Where are we
going with the "men's movement"? After some excitement in the late
1980s and early 1990's, it seems to have gotten pretty slow and quiet. Sometimes
I hope that it was just my inattention, the busy-ness of life, and so on. Maybe
there were lively men's events and gatherings that had just slipped off my
radar screen. But other men have told me that the movement had gone either
underground or away. One even told me that a certain amount of media ridicule
had decimated the membership in men's groups and organizations.
Like many men,
I had started out with Bly (the public TV documentary "A Gathering of
Men" with Bill Moyers) and gone on to become immersed in Bly, Hillman, and
Meade. I couldn't travel to see them, but when any one of them came to the
Boston area, I was there. The visits were far too few.
I was in a
couple of men's groups, one fairly short-lived and one very short-lived.
My re-entry was
sudden: at a weekend seminar with Meade, one of the participants told me about
the Men's Wisdom Council, an annual five-day retreat in the mountains of
western Massachusetts. I went mostly to get away from the tensions of my job
and marriage, hoping for a quiet week in the woods.
I was blown
away by the fellowship and nurturing of the 35 men, and the deep work we were
able to do in just a few days. As a direct result of that week, I kept my
marriage, changed my job, and began to wait impatiently for the next Wisdom
Council.
This went on
for two more years: a week of renewal and amazing insights followed by 51 weeks
of yearning to go back. Finally, I ran into one of the leaders (he lives in my
town) and mentioned this yearning. He said, Let's do something about it.
Last January,
we (and several other guys) hosted Mending the Web: Building a Community of
Men. We explored, with a couple dozen men, the needs of men and men's groups in
the Boston area. From that Saturday we spun off some new projects, including a
Web site, a drumming and poetry circle, an anti-violence committee, and others.
Slowly, we're on our way.
This newsletter
is both independent (I thought of it before the Mending the Web project) and a
part of the community effort.
So, I guess I
haven't answered the question. Where *are* we going? The short answer is
"forward, slowly." My inner sense tells me that the down time in the
past decade will turn out to have been good for us - a time to reflect, a time
to gather our energies. It was also a time for men - as men - to be out of the
public eye. About the only media attention I've noticed about men in the past
ten years has been ridicule. Just look at the sitcoms, advertising, and daily
comics pages. We can be (super)heroes, jerks, or "sensitive" males.
What needs to
happen? Here's my vision: We need to talk and work and play together. It's that
simple. No underlying theorizing, no "movement," no ideology. Fly
under the radar and avoid any media or mass-market attention or attempts to co-opt
us ("Collect all six REALMAN figurines at Burger King!").
One of the
things society has done to people in general in the past twenty years is to
isolate them: family from family, worker from worker, community from community.
We compete with each other for jobs, we hole up in the den in front of the TV
or game console, we barely know our neighbors. For even longer than that, men
have had - or made - few opportunities to just be with each other.
We need to be
together more. Let's start there and see where it takes us.
Sometime in the
next couple months, I'm going to try to put together a film series on
mentoring. I hope I can sell the idea to my local branch library in Jamaica Plain,
Mass. Although the series will be primarily for men, women will be welcome,
especially because the library is a public place.
Depending on
their availability as video rentals, I hope to have a series of four to six
films. Here are the films I'm considering, in no particular order:
Finding Forrester
The Cider House Rules
Good Will Hunting
November Sky
Dead Poets Society
Shawshank Redemption
The Color of Money
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Slam
The Man without a Face
The Tic Code
Training Day
What is
mentoring? It's usually defined as the care and protection of a (usually) older
man who's not your father. Most of these movies adhere to that definition, even
to the point (in Star Wars) of being dubbed a "modern myth." In some
movies, the mentoring results in a kind of misty, feel-good experience. Others
follow a more classic pattern of early rebellion, hard lessons, growing mutual
love and respect, and finally a parting, perhaps with an element of betrayal.
Training Day compresses this whole sequence into a single, long, violently
bloody day.
Mentoring is
not a natural part of men's lives in Western contemporary society. The fact
that there are so many "mentoring" movies may speak to our unmet
desire for the compassionate teacher and protector - perhaps with a mixture of
rescue fantasy. Fictional characters become our vicarious substitutes.
Some of us find
mentoring at work, either informally or through a formal mentoring program. My
experience with formal mentoring, as a "mentee" or protege, has been
different from what I would have expected from a non-work setting - perhaps
because I was over 50 when I entered the program. I've also had some workplace
mentoring from my bosses, including a woman younger than my oldest son.
A lot of my
mentoring and initiation experiences have involved reliving and reinterpreting
events of the past. This can be very fruitful, and I recommend it. Here's a
series of steps that may work for you:
1.
Think
of a person or event that challenged you in some serious way, perhaps even so
intense that it left scars.
2.
Remember
whether the person involved (if there was one) meant you harm, was trying to
help you in some way, or was neutral. Compare this to how you remember feeling
at the time.
3.
Go over
what you had to do to survive this challenge (and heal from any wounds). How
did you grow? What have you learned? In what ways are you a better person as a
result of the experience? What would you pass on to someone you were mentoring?
4.
Think
of the other person or people involved in this experience. How were they
harmed? How did they benefit? What hurts or wounds did they bring into the
situation?
5.
During
some quiet moment - during meditation, while taking a walk, while sitting in
the sun, and so on - reflect on the whole situation and silently thank the
person or the event.
What's your
favorite "mentoring" movie? Why? How did it affect you? Write and
tell me. I'll report back in the next issue.
What other kind
of "men's" movie list could you put together? Would you want to
create a film series based on the list? Send your lists and I'll report on
them.
Here are a
couple of Web sites I really liked:
This site contains
the full text of a book, "If Men have All the Power How Come Women Make
the Rules," by Jack Kammer. [You'll need the Adobe PDF reader (free
download).] This is very pro-man and sometimes anti-women's-movement. You can
quote it at the dinner table (or in bed) at your peril. I speak from
experience!
http://www.aristotle.net/~diogenes/meaning1.htm
I like this
multi-screen essay on the meaning of life.
Here's a poem
from Tim Dalton, one of the leaders of the Men's Wisdom Council:
Opportunity
knocks with the
hand of another
wears an
improbable face
tracks down the
intimate scent of powerful dreams
moves high
along the sharp edge
of some deeper
chasm.
Vision
serves to reveal
the fine thread
woven
intimately
by a careful
knowing hand
into the seam
of
this moment.
And here's a
poem from me:
The worst
curse: to be
Regarded as
"promising."
What alchemy
can turn
The base metal
that people see
Into the gold
of their expectations?
We are gold
already -
And we own the
mine.
Here are some
future newsletter projects I have in mind:
Poetry and essays - yours, mostly; but don't send anything right
now.
Internet resources for men (there are lots of them, and I'll
review them).
CD discography of: music for breathwork; drumming; meditation.
Men and aging.
Men and work.
Wisdom.
Fathers and mothers.
Violence by and against men and women.
Spirituality.
Health issues.
Old age and end-of-life issues.
Ritual.
Initiation of young men into adulthood.
Initiation of older men into elderhood.
Copyright
notice
All original
materials are (c) Copyright 2002 by Tim Baehr. All rights reserved. All signed
materials are copyright by their respective authors.
Personal correspondence:
Tim Baehr
tbaehr@aol.com