Gender-Specific Ministry

The link above is to a post over at Resurgence. I saw it mentioned by several contributors at Boar's Head Tavern. Both the post and the reactions have me a little uncomfortable. I think it's a kind of polarization I find troublesome. The post is lamenting the feminization of the church and society, a very real issue. I have no problem at all with this kind of question being addressed. It is long overdue. I have some questions as to how this should best be done, but no answers. On the other hand, the reactions at Boar's Head range from a failure to see what the author of the post sees to ridicule where the language is a little one-sided.

That the post was vulnerable at the point of one-sided vocabulary is to be admitted. I am tempted to say that the author of the post decided to himself write a very masculine article about the lack of masculinity in the church. It is to the point, unnuanced, black-and-white, and unyielding. I like a certain amount of this. Too much of it, though, and I am reminded of the polarized nature of today's political rhetoric, where we have a choice between tough Republicans and sensitive Democrats. Distinct voices seem rarer than they used to be, with the majority falling into a very few personas. But I would think that the proper response would be to want to correct the post's failings with a more constructive approach, rather than write it off. Too much of what was said was on target to dismiss it. And to dismiss it with an air of superiority is counterproductive.

The book I found very helpful in offering a broad overview of the subject was The Feminization of American Culture by Ann Douglas. Douglas carefully documented the alliances between Unitarian Clergy and female parishioners in purposely feminizing the culture in the nineteenth century. Calvinism in particular suffered. Douglas herself lamented the fall of the kind of the tough and rigorous systematic thought espoused in earlier times toward softer and more relational teaching. John Taylor Gatto has documented the cultural engineering at the heart of mass schooling. The results are not accidental. They were planned.

When I taught a class on American Christianity, I gave each of my students a topic to do a short class presentation on to expose students to a wide range of people, events, and movements. One student did a presentation on "Muscular Christianity," the movement from 1880 to 1920 which gave rise to the YMCA, basketball, volleyball, and perhaps had influences on the institution of the modern Olympics. The student presented the history well, but when it came to personal evaluation debunked the movement's founder's use of Scripture. He was at least partly right in this, but seemed to over-correct. (True, St. Paul was telling people to flee sexual immorality when he noted how the body is a temple. But St. Paul probably got the image from Jesus, and it is open to more applications than St. Paul found. If sport was not mandated by the image, looking on how urban children were likely to use their bodies apart from such activities, the "Muscular Christianity" movement could be seen as offering a more fitting future.) I thought I even detected an unwillingness to publically be seen as showing any sympathy for such a movement. (I have to say that students seem much more deeply infected with political correctness now than I saw when I was a student. At a Christian college they are less free in their speech than I was at a state university.) My best woman student, in contrast, thought the movement had a lot of merit. I could be wrong, but I think she may have felt more free to speak her mind.

The Boar's Head folks did bring up one very good issue, though. Questions were put to the statement "Preachers, small group leaders, etc.: you have lots of mama's boys in your community and your job is to give them their God-made masculinity back." Michael Spencer said that the statement equated the Gospel with the recovery of masculinity, and said it was flat-out wrong. Spencer rightly sees the job of pastors, small group leaders, and others to be that of preaching or presenting the Gospel. To say that something else is their true job is to make a fundamental error. But if the Gospel is a pastor's true job, it may not be his only job.

St. Paul gives instructions to Timothy that relate to gender (e.g. 1 Tim. 28-15). These are rooted in Genesis, and Paul's instructions do seem to make following the orders part of Timothy's job. Now I am willing to entertain all kinds of discussion as to what to do with this passage. (I won't end the conversation even when someone suggests they think the book is non-canonical or the passage in question is an interpolation.) But the existence of this passage seems to offer precedent to a statement like the one above about the pastor's job. We can argue over whether the statement is true or not. But it should not be dismissed on the basis of the form of the statement alone. This form has precedent.

I think we are living in a world where we have been the victims of great amounts of social engineering. A suggestion that the church needs to become aware of this fact and face it is a helpful suggestion. I may conclude that this or that proposed course of action is nonsense. I may wish that the argument were written so as to offend fewer. (I don't fear their wrath. I want more of them to accept the argument!) I may question the exegesis of this or that passage. But I think the discussion is helpful and should not be dismissed.

Now Accepting Comments

In reviewing our template, I discovered this morning that this blog was set to receive comments only from team members. That has been changed. We did not want to leave anyone out. In fact, I have been wanting to see comments, and wondering why the number of comments was at zero all this time. Unfortunately, nobody could leave a comment telling me why, either!

Sean Thornton and Leonidas

In Iron John, Robert Bly mentions how John Wayne as a guiding image would fail a man after he reached a certain age. I think I know what he means. I can imagine certain Wayne characters being a little too narrow to live in. Even if I thought he handled every situation well, would my own situations really run parallel to his? But if I look at one of my favorite John Wayne movies, The Quiet Man, I wonder if his character Sean Thornton would not be livable in a wider variety of situations. Further, I wonder if his character doesn't provide a good foil for the current model of masculinity found in the King Leonidas of the 300 movie.

I watched again the portion of the movie where Leonidas rejects the deformed Ephialtes because he cannot really be part of the Spartan phalanx. I was reminded of how brittle strategies won't work over the long haul. In the Sparta of the 300, if you did not serve the war machine, you did not live. And this was supposed to be based upon a calculating realism. Only as with many such calculations, it failed to take the messiness of reality into account. You kill children and you may well end up with more enemies than you bargained for. Or, as Kenneth Bailey pointed out, Christian missionaries were able to point out to Chinese Communists how in the Parable of the Shepherd leaving the ninety-nine sheep to find the one, while this appears to make the individual more important than the group, each person in the group feels more secure since he knows he won't be left behind. Spartan realism proved unrealistic.

