Menletter #10 for January 2003

ESSAY

Ruts, Routines, and Rituals

I was standing in the bathroom one morning, noticing how I get ready for my day. Shower. Shave. Brush teeth. Go downstairs. Make coffee. Make oatmeal. Open paper to comics section. Eat and read. Do crossword. Clean up. Within each of these events was a series of actions that rarely varies from day to day.

Now the question: Is my typical morning a ritual, a routine, or a rut? What's the difference, if any?

If I thought I was in a rut, I'd probably be unhappy. But I like my morning activity; I find it comforting, even calming. It's a way to ease into the day before I hit the commute to work. I could get up later, rush through things, not bother with the crossword puzzle, and so on, and have the benefit of more sleep. But I don't -- and won't.

It's not exactly a ritual, either. Most of the time, I'm on automatic pilot (except for the morning when I started thinking about this essay).

So I've concluded it's a routine.

This all got me to thinking about other repeating events in people's lives, including mine. What about Friday night dinner with the neighbors? What about my spiritual life? What's routine? What's ritual? What's got me in a rut?

Oh...I forgot about ritual. Ritual, as I see it, is some event that is done with intention. The event may be singluar or repeated, and it may follow a set pattern or be improvised to one degree or another. But the important ingredient is conscious awareness of the collection of acts -- their sequence, their meaning, their consequences.

We've all taken part in rituals: religious services, graduations, weddings, bar mitzvahs, men's retreats. And I think we've all seen certain repeated rituals devolve into routines and sometimes into ruts. Even your daily meditation and/or prayer can fall into a rut.

Here's an idea: Take inventory of the things you do regularly. Classify them into rituals, routines, and ruts. Try to identify the meaningful things that have become routine, the routine things that have fallen into ruts, and perhaps even the rituals that have taken a short-cut into a rut without even becoming routine. Now decide whether, and how, you want to change things. (One trick from the lifestyle gurus: consciously break the patterns. Have dessert first. Eat steak for breakfast. Take a different route to work. I think this can be a bit gimmicky, but do whatever works.) My way? I just try to pause a moment, take a few deep breaths, and become more mindful of what I'm doing.

The inventory and assessment is a good way to freshen things up, to allow you to live more consciously and feel more alive. It's worth doing every once in a while; it could even become routine!

ARTICLE

No article this month, just a suggestion for a New Year's resolution (now that we've probably broken all the others): Reach out to one other man this year. In your own way, share your experiences in men's work.

MEDITATION / PROSE POEM

As we settle in for this seemingly endless winter, I'd like to share this piece from Igor Volkov:

there it was. the night with stars and a full moon. in the twilight of day into night, while i was just finishing painting mountains in the great meadows, a friendly womans face, bundled into her wintry things with a spray of blonde hair cheering those moments, said that this moon was called the Wolf Moon. and now, after my sleep, there it was again before me as i looked to the western skies from my snowshoes to my green wool hat. i began to walk toward the east. the river, a half of a mile away, waited silently under ice and two feet of snow. the snow before me was lit up, the shadow blued and stretched, the mountains in the east were night dark, and above them there was no sign of daylight.

