Questions and Answers regarding “Guyland”

A friend of mine studying to become a counselor passed along Michael Kimmel’s fascinating book Guyland to me recently, and I’ve found it riveting. I’m not even halfway through it and my mind is spinning.

In Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men—Understanding the Critical Years between 16 and 26, Kimmel lays out the hazardous terrain faced by males today as they navigate their lives.

Who are Guys in Guyland?

Faced with the fallout from a shifting world where there are endless unfulfilling options, and little motivation to commit to anything, many guys today are not shown that they’re worth anything. The marketplace values them as consumers, but the economy doesn’t have room for them to do much but work McJobs, despite the fact that they are, on the whole, a highly educated and intelligent bunch.

According to Kimmel:

It’s easy to observe “guys” virtually everywhere in America—in every high school and college campus in America, with their baseball caps on frontward or backward, their easy smiles or anxious darting eyes, huddled around tiny electronic gadgets or laptops, or relaxing in front of massive wide-screen hi-def TVs, in basements, dorms, and frat houses. 

…Guys often feel they’re entirely on their own as they navigate the murky shallows and the dangerous eddies that run in Guyland’s swift current. They often stop talking to their parents, who “just don’t get it.” Other adults seem equally clueless. And they can’t confide in one another lest they risk being exposed for the confused creatures they are. So they’re left alone, confused, trying to come to terms with a world they themselves barely understand. They couch their insecurity in bravado and bluster, a fearless strut barely concealing a tremulous anxiety. They test themselves in fantasy worlds and in drinking contests, enduring humiliation and pain at the hands of others.

A few years back I wrote an article for Alternatives magazine called “The Male Road Map.” I recently reread that article and although I still agree with it, I now consider it an idealized version of reality for the “guys” Kimmel has studied at length. My heart goes out any man who is confused and having a hard time finding his own place in the world, for that has been a defining theme of my own story.

So faced with the dilemma of Guyland, I find myself asking, what can be done to ease the suffering and provide for the needs of these guys?

Folks suffering poverty need food, shelter, and medicine before they need doctrine and churches. Ask them and that’s what they’ll tell you. I would assert that if you ask a guy in Guyland what he needs most, he would probably tell you: a job, some intimate connection, good times, some idea where he’s going.

I imagine the language of personal transformation would probably result in a blank stare, rolling eyes, or laughter.

So going up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, doesn’t it make sense that if we help these guys obtain their basic needs in a conscious and fulfilling way, we would be giving them the leg up they need to exit Guyland and find a way toward a full and meaningful life?

I’ve been involved in the “Men’s Movement” for 20 years in one way or another. I’ve been through the ManKind Project, I have participated in or formed men’s groups. I love being a man among men and I love to support my fellow men so that we can be our best. Yet the movement is losing steam. I believe this is because it has left “guys” out of it.

How do we older men (and women) help guys in Guyland in a way that is effective and respectful and honoring of who they are and what they need?

This is the question. I am cogitating on a few answers, but I want to hear from you. And this blog entry is getting pretty long. And my wife is due to deliver our first child any day or hour now. And I have to make dinner.

What say you?

The Bishops vs. the Girl Scouts

I read today on Yahoo! News that the U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops is launching an inquiry into the Girl Scouts. Yes, you read that correctly—the Girl Scouts. According to the AP article:

"The new inquiry will be conducted by the bishops' Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth. It will look into the Scouts' "possible problematic relationships with other organizations" and various "problematic" program materials, according to a letter sent by the committee chairman, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne, Ind., to his fellow bishops."

It is terribly tempting and rather justifiable to make a laughingstock of this group of guys for being out of touch, fearful, patriarchal. But what would be an appropriate spiritual response?

I'd assert that this move by the bishops demonstrates a fear-based reaction to changing times and expanding minds that sounds like, "We need you to believe as we believe, or else bad things will happen." Whether they fear for themselves, the church, or the girls, can only be guessed at unless you're friends with a bishop.

The late Jesuit mystic Anthony tells a great parable about belief, in which the Devil and his friend followed a man and watched him stop and find some truth. When his friend expressed concern at the Devil's lack of response, the Devil told him "I don't have to do anything. I'm going to let him make a belief of it."