Sean Thornton in The Quiet Man was a fighter by profession. Perhaps that makes him more Spartan than Athenian, whose warriors were sculptors and farmers by profession. Thornton's fighting was sport, however. And when sport led to death, he was done with it. He is a modern man. He is able to fight well, but desires peace. But when he walks into a community where the rules are different, he has the strength to stand alone.

The "strong silent type" as he was known in the past is interesting here. A Spartan is part of a unit. Sean Thornton is not. It is interesting that the visceral appeal of many martial cultures often mixes with this organic sense of unity. I wonder whether there isn't some kind of gendered proportionality to it. When you strip back enough of the softer comforts of life in one area, you have to compensate in another. This Dionysian unity among the Spartans brings a maternal sustenance to people undergoing hardships. Perhaps it is underlying unity that makes this attractive. The "strong silent type" of the old American ethos misses out on that degree of unity. He has the moral strength to do so. His comforts have to be comforts other than that kind of organic unity.

I can't see Sean Thornton mistreating Ephialtes. Come to think of it, the The Quiet Man's town drunk, Michaleen Flynn, looks just a little like Ephialtes (The two actors do actually bear some resemblance out of makeup. I use IMDB to get all the names and dialog right. It has pictures of the actors.), and he and Sean got on quite well! I'm not sure exactly what Sean would have done, but I would trust it.

I think there is a lot that is admirable in the world portrayed in 300. There is even more that is admirable in Steven Pressfield's take on the story in Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae. Where 300 is not admirable, it is still striking, and that is the challenge. We have to carefully unwind what is useful from what is not. But the vision of a movie like 300 is visceral in its appeal. To be part of a phalanx appeals on a level that runs far beneath rationality. It appeals to something old in us. If we are wise, we will not attempt to completely stifle such attraction. Better to feed it healthfully, as was done in Sean Thornton's Innisfree. Tolerance and individualism don't mean your world can't pull together when it is appropriate.

Gorgo was pretty hot. Kobra loves her line "Come back with your shield or on it." He has pointed out how supportive it is to a man who wants to feel free to pursue his values unto death. I enjoy the argument between Sean Thornton and Mary Kate Danaher on similar subjects. She wants him to go out and fight, which he will do. But he won't have himself questioned on what he will or won't do. She is not to imagine that she is the engine driving him forward. This is not clear to her earlier in the movie. "What manner of man is it that I have married?" she asks. "A better one, I think, than you know, Mary Kate," she is told by an insightful villager. Sean settles it so that she finally trusts him. And she tells him she'll have his supper ready after the fight. That's her Gorgo line. Though I don't think Gorgo would have been half so happy to serve one of the Persians after the fight.

It's hard to imagine Leonidas and Sean Thornton in the same movie. I wonder how it would go.

Spartans and Christians

I just saw the movie The 300 last night and loved it. For what it was supposed to be, I give it an A+. I might well agree with many of the charges people will level against, it, but those charges tend to assume it is a different genre of movie altogether. For them, I recommend the old The 300 Spartans, which I just watched for the first time about a year ago, before I knew this current version was coming out.

Watching this movie, I was alternately repulsed and attracted to the Spartan culture. I think that much of what I saw there was good. Much of it was obviously evil, too. But I think our culture has thrown out the baby with the bathwater. Initiation is a good idea, as were many others. Teasing out just which aspects of Sparta were bad is difficult business. So we need an appropriate tool.

I want to use the medieval disputation style to compare and contrast aspects of Spartan and Christian culture. Peter Abelard developed this in his famous Sic et Non (Yes and No), where apparent contradictions between sayings of the Fathers and the Scriptures were arranged and harmonization was attempted, after clearly showing just how much contrast there was between some sayings.

For those unused to this kind of idea, you read to the end before you judge what is going on with this. This is kind of like a debate where one person tries to present both sides of the debate. The method itself is an attempt to keep people from one-sided thinking. If you just read the first arguments under the heading "Warrior Culture — Sic," you'll imagine I've lost my mind. Patience, reader. I'm presenting some arguments on each side that I might not make myself. And to the purist, I am not following perfect disputation form. I'm dipping in to the tradition of disputation and adopting helpful elements.


Warrior Culture — Sic

A. It would seem that the Spartan Warrior culture is compatible with Christianity.

1. On the one hand, many wars were fought in the Old Testament at God's bequest. The conquest of Canaan under Joshua was incredibly bloody, yet it was according to God's will (See Joshua chapters 1-12).

2. Also, warriors are extolled. They are called "men of valor" (Joshua 1:15). David says of Saul and Jonathan that they were the glory of Israel (2 Samuel 1:19).

3. In addition, Jesus enjoins the disciples to carry swords (Luke 22:36).

4. St. Paul says the ruler does not bear the sword in vain, and seems to grant it legitimacy (Romans 13:4).

5. Further, buffeting of the body is helpful to salvation (1 Cor. 9:27).

6. Finally, it is important that fathers give training to their sons, and the Spartan way at least allowed the father to introduce the son into a male role in the world.


Warrior Culture — Non

B. On the contrary, it would seem that the Spartan Warrior culture is incompatible with Christianity.

1. On the one hand, Christians are told "Thou shalt not kill" and "He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword," (Matthew 26:52) suggesting that sword-wielding brings judgment with it.