each step took me closer. after that thought, my mind began to believe that it would be too cold. it added the fact that it was exactly zero out there. the snow was deep and powdery, the snowshoes sank down a half foot with each step, carrying some on the way up. i would get too tired, i was walking without preliminary stretches or breakfasting, to walk the distance. my body kept walking across the snows. i noticed that with the mind talking like that, i'd picked up pace, as if in a hurry to get there, where-ever 'there' was. i slowed down. my thighs began to feel the strain of picking up the old-fashioned wooden, long-tailed, snowshoes, breaking through, lifting up. my nose felt like a frozen strawberry and each exhalation brought a strange feeling of stalagtites, stalagmites, and crystals being formed in it, my new moustache was becoming white with frost. the fingers were cold in my green woolen mittens, i bunched up my hands inside them. my body kept walking across the snows. glancing up and looking toward where the river was hiding under the New Hampshire mountains, i noticed that i hadn't gotten far at all, compared to the heated sunny walks, runs, in the warmer seasons. maybe i shouldn't try to make it all the way to the river, the Vermont State Trooper, just on his way to work, had told me "Don't go further than you can come back". my mind became divided between patiently, simply, going along, enjoying the steps in the moonlighted snows in the notable cold night of the January Wolf Moon and planning not to go too far, noticing how much energy i'd have for a return and turning around at the right time. my body kept walking across the snows. there was a huge starry light hanging near five stars in the shape of a gingko leaf over the eastern mountain. i noticed a vague lightening just over the ridge and the stars low in the sky there seemed to relax under a reddish dark blanket. overhead the eyes could fly forever into the blue-black deep passing the shining lights. my shadow continued moving forward.

i was three quarters over the fields, walking on water, a foot up off the ground, over the sleeping rootlets of alfalfa in the earth. i stopped. my thighs felt expanded, blown up, they were beginning to ache. i wiggled my toes in my plain leather boots to check for beginning frostbite, and i felt each one calling out for a warm bed but they were warm enough. my body kept walking across the snows, each step a little closer, i picked up the pace with that stupid nervousness and noticed it and slowed down. the trees alongside the riverbanks appeared beautiful, approachable, a real beauty rose up and entered my world then. i was near the river and it was near me. when my eyes finally saw the windswept whiteness, i smiled inside. there was a quiet bowed tree, with clusters of seeds hanging from still branches, i chose one with lines of branchlets like the five stars in the sky. it snapped off the tree with a pop, i tucked it in for the trek return. took a breath. stood by the silent river.

and then i turned. faced west. there the full Wolf Moon was sinking down over a rolling Vermont hill, soon into green-black tips of pines, its playing, yellow face sneaking mocking, teasing looks at me. wolf language of a perfect morning for it. i snuck a mitten off, wrote 6 a.m. and a circle for the moon over it, with my forefinger, my whited breath blinding me, and i straightened up. i felt the completeness, i'd made it, the air over the New Hampshire mountains behind me was clearly lighter, nearly as light as the skies around the western moon. straight up was still the night with a star twinkling there like a wink on a gate. the sun and the moon in equal light, the night in between with a star. i took my first step in awe. my body kept walking across the snows.

ps. the Wolf Moon

is copyrighted.

if you put my name, January 2003,

and the copyright sign directly at the

bottom, use it for the guys in all good

health. thank you.

if you don't, my lawyers will eat your

child, your dog, your car, and all of

your future dreams. or so they said.

all the best.

My Own Business Directory

Here are a couple of resources worth noting.

Luminous Woods is a one-man woodcraft business run by Tim Dalton. His products include wood jewelry boxes, clocks set in highly polished burls, and a meditation bench. Check it out here:

http://www.luminouswoods.com/index.html

John Dore, when back in Arizona, offers spiritual retreats, guided self-healing, and psychological intensives for individuals, couples, and group. He and his wife, Karleena, also run the Peace Barn Bed & Breakfast, located in the Tucson foothills. You can reach John and Karleena at 5141 N. Blue Bonnet Ave., Tucson, AZ 85745. John (BlessingWay Trainings): 520-906-1768; mailto:dorejj@aol.com. Karleena (Bed & Breakfast) : 520-743-2444 mailto:ravenwoodk@aol.com.

David Loftus, another member of this mailing list, has just published "Watching Sex: How Men Really Respond to Pornography," based on interviews with nearly 150 men, Loftus seeks to refute the idea that pornography warps men's ideas about sexuality. Available at Barnesandnoble.com, Borders.com, Amazon.com, and so on.

I'm sure there are more of you out there writing books or running a solo shop of some sort; drop me a line and I'll expand this list.

Warranty

I am not responsible for the contents of Web sites I list or recommend.

Personal correspondence:

Tim Baehr

tbaehr@aol.com