What do we make of it when our friends, children, or family members respond to something we disagree with and run with it? A child who becomes a religious zealot, a parent who joins the Tea Party, or a friend who "finds herself" using drugs: Do we react, attacking the new-found belief of our loved one? Do we judge them and entrench ourselves in our own position? Or do we roll with it, understanding that the human perspective on truth is that we are always discovering what makes sense to us, and that as we mature different things make sense to us that didn't carry much weight earlier?

Today's invitation: What is the latest thing you thought was true that you are now reconsidering? Or has it been too long since your beliefs got stirred up?

Is it such a bad thing? The rise of Atheism in America

I just saw this interesting article on Yahoo! News, explaining the rise of Atheism in America.

Per the article:

Only between 1.5 and 4 percent of Americans admit to so-called "hard atheism," the conviction that no higher power exists. But a much larger share of the American public (19 percent) spurns organized religion in favor of a nondefined skepticism about faith. This group, sometimes collectively labeled the "Nones," is growing faster than any religious faith in the U.S. About two thirds of Nones say they are former believers; 24 percent are lapsed Catholics and 29 percent once identified with other Christian denominations. David Silverman, president of American Atheists, claims these Nones as members of his tribe. "If you don't have a belief in God, you're an atheist," he said. "It doesn't matter what you call yourself."

A corollary or companion to this article might be called, "The Retreat and Decline of Theology in America." Because modern American churches—as well as the Roman Catholic Church under the leadership of its current pope—have abdicated theology as a field of expanding study, religious thought has not kept pace with the changes and growth our human species is currently experiencing. Theology, I was taught at one point during my Catholic education, is "Faith seeking understanding." On a more literal level, theology is the study of God.

Our collective human experience, especially as influenced by the free flow of information and the rise of technology, as well as existential threats to the world's population including terrorism, war, environmental degradation, resource depletion, and climate change all lead the human mind to question how "God" fits into all this, if indeed the mind in question has a current belief in God.

So how does our contemporary experience fit into our understanding of God? That's the traditional question, but it's not the best question to ask for these times. And the "atheists" have stopped asking, wisely.

Here's why: Fitting our experience into our understanding forces us to change our narrative about our experience if it contradicts what we are taught about God. If one is taught, for instance, that God disapproves of homosexuality, and that person is inclined to enjoy his or her homosexuality, then in order to gain God's approval such a person must then become disinclined to enjoy his or her own sexuality. In such a way, one's narrative about one's own experience must be altered to fit the belief.

However, spirituality (if not religion) works better when we have an experience that contradicts what we're taught, and then we examine what we're taught to see how it may in fact intersect with our own experience without contradicting it. Doing so, however, requires one's understanding of God to grow with one's understanding of the world and of one's own self. That is theology, and the study has been replaced with censorship (in Catholicism) and fundamentalism (in most of the rest of American Christianity).

So here's a call to today's churches: If you want to reduce the defection of your young, fresh, promising young people, be ready to question the understanding of your faith along with them. Your faith will deepen as a result, although your cherished beliefs may change.

Humble beauty

For about two weeks out of the whole year, this modest weeping cherry bonsai is my favorite tree of my collection.

I love cherries. I love eating them, I love looking at their blossoms. I love the lenticels (small horizontal lines) that mark the shiny bark on their trunks. I love their fall color. Now, weeping cherries are probably my least favorite cherries, because their blossoms point down instead of out. There's something a little bit sad about a weeping cherry. Kind of like someone who has a beautiful smile, but always seems to look at the ground instead of straight at you.

I was photographing this tree today and decided to get underneath the tree to have a look at the blossoms straight up. The blossoms really struck me as beautiful in a way they hadn't before. Sometimes it takes getting on your knees and looking up to see the beauty in things.

In a similar theme, I also took a photo of a wild pansy of some sort that I found growing in the middle of my lawn (there are advantages to being lax about mowing). It's not a real flashy pansy like you find on the racks in front of nurseries, hardware stores, and discount centers. This one would never sell alongside those pretty ones, but interestingly, this is a durable little plant.

Fearing that the frost and snow of winter would kill off this little seedling, I dug it up and put it in a liner pot and gave it some shelter, and it survived just fine over the winter. And then I put it in a little Japanese pot a few weeks ago, even bare-rooting it and giving it completely new soil. It's already giving me flowers.

