Better than a Bailout

At first glance, maybe it doesn’t seem like male initiation belongs on a site about alternative economics. Thinking back to a time when I knew nothing of initiation and had not yet completed my rites in the Arizona desert a few months ago, I might have only thought of initiation as something that college frat boys or gangs do to prove a candidate’s worthiness. Images of hazing and abuse came to mind. And of course, those rites can be dangerous and deadly. Not so with the Mens’ Rites of Passage (MROP) put on by Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation. I felt a pull toward that program and let it speak to me for nearly a year before I found myself taking part. But interestingly, my time in the orbit of JEM helped pave the way.

JEM had long been conditioning me to bear witness to a reality that, from my too-white, too-male, too-young perspective was considered the underside. It is sort of the standard issue perspective of people like me—a bit too well off without even knowing it, just living the life I was issued and not really investigating much outside my suburban existence. I was just comfortable enough to be asleep. When that got rattled in 2005 with eviction and quite a lot of angst toward my landlord father and a host of other family issues, I was unknowingly being thrust into a spiritual adventure that I had not signed up for. My Hero’s Journey had begun and I hadn’t even packed my bags yet.

And then, as if it was a lifejacket given me by a stranger just before the boat sank, JEM appeared on my horizon, the thing that helped paint a picture for me of another way to relate to people, property, things. Much discernment followed for these last few years. Encounters with friends, therapists, pastors, spiritual directors all helped too, but JEM helped create a cohesive reality for me that tied together ancient wisdom with the need for current action. An interest in peak oil and the cultural shift that appears necessary in the face of that was also given a place to coexist with my other experiences. JEM made charming the need for self-limitation and withdrawal from the excesses of the world around me.

So I was ready when I first heard Fr. Richard Rohr speak on a DVD that addressed the spiritual crisis in the world today. Rohr and the other panelists on the DVD offered a splendid portrayal of the humble human Jesus who took on the powers with power derived from his own connection with God. Following up on that DVD viewing, I found out about the Mens’ Rites of Passage and knew it was for me. My application essays gave me a chance to name soul work that I had done, and to cite spiritual fathers who shaped me. Of course, Lee’s personal influence was part of that discussion. Having discovered the MROP at the time I did, I had just missed a rites week that started only miles from my house, so I ended up having to wait many months before the next was announced, but the time proved handy for building desire and envisioning what it might bring. Deferred gratification itself is a spiritual lesson.

I’ve introduced talk of initiation by calling it a “vaccination for the soul.” That is, the experience is had to introduce a small dose of what can emotionally hurt or even kill a man, so as to offer the soul a chance to know and to hold that experience, something that can be reflected on as time passes, a reference to the authentic experiences of pain and disappointment. The hope of course is that once one has had that realization formed and nurtured in a sacred liminal space, it can be cause to act compassionately. For older men who already have life experience before the rites, I’m sure the new experience must have validated and reframed old experiences.

Rohr brought on the Rites because he lamented the sad state of male spiritual lives, and how that plays out in the world in terms of the violence and manipulation that results from men who have not learned how to deal with their pain and frustration, at least not in a healthy and appropriate way. All the acting out is what shapes the daily news. We know it too well. The mens’ work  he leads aims to reorient mens’ spiritual compass.

The shift in a week’s time is remarkable. While the essential nature of the rites is a covenanted one of trust and confidence, it is safe to say that this is a place where some major work can be done at a deep level and in a setting conducive to the work of addressing hurt and pain and discord. The rites are always in a pristine natural setting that allows creation itself to realign the soul. But the rituals too are things that help men know the spiritual lessons of the Gospel from the inside out—the death and resurrection is not just the story of Jesus from 2,000 years ago, but the story and drama playing out in each participant’s life. A lot of men are able to come out from whatever closet they are in—closets masking their sexual identities, closets masking their abusive sides, closets masking their addictions to all sorts of things. Shedding the skin of the “false self”—the one that is racked with the kinds of socially inflicted insecurities that lead to the abuses of power at all levels—can make way for a life not shaped by those things, an authentic life rooted more deeply, and one that can in turn point the way for others to have that kind of life.

In JEM we speak a lot of seeing with new eyes; paradigm shift; metanoia; turning. I’d like to think Rohr is on to something with this initiation idea and the way it can multiply efforts like we make here. Part of the mandate for the initiated men is to go spread the lived gospel in kind in whatever way seems appropriate to their lives. Some, remolded in this new way, might be able to return to a life of leadership from a boardroom. Others will forsake that life and join the Catholic Worker movement, repenting of past titles and privileges in favor of a life among the polar opposite population. Others will have new vitality and purpose in their roles in church or civic groups. Others will mentor younger men or boys. Many will be better husbands and fathers. The hope is that men will better be able to process the harder to cope with emotions in a way that does not turn that negative energy out onto others—the same lesson illustrated for the ages by a self-possessed Jesus loving the world that would kill him. Circulating this essential wisdom, this gospel, is itself a form of gift economy that if practiced would be vastly more useful than any bailout plan today.

You can read a great introduction to the need for reawakening the traditions of male initiation in this Sojourners.net article, written by Richard Rohr. (Requires basic sign up.)

Comments

[Dan]

excellent reflection Ed...glad that JEM could play such a significant part...can´t wait to meet someday soon.