Manhood in America

These are some quotes and ideas from a good book I am reading: Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation by Richard Rohr.

"The English historian G.M. Trevelyan said that Western education 'has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.'  In other words, we have substituted job preparation for broad education, information for knowledge, facts and statistics for wisdom.  What the primal peoples seem to have known is that mere technology without depth and breadth is dangerous, even destructive to society.  Initiation was on a different plane that mere transference of facts and data."  (p. 16)

"Sacred rituals and sacred words situated life in a bigger frame, so nature, beauty, suffering, work, sexuality, and ordinary humdrum were seen to have transcendent significance.  Basically, they gave life meaning, and that is the one thing the human soul cannot live without.  Heaven and earth have to be put together or this world never becomes home. [...] This was the incarnation before the Incarnation!  Jesus made incarnation particular, concrete, visible, and beautiful, but it has always been God's pattern and it is called creation.  Yet the particular has always been scandalous and unworthy of thinking and sophisticated people. [...]
Union with God, union with what is, that is to say, union with everything, has always been the experiential goal of initiation."  (p. 29)

"The entire process that we call initiation somehow made it possible for a man to experience five essential truths.  They became the five essential messages of initiation:

1. Life is hard.
2. You are not that important.
3. Your life is not about you.
4. You are not in control.
5. You are going to die.

You will perhaps be shocked by the seemingly negative character of these five truths, which probably shows how untraditional we have become, even those who think of themselves as conservatives. At this point in history, we have some major surgery to do; separation from codependency, separation from limited self-image, separation from the autonomous ego, separation from the securities of boyhood and an almost coercive push into the responsibilities of manhood." (pp. 32-33)

"In the spiritual life there is no elsewhere.  First and last, you are your major problem.  My angers and irritations are, first of all, saying something about me, and that is what I must hear before I make any other judgments.  What we have come to call sins are actually the symptoms of sin; in other words, they are the predictable effects of trying to live outside of evident reality, which is the cycle of death and rebirth.  We prefer to feel appropriately guilty about the symptoms instead of doing the hard work of changing the underlying illusion, which is why most people don't grow very much." (pp.41-42)

I find Rohr to be a delightful integration of many other thoughtful authors and perspectives that I have enjoyed in the past few years.  He contains echoes of Lewis, Chesterton, George Ladd, Wendell Berry, Donald Miller and Eugene Peterson.  His commentary on the state of our modern American culture and spirituality are direct, pointed, and very insightful.  His understanding of the Kingdom of God and how it is to be worked out in our individual lives, our church communities and our world is quite refreshing.  His prescriptions (so far) for beginning to deal with the profound and frightening issues confronting healthy masculinity today are powerful.

I'm going to keep reading.