I love this little plant as much as many of my trees. I love that it was little more than a weed growing in the middle of my lawn and given a decent pot, can shine as a metaphor of grace, toughness, and beauty. I imagine this little pansy will live for years in this little pot if this winter and a bare-rooting didn't kill it.

The notions of humility, modesty, and looking for beauty are not new spiritual concepts. But living with plants and tending my bonsai garden continues to strengthen and heighten my attention beauty. The outpouring of goodness found in the beauty of nature is inexhaustible: It's there whether we're looking or not, whether we notice or not, whether we care or not.

Walk in beauty, as the blessing goes. Look for it, get down on your knees and look every which way, and see things deeply and newly. Let the plants be your teachers.

Spiritual lesson from a bonsai in training

I started this blog out as a vehicle for my spiritual reflections, but oddly, after awhile, it turned out that most of the blogs I am interested in are centered on bonsai. (Bonsai is the art of using living plant material to make potted sculptural representations of larger trees.) Since I do lots of bonsai and it's my passion these days, I've felt more like having a bonsai blog lately than a spiritual growth type of blog.

This entry will be a little bit of both.

As I was spending some the last hours of daylight pondering my trees today, my eyes settled on a vine maple my friend Chris and I dug up off a mountain on the east side of Mt. Hood, which I recently repotted down to a shallow box, preparing the tree for its eventual home in a bonsai pot.

When I first laid eyes on this marvelous maple—some 50 years old, I reckon—with its curvy trunk, I was transfixed. We had been looking for maples all day with no luck and suddenly this one appeared and I saw its potential design immediately. Key to the design was a large branch that came off a curve in the upper third of the tree, with perfect diameter, and at a perfect angle.

During the months after I took that maple home with me, I watched that branch wither away and die even as the tree put out all kinds of healthy new growth. Turns out that branch had gotten cracked at the base sometime during the process of digging it up. Eventually I cut it off, and an ugly scar developed there, reminding me of a disappointment, of potential unrealized, of what would never be there again (unless I did some tricky grafting). I hoped a bud would sprout right next to the scar. Didn't happen. But they sprouted everywhere else!

The tree began to lose its charm for me and I almost decided to auction it off. But there has always been magic in that tree, something I hoped I could unlock.

Last weekend, two springs after that maple left its home on a mountain of lava, I took it out of the big wooden box I originally made for it, and cut off much of the root mass. There were ample fine feeder roots close to the base of the trunk, such that I could remove a large portion of the lower roots that had been with the tree for most of its life. I could now fit it in a large bonsai pot or a smaller, shallower box. I chose the latter. We slanted the tree downward about 10 degrees to make the design more dynamic.

Pondering the maple on my bench, I cut off a branch at the base of the tree that had always bothered me. Then I looked at that scar. Michael Hagedorn, my teacher, told me he doesn't really like branches coming right out of the outside of curves, which is contrary to much of the design principles you see in many of the bonsai books. In fact, another branch had sprouted just above and to the side of the scar, that would make an excellent alternative later on.

I decided to remove the scar, so I cut deeply into the wood to make a concave area that would eventually heal flush to the line of the tree without an ugly bump. No branch would ever grow there. Ever.


I applied the cut paste to help the wound heal, and pondered the tree. Suddenly the magic was back, as the line of the trunk was restored. Now I love that tree more than ever.

What does this have to do with spiritual growth?

I think sometimes we hold on to dreams from our past that didn't work out. We might hold on to certain possessions or relationships that could eventually re-sprout and work out the way we always wanted them to. But time turns those disappointments into "ugly knots" that detract from the beauty, simplicity, and magic of our lives. And perhaps to restore that magic we have to excise the scar, dig deeply into our soul, remove the infected tissue, and have "less" there than there was before.

Painful for a bit, but a good deal when you get the magic back.

As a technical note, other than the one unsightly branch at the base of the tree, I did no styling or pruning to this tree upon its re-potting. I will likely wait until May or June to work on this tree. It's usually best to leave lots of top growth on a tree upon removing lots of roots, because all those leaves will generate the sugar needed to grow lots of new roots.

Clarity vs. Trust

I've been pondering the notion of clarity lately. In truth, I've found myself envying those who have it. Times are uncertain for me right now.

Whenever I hear the word "clarity," I think of a story I heard once about a struggling priest who went on sabbatical and as part of his travels, went to Calcutta to meet Mother Theresa. When he finally met her, he requested that she pray that he have clarity in his life. Mother Theresa responded, "I will not pray for you to have clarity. I will pray for you to trust."

