusual twenty years ago and I think that there are, there were, and continue to be many people who want to ask those sorts of questions about the scripture. So, this book was an attempt to systematically read the gospel as opposed to just pick certain themes, which were convenient—which had been the approach of a lot of first generation liberation theology. But I was to read the gospel from beginning to end using the narrative approach and to see how that story was deeply political in its own time and continues to be in ours…”

 

Daily Meditations for Men

Chelle recently left a comment on this blog, and I’ve now had a bit of a chance to have a look through her really interesting blog. Today I want to link yesterday’s Richard Rohr post by referencing a book review by Chelle. She review’s Rohr’s On the Threshold of Transformation: Daily Meditations for
Men (pub. 2010). 

Here’s an excerpt from her review. You’ll find the complete review here.

Rohr writes:

‘Authentic masculinity is the other side of feminine energy.  It’s the complement, the balance, the counterpoint, the needed energy to create a lovely whole.  Together these two energies are always new life and new beauty.  Separate they are overstatement, imbalance, sterility, and boredom.’

Richard Rohr believes that there is a unique masculine spirituality that has been lost in western men.   (David Tacey also writes about this brilliantly in relation to the Australian male – will post on his books eventually.)  The masculinity we see in culture is over-cooked, from the shadow of the human personality, an ill-fitting suit of armor.  Our culture does not encourage men to take the time for self-reflection nor does it offer enough diversity in the expressions of masculinity honored.  If consumer media culture has created problems for women in regard to body image, our media has created problems for men in regard to ego and the inner life.

So how does Rohr define masculinity?

‘By the ‘feminine principle’ I mean everything vulnerable, interior, powerless, subtle, personal , intimate, and relational.  By the ‘masculine principle’ I mean everything clear, rational, linear, ordered, in control, bounded, provable, and hard.’

I am aware of a discomfort in myself each time I read this quote.  It’s a discomfort I am keen to befriend because it is a guide into further understanding of myself and the constraints of culturally constructed notions of sexuality.  Its a post-it-note from my soul to explore further!...”

 

A fresh way of thinking about Mid-Life and a spirituality that grows throughout life

Paul writes – One of the highlights of 2006 was attending a three-day workshop and chatting over a cup of coffee with US Franciscan monk Fr. Richard Rohr. Negotiating “mid-life” is in a many ways a significant transition period in ones life – it’s a period of re-formation and of opening up depth in ones life and relationships. Rohr is a helpful guide from within the Christian tradition. Other helpful voices (a good number from the Jungian tradition) include the likes of James Hollis (through this “middle passage” we move from “misery” to “meaning”), Robert Johnson, or Mark Gerzon (mid life transitions us from “crisis” to “quest”). While, the enneagram and the like can also often very helpful tools in this transition. 

All that really serves as a brief introduction to the fact that Rohr has a new book out in March / April. A 240-page hardcover from Jossey-Bass. It’s titled Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. 

The publisher writes: 

“In Falling Upward, Fr. Richard Rohr seeks to help readers understand the tasks of the two halves of life and to show them that those who have fallen, failed, or "gone down" are the only ones who understand "up." Most of us tend to think of the second half of life as largely about getting old, dealing with health issues, and letting go of life, but the whole thesis of this book is exactly the opposite.  What looks like falling down can largely be experienced as "falling upward."  In fact, it is not a loss but somehow actually a gain, as we have all seen with elders who have come to their fullness.  

Explains why the second half of life can and should be full of spiritual richness

Offers a new view of how spiritual growth happens loss is gain 

This important book explores the counterintuitive message that we grow spiritually much more by doing wrong than by doing right…” 

Contents 

Invitation.

Introduction.

1. The Two Halves of Life.
2. The Hero and Heroine's Journey.
3. The First Half of Life.
4. The Tragic Sense of Life.
5. Stumbling over the Stumbling Stone.
6. Necessary Suffering.
7. Home and Homesickness.
8. Amnesia and the Big Picture.
9. A Second Simplicity.
10. A Bright Sadness.
11. The Shadowlands.
12. New Problems and New Directions.
13. Falling Upward.

Coda.

Notes.

Bibliography.

The Author.

Index.