2. Also, it is the peacemakers (Matthew 5:9), not the warmongers, who will be called the sons of God.

3. In addition, the early church excommunicated soldiers and even Christian emperors found it difficult to start wars because a Christian population was unsupportive of them. This only changed with the crusades, after Islam's devastating conquests tempted Christians to fight fire with fire (See Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, Chapter V. "The Influence of Islam").

4. Further, bodily exercise profits little (1 Timothy 4:8), so the time spent on physical training is to be considered wasted time.

5. The Lord tells us that all authority comes from God (Romans 13:1). These authorities created public schools. So fathers should send their sons to public schools and tell them to obey their teachers.


Resolution

The Old Testament wars were typological, and are not to be taken as normative. God had a realm over which he reigned in the nation of Israel. Now he intends to reign, but with a rule which is not of this world. So warring is not the means of advancing the boundaries of the kingdom as it was in the Old Testament. Against A1

David and Saul and Jonathan are glorious men, but are in a class where few men in history have ever stood, the ground where typology comes down into the real world of men. Against A2

Sword-bearing among the disciples was for purposes of self-defense. And the sword-bearing of the ruler was for policing. These swords were to keep the peace, not to create more bloodshed. Against A3 and A4

Yet this is a valid role in our world, which is not a typologically perfect kingdom. So "He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword" may be the root text behind Romans 13:4. The bloodthirsty man shall be put to the sword by the law-abiding ruler. Against B1

Such a law-abiding ruler could better be considered a peacemaker rather than a warmonger. Against B2

The buffeting of the body that is helpful to salvation is not just any buffeting. St. Paul even condemns forms of self-abasement and severe treatment of the body where they are of no value against fleshly indulgence (Colossians 2:21-23). St. Paul's treatment of himself was, in light of this, something he himself saw a specific rationale for. Spartan discipline per se may have some value, but its ability to produce results helpful to Christianity will have to be scrutinized. We may make a man fearless of fire, and so more likely to walk fearlessly to martyrdom. But if he has not love, perhaps his sacrifice will be worthless (1 Cor. 13:3), and perhaps fear of divine wrath will itself be quenched. Against A5

Yet where we are told that bodily exercise profiteth little, this is likely in light of eternity. Compared to salvation, we receive little profit from exercise. Yet in light of eternity, many things are next to worthless. The practical question is, how do these things compare to each other. I'm not sure the study of Algebra would carry much more weight on the Pauline scale. Against B4

While all authority comes from God, earthly rulers do not have a blank check to do whatever they wish with their power. The Hebrew midwives were not "resisting the ordinance of God" when they lied to the soldiers who came to kill the newborns. As to public schooling, compulsory schooling did have its origin at bayonet-point when the town of Barnstable, Massachusetts fell to seige, and its children were marched to school by soldiers. This was a use of the sword for something other than the prevention of bloodshed, though such was its rationale in the beginning. Whether or not we decide to comply with state mandates, this does not absolve fathers of the duty of raising their sons and educating them with a good education. They are not to abdicate that responsibility to experts. For God created families. In the hands of experts, children will be treated as Elwood P. Cubberley said, "to be shaped and formed into finished products... manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry." A school that wishes to treat your son as a finished product for the sake of industry is not what God had in mind in his creation. God wishes adults to be free adults (Galatians 4:7) and not slaves. To raise people for enslavement is evil. If you send your son into the nail factory, you had better have a plan for how he will emerge as a man and not a nail. Against B5

It is important that fathers give training to their sons. In Sparta, this involved a separation from the mother. The ancients knew this was necessary. The founders of modern schooling, however, had psychological goals when they drove male teachers out of the field of teaching. This was done by design. For some time, they paid them less, at a time when men expected to make more than women, shaming them. Sons are put under the authority of women for more than a decade. This is done to soften them and make them compliant. But easy compliance is not an altogether good thing. And what does this do to the admonition of 1 Timothy 2:12? If the prohibition against a woman exercising authority over a man is rooted in creation, as verse 13 says, then is not the public school, at least in later years, a violation of the picture we see in Genesis?

This is the nugget of the problem. We are straining this way and that to somehow comply with a way of doing things that was engineered by those who hated the Bible. It is one thing to ask whether we are permitted to work within this system given social constraints. It is another thing altogether to fail to ask whether we are called to something better. We are.

We were created for something. Not war. But the keeping of the peace sometimes requires a sword. Not slavery. Not doing the bidding of industry. It will no doubt require generations of initiated men to begin to recover what we have lost. In the meantime, a movie like The 300 Spartans reminds us that there is a lot to admire in lost ages. And a closer look reveals that where they may have fallen short of a good society, we may be equidistant from it in ways we have not noticed.

Christian Friendship on BBC3(click to hear)

This fifteen minute broadcast discusses how Aristotle's and Cicero's understandings of friendship were incorporated into early Christianity, and altered in the process. Some good stuff. If you have not heard the audio of C.S. Lewis's Four Loves, you need to. But this short treatment offers more of the same: that is, description of some of the dynamics of a kind of relationship we know, but with examples drawn from the ancient world.

I would be sorry if we were limited to the ancient conception. But we have a lot to learn from it.

Since first posting this, I noticed that there were a couple of other broadcasts on friendship available on the same page. Catch these quickly! They are only available for a week.