In meditation this morning, I considered that clarity comes from the ego and ultimately is a delusion or fixation. It's nice to have, yes, but with clarity comes a sense of tunnel vision or exclusion of possibility. What if the Divine's will for you, or the deepest expression of who you are, is distinct from what you are so clear about? Clarity in this case would keep you from noticing, from being open to new possibility. Trust, on the other hand, necessitates a certain kind of openness.

Put another way, clarity is attachment that's convincing. Trust reflects commitment to the divine, the context that one cannot ever be certain of what is best and next.

This reflection brings to mind chapter 20 of the Tao Te Ching, which asks, "Is there a difference between yes and no?" Lao Tsu confesses, "But I alone am drifting, not knowing where I am. Like a newborn babe before it learns to smile, I am alone, without a place to go."

This greatest of sages even goes so far as to say "I am a fool. Oh yes! I am confused. Other men are clear and bright, but I alone am dim and weak."

He closes the poem by saying "Everyone else is busy, but I alone am aimless and depressed. I am different. I am nourished by the great mother."

"Aimless and depressed" does not sell self-help books and will not be associated with "The Secret." I understand, however, that Mother Theresa herself was party to immense spiritual doubt. But often "aimless and depressed" is the dark that comes before the dawn of something new and beautiful. Clarity will be of no help here.

Don't blame the 60s; blame high school seminaries.

A five-year study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice recently concluded that the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis was in large part caused by the sexual revolution and changing social mores of the 1960s. It should come as no shock that the church oversaw this study and partially paid for the study.

The principal investigator, Karen Terry, concludes:

• Homosexuality was not to blame.
• Celibacy was not to blame.
• It wasn't a pedophilia problem, since most of the kids involved were older than 10, which the study used as the cutoff for pedophilia. (Most kids abused were older than 10.)
  
• Boys were abused more often because troubled priests had more access to them than girls
• Priests were affected by the broad-sweeping changes of the 60s.
  
  

Most articles I’ve seen commenting on this study cut right to the church criticism, which I believe is warranted. I think there are some valid points to this study that the church should take to heart. Most notably that homosexuality was not to blame. Pope Benedict has had a witch-hunt mentality toward gay priests, so I’m glad that this information has come to light.

I begrudgingly accept that celibacy isn’t to blame either. Although I think that celibacy is to blame for many other ills facing the church and threatening its viability as a force for good in the current millennium. And if we had married priests, Catholics could have their pick of many fine candidates for the ministry that they would otherwise never have. (They would also have more Catholics.)

The study also posits that celibacy has been church policy for more than 1,000 years, so that cannot explain why the 1960s saw a spike in abuse nor why there were fewer reports beginning in the 1980s.

According to Terry, psychological exams, intelligence tests, and developmental history information would predict which priests would become abusers.

I have several thoughts about this study and its conclusions, but I’ll stick to one for now. The widespread influence (until fairly recently) of high school seminaries, and generally shame-based attitudes about human sexuality, formed a deadly duo that caused the crisis.

High school boys’ brains are still forming, as are their sexual identities. It’s a time when healthy sexual development depends on flirting, courting, dating, and getting to know what females (or males, if you're gay) of the species look, smell, and feel like, up close. If this development is stunted, combined certain teachings equating masturbation with sin, sexual desire with the sin of lust, unhealthy introjection will follow. Carry an unlived youthful sex life through to adulthood and add contact with young boys and girls, combine with loneliness, and you have the perfect storm. (There could also be an authority complex that some of the priests were suffering too.)

Regrettably, there are still high school seminaries; the church is tragically behind in its own understanding and embracing of human sexuality, not to mention its advocacy for school-aged boys and girls. Specifically, the church needs to embrace that a heart-centered, adventurous sexual life is healthy for one’s psychological development. I know, I know. Not. Gonna. Happen.

It doesn’t mean telling kids to have sex. It means encouraging them to have fun, make out, not be ashamed of their bodies, and learn healthy boundaries such that they can understand the vulnerabilities and circumstances that come with sexuality. Kids are wired to carry out this exploration on their own. Can adults—can the church—consciously bless and prepare them for the perilous and delightful journey that lay ahead?