|
Austen Ivereigh, deputy editor of the Tablet, reflects on his experience of attending the Men’s Weekend, organised by the Harvesters, a Catholic mens network, at Woldingham School in Surrey at the beginning of July and the importance of male spirituality.
|
Power
in Powerlessness |
I cannot say why but I have found myself this year wondering about this phenomenon of “men’s spirituality”. It is, after all, hardly new. The American Franciscan Richard Rohr published The Wild Man’s Journey back in 1991, since back in 1991, since then his retreats – involving a semisecretive “initiation rite” centred on the archetypes of wild man, warrior, and King – have attracted tens of thousands of men. So when some friends suggested recently that I join 220 blokes on a weekend away for men at Woldingham in July, it seemed too good a chance to find out what men’s spirituality was all about. The answer is that, like all Christian growth, men’s spirituality is a process of self-awareness and new openness to grace – but starting from the particular obstacles which men face. Our main speaker, David Wells, the faith formation officer for Plymouth Diocese and a superb raconteur, graphically laid out one of those obstacles with two columns of shoeboxes bearing words. Stageleft were those which men associated with “life”: achievement, friendship, athleticism, recognition, laughter, adrenalin, affi rmation, eroticism, dance and colour. On the right was the column of words they associated with faith and Church: purpose, meaning, decision, direction, peace, healing, blessing, wisdom and community. Men have severed the two. They have split psyches. Men strive after adrenalin and affirmation at work and roar with the crowd at the local match. But in the pews we sit forlornly - ghosts at the table, taciturn creatures in beige, cowed by a world we don’t regard as anything to do with the stuff of real life. It’s not that men and women have a different spirituality, but that we have different paths home. For men, that path lies in integration. Men often lead onedimensional lives, unaware of their emotions, swallowing their fear, less and less able to access their passion and their power - until it all explodes. Men’s spiritual “work” allows us to examine our inner wounds, moving us from self-sufficiency—a myth which contains a constant, nagging accusation that we’re not good enough—to vulnerability and reliance on God, and on each other. Only then do we access our real power. Men, it seems, often refuse that invitation because they have been fed the myth that being good means disavowing their wildness and renouncing their strength. But on that weekend at Woldingham I saw magnificent examples of men’s real strength, the sort you don’t argue with when you see it: the strength to admit their brokenness, the guts to surrender to God. Moving testimonies of powerlessness The most moving testimonies, I noticed, came from men who had undergone radical experiences of powerlessness, either through devastating circumstances (collapsing business, unemployment, divorce, illness) or a descent into sinful behaviour which they had suddenly been forced to face. It is only then that they wake to God and realise that all the time he was running with them. The crucified and raised-up Jesus offers them another way: submission to the true power in the universe, from which their own true strength – not the illusions of the “imperial ego” – derives. That journey brings peace and enables men to love. It is easier for men to begin this without women and their families around. Rohr’s idea of “male initiation” is, in essence, an attempt to get men to face the reality of their own powerlessness before they get flattened by it later in life. He observed that in all cultures teenage men seem to need to undergo rites of passage which teach them the truths that life is difficult, that they are going to die, that they are not in control, and that life is not about them. He notes how studies of male initiation agree that it is dangerous to give ascribed status to a man who has not journeyed into powerlessness, for he will likely not know how to handle power, and may even abuse it. “It seems that it is only the recent West that has deemed it unnecessary to ‘initiate’ young men”, he wrote in a Sojourners article. “Otherwise, culture after culture felt that if the young man were not introduced to ‘the mysteries,’ he would not know what to do with his pain and would almost always abuse his power.” In previous generations, war served as a partial kind of initiation for men, teaching them self-discipline for the sake of the common good, self-sacrifice for something larger than themselves. But where do Western boys get such an experience now? On that men’s weekend, I realised that some years ago I had had my own “initiation rite” – the 30-day Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, which turned out to be a searing experience of my own powerlessness. I came to it, in spite of what I knew in my head, with the instincts which society gives us: that we must struggle to survive, compete and strive, and that everything – even love – has to be earned. But in that particular desert I learned, the hard way, that God cannot be “won”, that He who gave us everything - including his own Son – cannot be obtained through our own efforts, however hard we may seek Him. Everyone – men and women alike – has to learn that message. But men have a particular difficulty in accepting it, in part because they fear that to renounce the self is somehow to put aside strength and power and life. That is an illusion which men’s spirituality has unmasked. It shows that the opposite, in fact, is true and that by acknowledging our powerlessness, a new shape to the universe emerges and we can be at peace. Maybe that is why the one sound I heard most at Woldingham was simple, joyful laughter.
|