Beware the Diplomat

I was thinking about diplomacy lately because I think it is often disguised as something that brings peace, but is actually used as a violent weapon. Diplomacy is, I believe, more often than not a power play and not motivated by a desire for true peace. How many times have we as men seen "issues" unresolved in church. It seems as soon as a problem crops up, the diplomat is right there to fix it. For the man this is problematic. The man is used to the line in the sand--"Here I stand." Luther drew the line in the sand. Luther was no compromiser. Yet, unfortunately, not everyone can be a Luther, and so as men we must learn how to defeat the compromiser. Not to win an argument necessarily, but to secure that the argument is carried out between two men and not one man and another man who is just pretending to be male.

I am reminded of my old Bosnian friend methods for dealing with such folks. First, I'll offer a bit of background. My friend, who still remains a good friend, grew up and lived the majority of his adult life under Tito. He then survived much of the war in the Balkans before bugging out to Italy in which he resided for a couple of years prior to coming to America. I don't know if it was his time in such a raucus place as Yugoslavia that made him so people-wise, but whatever ever did it it was magical.

Often as we worked our production jobs at the plant we would come across something on a print for a build that was just humanly impossible to build. This pretty much forced us to having to deal with the engineering dept which was housed in a sort of ivory tower that overlooked the plant floor. If they were to have watched us as we discussed the print details from their perch they may have thought we were two jovial fellows enjoying the masterpiece they'd handed down from the princely tower. My friend would tell me that we "could probably rig it like this" or "do this first and this second" to fix the problem. He was such a compromiser on the floor with me that I was often shocked at his demeanor when up in the tower with the engineers. Sure, they would offer the same suggestions that me and him would discuss on the floor, but he would have none of it. I can still here him saying in his thick Yugoslavian accent, "This is impossible! Bah!" and slamming down the print on the table before walking out. We would often chuckle when we arrived back on the floor because we knew that these guys didn't know how to handle someone who was so hard to control with diplomacy. I really learned a lot from my friend. God I love that man.

The big lesson is that you must never, ever, offer the diplomat any realm of commonality or agreement with you. This is the diplomats foothold and he will use it as a power to either guilt you into submission or simply to confuse your vision of who he is and the control he's trying to wield. So, whatever you do you must constantly pump the bellows and keep the fires hot. The diplomat, because of his feminine tendencies, will not know how to deal with manly, in your face, puffed out chest confrontation and will either concede to your prowess and say "what do you want me to do?" or be so baffled that he simply sits silently. I've seen this happen! When he asks what you want you make a demand that isn't a compromise. You demand his wife and firstborn child. This again forces him into a position where he has to fight like a man (call you an "asshole" tell you to step outside) sit quietly, or offer his wife and firstborn. Again, I've seen this happen! This may sound harsh, and it is, but it has to be because the diplomat is one hell of a shady character. He will use subtlety to manipulate much like a woman will--give you a little and then hit you with a "but I did this..." Whereas the countermeasure is in your face, demanding, and a manly power that is impossible miss. In other words, the countermeasure is the drawing of a line in the sand or the placing of a duracell on the shoulder of a seventies actor like Robert Conrad. The supposed peace-loving-diplomat-manipulator doesn't know how to deal in this realm of overt power. In fact everything he does he does to avoid this place and that is why he must be dragged there.

Anyway, I've gone on too long with this, but I think I've made my point. I cannot stand the feminine male--in myself or anyone else! I'm still eradicating the virus, but I think I'm winning.

My Dream

Dream

Part I: The content

12/23/06

I had a dream last night. I was at the White House and I was part of the Secret Service. There were a bunch of us and we were in very specialized gear and clothing. What we wore was designed to absorb and protect us from the power, radiation and heat of a nuclear blast. We were there to protect the President of the United States who was also dressed in the same clothing and gear. If we, dressed in this stuff, surrounded him and he wore the same gear he would be protected. We were all on our hands and knees and we had him surrounded when the nuclear blast went off. The heat and intensity of the blast were tremendous. I was in the middle of the group, in the second or third row. The men in front of me were consumed in white-hot heat. The specialized gear and clothing were burning. I was on my hands and knees and I saw my, gloved splayed hands, on the marble, begin to burn. I watched as the heat began consuming my gloves beginning at my fingertips. I was afraid and I wondered when it was going to stop or if I would perish in the blast. I looked back because I thought we were all dead. Apparently, the blast had gone just to my hands and it stopped. Just as quickly as it had started it was over. All the buildings were destroyed. Apparently, the President was safe and all the rest of us were fine. I got up with the rest of the Secret Service and we all began to walk out of what was left of the building. Everyone dispersed and I did not see them again. The President was gone and I didn’t see him again nor did I know what had happened to him. The building was made of white marble and I could see the crumbled marble and the re-bar and the dust and dirt. I walked out of the building and there was my friend with red hair. She had been my friend for a long time. She was tall and thin and silent. We walked down the white marble stairs out on to some very green grass. It wasn’t manicured domestic grass; it was wild but growing on the ground between the couple of buildings that were left standing and the buildings that weren’t fully standing any more. As we walked across the grass we walked toward a building that was fully intact. It was made of white marble. It had stairs leading up to a large dark door way and it had giant columns. It looked like it belonged in Washington, D.C. in the capitol. Coming down the stairs was a very young but older, kind and wise Ronald Reagan and his wife. She was a woman in her Mid-thirties with short brown hair. She was very calm, kind and supportive. Reagan I spoke about what to do next. We spoke as if I was to do something important. I asked him some questions we talked some more and then we parted company. My friend was silent. My friend, I recognize in real life as Janet K., a woman who was a good friend of my sister’s and a good friend of mine since she was 5 and I was 7. In the dream we’d known each other for about 7 to 10 years and we were close, I think. As we walked she continued to be silent. I was very aware of her presence. Janet and I walked on in the grass away from the buildings to some rolling grassy hills. When Janet and I were far away from the buildings but not so far the buildings had disappeared. We stopped and I dropped to my hands and knees. I looked down and stared at my splayed hands that were on the grass and dirt, the same way I saw them on the ground in the building with the gloves on. I knew there was something I was supposed to do but I just stared at my hands. All I really wanted to do at that moment was stare at my hands and wait. There was a crowd a ways
away and they were talking to themselves and wondering what I was doing and what I was going to do. They expect me to do something. Janet broke her silence and told me to get up. She wanted me to do something. Her tone and the way she used her words sounded like I had never done anything right or everything I’d ever done was crap. Janet asked me why I wasn’t getting up. She asked why I wasn’t doing something. She said there were others counting on me. She wanted to know why I was just kneeling there staring at my hands. She wanted to know what I was going to do. Her words dripped with contempt for me. She told me she had been taking good care of me and that she had supported me making sure I’d done everything right for the last 9 years. She implied that any success I’d had, in my life, was because of her. She said she made me who I was, today. I didn’t move. I didn’t say anything, I just stared at my hands and I was deep in thought. I just kept thinking and waiting for something. Janet was angry because I wasn’t doing anything. Then I woke from my dream.

