Richard Rohr is a Christian writer and teacher who focuses his work on mystical and transformational traditions. I’m reading his thoughtful and provocative book, From Wild Man To Wise Man: Reflections On Male Spirituality.
Rohr is treading on sensitive ground in the book, he suggests that men and women approach spirituality in different, and he also suggests that men desperately need to understand their wildness and turn it into compassion and wisdom.
If you watch the news, it seems apparent that many men are aspiritual, compassion and empathy do not factor into their decisions or work or politics. Accurately or not, we perceive – I should say I perceive – women to be more advanced emotionally and much more open to spirituality than men.
The male-dominated religious institutions of the world, which is to say most of them, seem tired to me, with little to offer in our increasingly complicated and divided world, a world in which women are re-defining themselves. Sometimes I look at those photos of all those old men in their fancy robes sitting in the Vatican, and I wonder, how can a global religious institution possibly stay relevant in a world of ascending women when they keep women out?
To me, it is Pope Francis that has what I would call a feminine spirituality, one that loves the earth, the poor, the vulnerable and who preaches for gentleness and tolerance. Increasingly, these issues, which are all of our issues, are also women’s issues. The spiritual world is upside. These values of tolerance and love were the essence of Jesus Christ and his teachings. Men in power have largely abandoned them. It matters how we treat people, that is, to me, the core of a spiritual life.
Male U.S. senators were traumatized at having an infant in the Senate Chambers, I see women as a giant wave about to crash on grumpy old and unawares white men. Why can’t men embrace the role of caregivers as well as women?
Many people I know are wringing their hands about the state of the country and the world, I don’t share their gloom. I think we’re just on the edge of great change, like the gospel preachers, I can feel that change coming, it is right over the horizon, and it is about the rise of women everywhere. Time is up, it is time for men to step aside and look inside for a different ways of living..
In our western culture, and even in our religious traditions, writes Rohr, there are few guides to lead men into the full male journey, and almost no mentors who have been there themselves and returned to share what they have learned. Men, he writes, yearn for believable mentors on every stage of the journey.
Men do what they see and what they know, and what they see and know is damaging our world.
Men desperately need guides to lead them through some new stages of their spiritual journeys, perhaps even to understand their wildness in a way that might be wisdom. Rohr writes gently – “wildness” is a generous word to describe what men are doing to the world and how they fill the air with violence and greed and selfishness.
Men have written the myths that govern western civilization, says Rohr.
These myths, he says, “are largely written by men who have controlled the power, the money, the corporations, the church, the military, the morality books. “What we call reality,” he says, “is the creation of men who have not worked much on their inner lives.”
I am working on my inner life all the time, every day, and it is changing me and challenging me.
I know very few men who have “gone inside,’ have not learned trust, vulnerability, power or poetry. “They, and the civilization we have inherited from them, are in great part unwhole and even sick. That assessment should not need much defense.”
So what, then, is a masculine spirituality? I’ve often joked that the only men I can stand to be around have either been tortured as children or humiliated as adults. Men do not seem to look inward naturally, they seem to need to be stunned or bludgeoned into thinking about spirituality.
In a sense, this might be one of the most important subjects in our world, which men are systematically destroying and polluting and fighting over for money and power.
Rohr says a masculine spirituality would be one that encourages men to take the radical journey from their own unique beginning point, in their own unique style, with their own unique goals – with no doubt or apology or need to imitate our sisters or our fathers. He says this requires immense courage and self-possession, traits most men don’t associate with spirituality.
The spiritual man can shed arrogance and rigid opinions, he can begin to live for other people, not just himself. He can commit himself to doing good, not just dictating good.
He can reject war as the only means of solving deep and difficult issues. The spiritual men possesses his soul and does not give it lightly to corporations, armies, nation-states or the mob. He is beyond red state and blue state thinking.
I like this book so far, and it has my head spinning about male spirituality. I have been on this path for journeys, it is one of the joys of my life.
For me, spirituality begins with empathy. It begins with mercy. It begins with acknowledging the worst parts of yourself.
It is about learning to speak gently, and to walk more gently in the world. It is about our Mother, the Earth, and our care for her. It is about supporting true equality for women, about standing aside to make room for other people in the world.
It is about learning to talk rather than fight, and to listen, rather than argue. It is about being a true father, encouraging and loving and protective.
It is not about being perfect, it is far too late for that, we are much more interesting than that, but about doing good and judging less. It is about compromise and retreat.
Hard stuff, easy to say, hard to do. The corporate ethic that has gripped our country and our world is the very antithesis of spirituality, it has no mercy and no regard for humanity, it is only about money, which makes it the enemy of spirituality.
I’m eager to keep reading this book and learning about the idea of a male spirituality. I’ll share what I’m thinking and reading.