Can be pre-ordered from Amazon.com (here). You’ll find a related article by Rohr here. It’s titled: The Two Halves of Life: How did we get them so mixed up? Also, this US Catholic Feb 2010 interview (PDF) with Rohr under the general title: “Don’t Miss the Second Half”.

 

Male Shadows and an Untouched Inner Life

Paul writes – An interest of mine is male spirituality and the work of male formation. I therefore appreciated Mike Crowl drawing my attention to a column by Fr. Richard Rohr OFM in a recent issue of Sojourners magazine. 

Mike has an excerpt on his site, and while I appreciated the whole article (and wished it was longer and in more detail) I was particularly struck by the following: 

“…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 an unconscious agenda that largely calls the shots. Are ongoing political, Wall Street, and church scandals really a surprise? 

By “shadow world,” I simply mean all of those aspects of our own memory and hurt that remain hidden in our unconscious, those things that we’re 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. 

In the male initiation rites we have been leading for almost 15 years (www.malespirituality.org), 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 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…” 

You can read the whole of Rohr’s column here. The book Rohr refers to in his column can be found here. It looks fascinating. 

William Stringfellow and his Homosexuality

Paul writes – While not definitive (by his own admission) Jason Goroncy has written a very useful post on William Stringfellow and his homosexuality. Included in that post are also links to three very useful posts on homosexuality by Ray Anderson. While I struggled to get my head around what he was saying and the practical implications it nonetheless offers some interesting ways of framing the questions theologically, and read in conjunction with the likes of James Alison, Rowan William’s The Body’s Grace (likewise linked from Jason’s post for those of you who haven’t read it) Kenneth Leech (indirectly and in relation to HIV – his essay “’The Carnality of Grace’: Sexuality,Spirituality & Pastoral Ministry) and Gareth Moore O.P.

Here’s an excerpt from Jason’s post:

“...There are a minimal number of references in Stringfellow’s own work to the question of homosexuality. That Stringfellow says abundantly more about Jesus Christ than he does about himself is, I think, significant in itself. One place where Stringfellow does speak to the question of homosexuality is in his essay ‘Loneliness, Dread and Holiness’, published in The Christian Century on 10 October 1962. Significantly, the essay is a reflection on 2 Corinthians 12:8–9a, ‘Three times I besought the Lord about this that it should leave me; but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”’

In that essay, Stringfellow begins by recalling the loneliness which is ‘as intimate and as common to men as death’, and ‘the void [which] may be mere boredom’, and then proceeds to note all the places that exploit and profit from that transient loneliness and boredom ‘promising that time will be consumed for those who pay the price’ – whether it be a dance studio, a club, a bar, with ‘prostitutes or homosexuals or whatever one wants’  – even if it means relieving the loneliness in lust. ‘These are’, he writes:

‘establishments often populated by those who realize that loneliness is more than the burden of time and who are beguiled by another fiction: that loneliness can be conquered by erotic infatuation. Here are folk, whether men or women, whether looking for the same or the other sex, for whom seduction becomes a way of life, who insist on the importance of what meets the eye – physique, clothes, the appearance of youth. Here are the lonely whose search for a partner is so dangerous, so stimulating and so exhausting that the search itself provides an apparent escape from loneliness. But when a partner is found for an hour or a night or a transient affair, the search immediately resumes, becomes compulsive. And while erotic companionship seems more appealing – and more human – than resignation to boredom, while touching another may be more intimate and more honest than watching another, no one may really find his own identity in another, least of all in the body of another. Perhaps this is the most absurd fiction of them all: the notion that is present, primitively, in erotic partnerships but also very often in other relationships – between parents and children, in friendship, in marriage – that one’s own identity must be sought and can be found in another person’...” 

Also insightful is Michael Westmorland-White’s “comment” appended to Jason’s post.  

You can read Jason’s full post here.

Men and Church

Paul writes – Frederica Mathewes-Green has written an interesting essay on why (she believes) “men are showing up at Eastern Orthodox churches in numbers that, if not numerically impressive, are proportionally intriguing.”

Based upon her research, she gives the following reasons; reasons that I must say remind me (in part) of a conversation I had with Alan Roxburgh, Steve Taylor and others around a table in the US earlier this year.