"The End of Living and the Beginning of Survival" (click for video)

I was texting Pablo about Joseph Campbell during a discussion of myth. I wanted to send him a link to some video of Campbell, so I looked up The Power of Myth. I found the link above. In it, a very intriguing phrase occurred in Chief Seattle's reply to the governor of Washington who had made an offer to buy their land. He asks what the future will be of the white buyers of the land. When their civilization overruns the land, it will be "the end of living and the beginning of survival."

This is an intriguing contrast. Of course, one has to survive in order to live. "To live" suggests a quality of life that makes survival worthwhile. But I think it suggests more. Somehow in Seattle's discussion, we see that it is the Indian way of survival that is living. In our culture, if we achieve a quality of life, it is something we enjoy after we have done our work to survive. The cleavage that we know, even when we have things wired, seems to be absent.

I don't think the Native Americans are the only civilization to have achieved a unity of survival and life. In his book Aristotle, John Hermann Randall, Jr. writes of "a life of nous, of thëoria, of intelligence, burning, immoderate, without bounds or limits" (Randall, Aristotle, p. 1). I don't sense a cleavage there, either, even if Aristotle doesn't want to be entangled in mundane concerns.

I feel a tragedy in our history at the same time that I feel a thankfulness. Our history in this country is better at many points than we should have been able to insist upon, yet still deeply disappionting at other points. What might our world have been had other courses been taken? If Chief Seattle's warning had been taken to heart in a culture that was burning with Aristotelean nous? The wilderness would have been made friendly to man through thëoria rather than asphalt.

To those who imagine I'm being ridiculously theoretical, I am not. Our earlier polity was much more libertarian, and the complaint in the freest states was that no decent road could be built. How much would the members of the Green party give to live in that world? Individual solutions to problems of space use and transportation would have been developed rather than our mechanized one-size-fits-all auto-centered planning. Ayn Rand argues that "Aristotle (via John Locke) was the philosophical father of the Constitution of the United States" (Ayn Rand, The Voice of Reason, ed. by Leonard Piekoff, p. 12). Had his vision been allowed to rule more thoroughly, I think we might have had a wondrous culture of greater harmony with the wilderness and greater harmony among the inhabitants. Perhaps a world where there were fewer roads, but we had gotten further in space travel. I like to picture that world, anyway.

It is when we are entangled in mere survival, and in the pursuit of survival we feel no harmony between our faculties and our world, that we feel the curse.

Men and Myth

The mythopoeic men's movement was created when Robert Bly discovered that telling fairy stories to men could help them to consider the issues of their lives on a deeper level than was otherwise possible. A mythic vocabulary is more easily learned than a technical one, but there are other benefits to this approach as well. The story of Iron John was the first story Bly used, and became the center of his bestselling book of the same title.

I am quite thankful for how I was introduced to this story. A week before this happened, an older friend of mine had been reading the book Iron John and either read or recounted the story from chapter one to Dr. Rod Rosenbladt. I went to Coco's with Dr. Rosenbladt and he recounted the story and offered some personal commentary. Well, I was hooked. To have my spiritual father and mentor tell this story to me at a critical time gave it a resonance that I'm sure went beyond what a typical reader would have found. And I think a typical reader would have found much to resonate with.

As time has gone on since then, I have seen two things happen. One was that Bly's men's movement got eclipsed for a while in the media by the Christian Men's movement. I had no interest in the latter. I was involved in Christians United for Reformation (CURE), a group of men who were involved together in Theology. I didn't need to add what appeared to be a bunch of pseudoevents from Promise Keeper's into my life. Don't get me wrong. I think male connection is such a powerful thing that many may have benefitted greatly from their activities. But I think the space they created for that mattered much more than the content. My life had a lot of space already for the kinds of connetions they fostered. In addition to being eclispsed in the media by the Christian men's movement, Bly's movement was also put under scrutiny for being either a reaction to the Woman's Movement, which it was not, or for being just a bunch of guys running through the woods beating drums. Well, the latter sounds like it couldn't be a bad idea. But from what I saw of the gatherings in the Bill Moyers special, the use of myth was a deeper part of what was done. And it is the mythic that I think needs greater attention. This was not just a bunch of overcivilized men going tribal, as feminists feared.

The mythic is a funny dimension of human culture to try to characterize. In the past, it was a much greater part of culture. In our own time, it would be easy to say that it had fallen on hard times. Except that it is much more widely recognized now than, say, fifty years ago. Great mythographers have exposed generations to the lost power of myth. There was James Frazer in the nineteenth century, W.B. Yeats in the early twentieth, J.R.R. Tolkien at mid century, and Joseph Campbell a little later. My own generation grew up in the shadow of Narnia, Middle Earth, and Luke Skywalker. This was a far cry from the mundane concerns of generations before us.

The mythic has greater popular exposure. But what do we do with it? We enjoy the myths as stories to be sure. Perhaps we see that they tell us about our lives to a degree. Sam and Frodo fight evil as we fight it. Their journey is much like ours. Their journey tells us what we can expect, even in cubicleland. But the description, even where it is true, is a different kind of description from that of Dilbert or Office Space. Comic treatments such as those are meant to deflate the importance of the bosses. Mythic treatments magnify the stakes. We know this much.

But the mythic has another kind of hold on consciousness. Mythic time is not like ordinary time. We feel like we're entering another realm when we go into it. Bly knows this. He makes use of sacred space and sacred time. He doesn't think that these dimensions are the sole property of religion. And current religious practice suggests this is abandoned property even if it belonged to religion. And when we enter this realm, we find that we are broader beings than we imagined.

One writer who gets this is G.K. Chesterton. His piece "Christmas and the Aesthetes" is must reading. (And it's a good time of year to do so.) It can be found in his book Heretics, which is not so much about formal heresies, as much as modern people whose ideas fall short of Christianity. Unlike an ancient apologist, Chesterton tells you all the places that these writers get things right, and expresses gratitude for that fact. (Generally, each heretic is a sage.) Chesterton explains that "A feeling touching the nature of things does not only make men feel that there are certain proper things to say; it makes them feel that there are certain proper things to do. The more agreeable of these consist of dancing, building temples, and shouting very loud; the less agreeable, of wearing green carnations and burning other philosophers alive." And I think that mythic work will take us to where we feel more of a need to be what we are.

Mythic work invovles rituals that give us a sense of what we are on a gut level. Bly once described one where the men were buried in the ground with only their heads sticking out. It gave them a certain sense of the earth.

I am drawn to this kind of thing. When I became Lutheran I found that having the Lord's Supper at the center of the service changed how I perceived all kinds of things. It was a reality whose centrality I had missed growing up. No amount of teaching from the pulpit could ever have registered on the same level as what happened when I would go forward with the congregation to receive grace.

But I think there are secular uses of this as well. In fact, I think we could speak of the mythic nature of much of modern life. The "myth" of schooling for one. John Taylor Gatto tells us of the "hidden curriculum" of compulsory schooling. The kinds of things students unwittingly learn as they go to school day-after-day, year-after-year, no matter what this or that teacher might teach under this or that stated curriculum. (For instance, that nothing is ever worth spending more than an hour on.) We need to be aware of these things.

When Heroes Fall

More often than not Hollywood through its movies gives us an unrealistic opinion of what a true hero is. Yet, very often real life gives us a glimpse into what makes a man a true hero. James Kim is one of these real life heroes.

Kim left his wife and children at the family's Saab station wagon, which was stuck in the snow deep in the middle of the Oregon wilderness, to find help. He walked 16 miles before succumbing to hypothermia. Surely we could second guess his actions and criticize him for not being properly prepared, but that doesn't diminish the heroism of this man. Clearly driven by love he pushed himself through what must have been a dark curtain of hopelessness until his body could no longer keep up with his heart. Our prayers should go out for his widow and his now fatherless children. Godspeed, James, you died a hero.

Here is a link to a James Kim CNet video. Take a look to put a voice with the story:

http://news.com.com/2009-12-6141617.html

William Stafford's Choosing a Dog (click for audio)

Above is a link to an audio piece on choosing a dog. Quite wonderful. This piece is humorous, and gets across dogs in their doggy glory very well.

Looking Forward to the End

...Of the Semester! It is my solemn hope to give care to this blog during the upcoming break. It will include some posting, some link fixing, etc... It might be nice to add a person or two to the contribution roll as well. Anyway, I'm more than ready for this semester to end.

I should report, because this blog is concerned with all things Bly, that my American Political Thought professor, Dr. Terrence Ball, actually knows Robert Bly. Maybe I can talk him into making a brief submission pertaining to how Bly's work fits into American political thought. Could be interesting.

The Good News is, You Have Loins

Pablo asked for some more explanation of something I had said in a comment. He noted how one of my comments said that the culture purposely produces weak men. He posed the question "I wonder how much of this is contrary to God's design. God, who tells Job to gird up his loins and the church not to be lukewarm." I said that "The older I get, the more I see the Gospel/Indicative side of that in addition to the Law/Imperative side of it." That last part was his question. How are God's commands on these points Gospel indicatives as well as Legal imperatives?

The idea that the same passage can be Gospel as well as Law is an old one. At different points of time, certain passages may come across to us as condemning or as promising. Even the Ten Commandments might offer Gospel readings if read in a certain light. "Thou shalt not steal" might be read in faith as "You won't need to steal, for I will provide for you." This doesn't require a lot of reading in, either. The Decalog has a preamble that says, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery." This is the background of the commandments. We can say on the one hand, this is why God is owed such obedience. But we can also say, this is why God is worthy of such trust.