Eastern Orthodoxy is (and Mathewes-Green suggests other denominations might benefit by, as it were, listening in on the findings):

1.           Challenging – it is active, not passive – “It’s the only church where you are required to adapt to it, rather than it adapting to you. It thus has a strong “counter-cultural” stream. I wonder if this need reinforces the value around an intentional, challenging “missional order” at the heart of a congregation – not in the sense of those in it being some kind of “super Christians”…?

2.           It represents a reasonable set of boundaries – “just tell me what you want.” It has clear expectations and resources that enable and prevent one from “feeling put on the spot”.

3.           Offers a challenge with a goal – union with God (theosis). “Challenges and spiritual disciplines increase self-knowledge and humility, and lead to strength over sins that block union with God. It emphasizes “doing”. Grace for the Eastern Orthodox is not a static concept. It provides a “means of making progress along a defined path that is going somewhere real and better.”

4.           Opens up a new dimension – a way of encountering “the invisible realities that form the genuine substance of the Christian lexicon.

5.           Jesus Christ – Jesus Christ is the centre of everything the Church does or says. Orthodoxy offers a “robust Jesus.” Christ is the goal.

6.           Continuity – A sense of history (“ancient” + counter-cultural – see point #1) and continuity. A continuity that “intellectually-inclined [male] readers of church history find compelling. It offers stability and a rich tradition.

7.           Worship is startling and “amazingly different.”

8.           It is not sentimental – Leon Podles (see the title below) offers the theory that the piety of the Western Church became “feminized” in the 12-13^th centuries with what he calls “bridal mysticism”. The effect was a dualistic separation of “head” and “heart” – “men retired for brandy and cigars to the Systematic Theology Room.” Eastern Orthodoxy escaped this “split.”

9.           It invites men “to something more subtle than the ‘standard stereotypes of masculinity’.” “In Orthodoxy, the masculine is held together with the feminine… It is neither male nor female.

10.       Men in leadership – “Like it or not, men simply prefer to be led by men,” Mathewes-Green writes. 

Have a read of the full paper – Men and Church

Also recommended by many during the course of Mathewes-Green’s little research ‘project’ was The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity

Does anything precipitate an Interior Journey by Males?

Paul writes – With “Fathers Day” having just passed here in NZ, I had been watching a video and thinking about my male journey. The music video was for the song Burn My Shadow by Unkle (the song is on their latest CD, War Stories). The clip is here (you’ll need broadband) Warning: some might find this video disturbing. Thanks to Malcolm Chamberlain for bringing the video to my attention.

Here’s an excerpt from the lyrics:

“I have burned my tomorrow
And I stand inside today
At the edge of the future
And my dreams all fade away…

And burn my shadow away…”

There is no future (hope). There is no past (nothing to hold onto or to be held by). There is only the present… and it’s counting down. What if you only had three hours to live…?

I was struck by the sense of crisis in the video; the sense of hopelessness, and I wondered about the place of crises in “forcing” males to consider their inner lives; to go on a quest for what is deepest and true about themselves. From a Christian point of view we might want to describe this quest as being a quest for the “true self”; it is about “the liberation of the image of God from the encrusted layers of ‘unlikeness’” that accumulate over the course of our lives.

Richard Rohr writes:

“Men aren’t inclined toward the interior, they tend to move in that direction only when they are stretched or called or forced by circumstances [or crisis].”

David Tacey writes:

“…The men who finally admit that they must change have often arrived at this awareness through some kind of trauma or failure. Men sometimes have to suffer a nervous breakdown, unbearable stress, chronic fatigue, a broken marriage, the first heart attack, or a debilitating disease before they think about ‘reconstructing’ their lives. Only a big shock will awaken some men from the shallowness of their patriarchal role [and machismo], and urge them to embark on a search in which the soul is redeemed.”

Crises often function to highlight our unfreedom and lack of wholeness as males. Thus they also highlight our need for deep liberation and healing. In this sense, I wonder if crises are an important, are in fact vital needs in the male journey. Do males even care…? Is the inner journey even important or are we too invested in our outer journey’s – work, career, success etc.? If, on the other hand, males are interested, and are longing for a sense of authenticity and wholeness, for‘spirituality’, I wonder how churches can work with this deep longing, with crises… ?