So "Gird up your loins" doesn't just lay a burden on a man's shoulders. It says that his shoulders have been made to carry such a burden. He was created to be a man. This is good news in a world where people are acting like interchangeable cogs. The human chaos of modern society, where order is externally imposed or mechanistic, is not the world as it was created to be. Yes, it may seem a burden to go out and tell this to people. (Especially when half the presentations we've seen modeled don't really have a doctrine of creation as a backdrop.) But it is good to know that the world we see is not Plan A. That would be insufferable.

As to the lukewarm church, it is a relief to run into some of the passages just to see how false all the calls to be nice are. Especially when so many of the "nice" people are anything but.

I was once in a venue where a pastor had been called in to deliver an address to an audience. He cited some statistic about how his church body had a reputation for being among the coldest church bodies according to outsiders. I was not part of his denomination at the time. What it convince me of was that he really had no sense of how he was coming across to an outsider, even as he was discussing the opinions of outsiders. Coming from one of the so-called warmer churches in the survey, I knew that my pastor would never have subjected us to such a tirade.

There's a real limit to what can be done with imperatives. But we have a God of indicatives. He has created a good world. We've been called into battle with him. Some of the good news is that there is something worth fighting for.

I know why Ted Haggard did it.

While I will never understand the homosexual urges that Ted Haggard may have, I think I understand what happened to him. There is something in a man that wants to bring it all down, especially those men who hold themselves to certain legalistic standards. But whatever standard you hold yourself to, you know that, from time to time, you have wanted to tear the fucking thing down. It is like when Lt Colonel Hal Moore is speaking to his soldiers before they go to war; "They say we're leaving home. We're going to what home was always supposed to be"(We were Soldiers). Yeah, we would choose the hell of war over this mind numbing peace. Or perhaps there was never peace but a war going on in our heads. To relieve the pressure we lit our world on fire and watched it burn. Bly speaks of a man going down into the darkness willingly and if that doesn't happen the darkness will come up and drag him down.
I don’t know what exactly Haggard’s issue was. This isn’t really supposed to be a analysis. I just know that alot of Men, big and small, seem to take their lives and crash them straight into the ground. Thoreau was right when he wrote "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."
In my own life I see that I was resigned to follow my "Vocation" but really it was just the easy way out. My angst all through my twenties was good and right. Putting this away was hazardous to my health because eventually it will send me spiraling

Passage from what to what?

Kobra's post on tattoos introduces us to the idea of rites of passage. In the old mystery religions, there were many of these. We know that in Christianity, the ancient baptismal practices were quite involved. The candidate would undergo baptism in the nude after a long vigil. Current practice is no doubt valid, in that it "counts" as a baptism in God's eyes. But perhaps it doesn't count as one in some of our own. What do we do to enlarge that?

In Christianity, the passage is from death to life. I remember once talking to someone about the nature of some of our holiday gatherings in our family. You could almost sing the end of the Gloria Patri over such an event: "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end...." This man suggested that it was ironic if the celebration of new life were itself the occasion for entropy and stuckness.

If we decide on what our new rites of passage are to be, and we create them for an intention, then we need to know what our purposes are. That is probably primary. Even if we say, "No modern intentionality. We want continuity with the past." Then the idea is to find something ancient and stick with it. Or we might say, "A break with mother. Connection with men and their wisdom." Yes. How do we get the boy to grab the key beneath the mother's pillow? They must reach beyond key in the story to grab the real one.

What is the golden key you grab when you reach under the pillow?

I'll give Bly a reading for my own life to say how I grab the key. To some degree it is in having the mentor I have. In Jungian terms, my pedagogue is an enigma to my mother. (And vice-versa. Her pedagogue, whoever that may be, is an enigma to me.) I follow a life course enigmatic to my mother. I am an explorer, sometimes not even able to articulate what I'm trying to explore. But I do it anyway. When some wonder whether there is even an exploration, I hack my way forward.

So what is the golden key you grab? Go ahead, be amorphous and enigmatic. Or pointed and specific.

If I had to create a rite of passage to make such a move possible for a kid, I think it would almost have to be a scavenger hunt. Only they could choose which clues to follow. Clues that resonated with them better would lead them to the right pedagogue. Perhaps God has already arranged such a scavenger hunt for many of us.

How would you arrange a rite of passage to endorse grabbing the same golden key you have grabbed? (Read the first chapter of Iron John to find out what the key beneath the mother's pillow is about.)

Wounds: Tattoos?

I know that in Somoa the art of tattooing of a person is a rite of passage for both men and women. This is a very painful procedure as it is done with fish bones and a hammer like implement. The reason I have been thinking about this is that ever since I read Bly's stuff on wounding and rites of passage I've been seeking to find such a rite that might work in America. So, I thought, I have tattoos, they hurt, and are a wound that doesn't go away. Why not? Opinions?

Some Brief Notes on the Poems by Antonio Machado

Below I offered a link where you can hear Robert Bly at a poetry reading. I have listened to over half the poems so far. My favorites at this point are by Antonio Machado, and can be heard here.

Bly has elsewhere said that deciding to become a poet was an unusual thing for a Lutheran to decide to do. Having grown up evangelical, I at first thought this was a bit of a slap at Protestant culture which ignored some of its high points. Having been around the Germans a bit, though, I think I know what he means. (I know. Bly is not German. But I have to wonder if German readings of Luther don't influence other people.) It is not so easy to argue how poetry helps the neighbor. (It can be done. It is just not so easy.) Women and men who try to follow churchly admonitions tend to end up in the helping professions. I have often felt like a fish out of water when I've been around such people. I'm glad they're there. I'm just not one of them.

In one poem, Machado asks himself "What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?" This is a little like the Parable of the Talents, only in a different vein. It offers an internal development as the standard. It may pose the question of whether or not in our own day we take the Parable of the Talents a bit too literally. What is it that has been entrusted to us? The Parable asks us to consider what the world would look like if we decided that what was entrusted to us was to be managed with the same attention, the same expectancy, the same sense of stewardship as money lent by a venture capitalist. Our application is to throw ourselves more aggressively into just that kind of world. Perhaps something has gone awry? Our reading is similar to one where we hear the Parable of the Prodigal Son and rush out and put ID bracelets on children, or hear the Parable of the Good Samaritan and warn people about travelling in the Middle East. It isn't that the applications don't have some merit. But our readings are a bit narrow and far too literal. Making them too literal, ironically, does not lead to better conditions in the real world.

One of Bly's contributions is to suggest that a male garden doesn't look like a female garden. You cannot find out what it's supposed to look like from a woman, even if a good one can offer great support in the venture. A rose garden is not a jungle. A medicinal herb garden is not a primeval forest is not an arboretum. (I offer three terms so nobody can get too insistent on which is male or which female. I don't want to put on women what their own garden should be, whether very cultivated or wild. I don't think that's always the key difference between male and female, even if we have to stake out a lot of room for wildness in our time.) Bly's colleague James Hillman has done some work on our poverty of imagination in these areas.

Bly's poetry read aloud

Here is a link to some mp3s where you can hear Robert Bly reading poetry at a conference. These recordings are really nice. You can listen to the conference a piece at a time or pick and choose just the poems you wish to hear. But I also enjoy Bly's commentary on the poetics of a particular poem.

I am a major audiobook devotee. The spoken word offers something the written word does not. I liked little poetry until I started to purchase poetry on tape. Listening to Bly read will likely mean that by tomorrow you will have as some favorites poems written by men whose names yesterday would have sounded like the favorites of people in other countries who vote the wrong way.

If you enjoy this kind of discussion, you should go out and find a recording by Robert Bly and James Hillman called Men and the Wild Child.

Margaret Sanger

As some of you may know from reading the other blog I regularly post at--Theomony.blogspot.com--I am being forced to take a course titled "Women and Politics." It isn't a political history course, but a course designed to further the childish philosophy that many men and women today espouse--feminism. In fact, I am the only man in the class who doesn't possess a vagina. Not even the 6'4" 350 lb. offensive guard who sits next to me appears to have two. It is both frightening and sickening.

Lately I had been struggling with an upcoming assignment. We have to write a biography on a woman in politics. Though, one girl asked if she could do a biography on Angelina Jolie and was approved, and so I suppose "politics" is being defined pretty broadly here. Anyway, I didn't know who would be the targ...uh...I mean object of my writing until yesterday while sitting in my immigration history class.

My professor began talking to us about the prominence of eugenics in the early 20th century and my mind jolted into gear. Suddenly I recalled that the founder of Planned Parenthood was a leading voice in the eugenics movement. Margaret Sanger is truly a villain in American history, but unfortunately I don't believe many know enough about her to see her as anything other than a woman who gave women the right to "control their own bodies." This is where I come in.

I plan on presenting a pretty sterile biography for the most part--that means no interjection of opinion. Well, that's not entirely accurate. I will offer opinion but it won't be mine but Margaret Sanger's and she has expressed her opinion plenty. Here is a sample:

"The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."
Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race (Eugenics Publ. Co., 1920, 1923)

I pulled that off the web, but will be checking ASU's journal archive to see if I can find it quoted in a scholarly journal and/or get ahold of the original writing.

Oh, golly, here is more:

"More children from the fit, less from the unfit -- that is the chief aim of birth control." Birth Control Review, May 1919, p. 12

"Couples should be required to submit applications to have a child, she wrote in her "Plan for Peace." Birth Control Review, April 1932

Here is a link to a eugenics image archive:

http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/

So, how do we as men deal with this attitude in other men as well as other women?

More Poetry

Here is a poem by Bly. I don't understand it completely but I know how hard it is to finish sentences, or to start them. To be honest I find strength in burying things.

"It's Hard for Some Men to Finish Sentences"

Sometimes a man can't say
What he . . . A wind comes
And his doors don't rattle. Rain
Comes and his hair is dry.

There's a lot to keep inside
And a lot to . . . Sometimes shame
Means we. . . Children are cruel,
He's six and his hands. . .

Even Hamlet kept passing
The king praying
And the king said,
"There was something. . . ."

Men and Their Peckers

Men and Their Peckers (title mine). This was a poem originally published in M.E.N. Magazine. I think you'll find the double entendre of my title funny once you read the poem. Here it is:

This morning I’ve been thinking
How much I love the way some men
Keep working with their bills. You’ve been
Alone in the woods, heard that knocking sound
Far off. It’s one of them.

If you’re going to follow your beak
Back to childhood, then the food you’re looking for
Will be far beneath the bark. The beak is so
Close to the brain that some men will want to
Call the whole thing off.

Men who work like this sometimes live in acres
Of scrub trees. I like that cheerful sound.
"Not many people here." "Woodpecker
Friend, call me or I’ll call you. How’s
That wood?" "Hard but wormy."

Robert Bly

Do you hear the drums sounding?

We live in an age of loss. Men and women have lost their fathers and their mothers. Sons and daughters have lost their parents. Seemingly nothing but shadow is left for us. Muddy beaten trails that lead to a cemetery where all the graves are empty. Not even the bones are left in the graves, and the bones in our bodies have grown brittle with frost. It is time to rediscover fire.

Special thanks to Robert Bly. He is a man of warrior spirit. He's shown me grief and I am thankful.