Heart ThreadsFrom Menletter September 2002 By Tim Baehr We are all
born with an essential inner core. I call it a heart, but I'm not referring
to the meaty muscle that pumps our blood. The way I envision it, it's the
essence of who we are; it's paradoxically both what makes us individuals and
what ties us to the infinite, the divine, the oneness that unites us all. This heart
has (metaphorically speaking), four spinners of thread to wrap itself in. The first
spinner is joy. The joy of a baby or young child spins outward and bends
gently back, enveloping the heart in a glowing, gossamer skein. It cradles
the heart, lets it bounce around a bit. It's impossible for the spinner to
produce so much joy that the heart is obscured; the skein simply expands to
accommodate it. The second
spinner is grief. This comes usually from pain, from injuries and wounds to
the heart. Even babies experience some of this: hunger, thirst, fear of
abandonment, and so on. In boys it may include circumcision. Unless the baby
or child is abused in some way - by its parents or by war, poverty, or the
like, the grief threads are vastly outnumbered by the joy threads. But one characteristic
of grief threads (and of all the other threads) is that they grow up through
the other skeins of threads. Joy still enwraps the heart, and the threads of
grief grow up through the wrapping of joy and eventually can surround it. Life provides
many opportunities for grief, because life can be painful. For some
people, the source of grief is sudden and severe: Abandonment - physical or
emotional - by our parents. Outright abuse. Loss of a loved one through
illness, accident, or violence. Severe illness or injury. For some
people, the source of grief is slow and grinding: Dull routines. Living with
an uncaring spouse. Repeated disappointments in love, work, friends. Gradual
decline in health. Ongoing, pervasive racial or gender discrimination. Poverty.
For women, the grief may come from feeling undervalued - increasingly in both
the workplace and at home. For men, the grief may come from feeling
undervalued - as a replaceable cog in the commercial machine and as an open
wallet at home. In any case,
a skein of grief can envelop the joy, and the heart is lost inside. The third
spinner is anger, or rage. Anger is very useful. It propels us, activates us,
makes us want to change things. And it is certainly efficient in covering
over the skein of grief. The sources of anger are similar to those for grief,
and sometimes the threads don't make neat layers; the two skeins become
intertwined. If the skeins
of grief and anger are allowed to cover most of the joy, the situation
becomes intolerable. Anything that rubs up against them sends painful shocks
to the heart it has covered, irritating or reopening old heart-wounds. Joy,
once a gossamer cradle, shrivels up against the heart as grief and anger
press in. So a fourth
spinner has been active almost from the beginning: numbness. Sending threads
up from the core of self, this spinner attempts to protect the heart from the
things that rub up against grief and anger by weaving a sturdy, impervious
shell around the whole thing. That way, further insults to the skeins of
grief and anger can't get in. We all have
this protective shell, thick in some places and a bit thin in others. A child
turns away from abuse and builds a fantasy world inside the shell - or simply
goes inside and forgets. A wife turns away from her husband because his shell
seems to shut her out. Men - and now many women - turn away from the world
when they discover that they cannot show rage, grief (or in some cases even
joy) and still keep their job. Our society
puts a very high value on this numbness. It takes a certain amount of
numbness to do repetitive work, or even simply to show up at work every day,
day after day, away from family and home. It takes a certain amount of
numbness to live amid pollution, destruction of the environment, injustice,
and war. Historically,
men have been most encouraged to spin this skein of numbness. That way, they
can be ordained into - or honored and flattered into - being the protectors,
the stalwarts, the danger workers. Even salesmen and office workers have
bought into this ethic. When women in the past twenty years or so told us we
had to get in touch with our feelings, we just stared blankly (didn't we?)
and thought, "What the hell is she talking about?" Now more and
more women - single moms and executives both - are finding out what men have
faced since the beginning of the industrial era. And their shells are getting
almost as thick as men's. The shell has
another great economic value. Because of this numbness, it becomes harder to activate
any remaining joy, so we're willing to pay more and buy more things, just to
give joy an occasional tickle. Some of us
even try to get numb from the inside, soothing the heart directly. We use
drugs, alcohol, television, shopping, and a myriad of other devices. Society
promotes this, too: numbness from any source has its utility. The problem
with the internal numbness is that the heart eventually shrinks, and the
skeins of grief and anger wrap themselves tighter around it, crushing even
more joy. These
attempts at numbness can look very pathological. But the heart shows a kind
of loving wisdom in this. It is making a desperate attempt to preserve its
joy and its connection to the divine. But the numbness can become so complete
that worthwhile aspects of our lives - spiritual practices, creation or
appreciation of beauty, loving relationships - become distorted or
impossible. Every once in
a while, a thread of anger, maybe intertwined with grief, works itself up
through the shell. It whips around, slashing at anything in reach. A parent
roars at or hits the children for a minor infraction. A boss belittles a
valued assistant at a staff meeting. A cop clubs a homeless person sleeping
on a bench. Sometimes the thread breaks loose and does its damage unconnected
to its source; shrinks call it passive-aggressive behavior. Sometimes the
thread turns on its host. Then we have car accidents, insomnia, depression,
physical ailments up to and including heart attacks and cancer - and suicide.
If we manage to stuff the anger-thread back into the shell, it's a bit
thicker and a bit stronger. What happens
when we start trying to undo the layers? Some of us have done this in
therapy, some in men's groups. The first thing that gets exposed is the anger
skein. One of the great dangers of the early men's movement was that it
stopped at that point. Having liberated their rage, some men went home from
retreats in silent seething or open rebellion. A lot of the
rage was against women, or against one particular woman. Sometimes, after a
short outburst, a man stuffed the anger back into the shell and went on with
his life, a little more depressed than before. Sometimes the outburst lasted
long enough to cause great harm, savaging a relationship or ending a
marriage. If some grief
threads started poking through the anger, men were both angry and raw. Many
men struggled along, covering their anger, living with grief, and hanging on
to relationships any way they could. I think the
men's movement has been maturing a bit over the past decade. We've been
discovering that rage and grief are intimately entwined; if we want to
unravel anger, we have to deal with grief. We've discovered we can, with the
right group of men, release the anger and grief and grab handfuls of joy - through
fellowship, play, zaniness. This isn't the touchy-feely stuff of the
seventies, which seems to have tried to weave yet another skein - of
gentleness and softness - over the numbness, the seething anger, and the
grief. Men today are discovering the wisdom of going down into the anger and
grief, fully experiencing it, and finding and releasing joy as a result. Without a
safe place to do this work, the anger and grief would be unbearably painful.
Retreats like the annual Men's Wisdom Council, and other men's retreats,
create a place and a community of men to give the work a sacred context. The
work involves some specific techniques: ritual, music, breathwork, dance,
poetry, discussion. Gingerly at first, and then with increasing boldness, men
unwrap their numbness, and then their anger and grief, exposing deep wounds.
With brothers as witnesses, the work takes on a joyfulness. Wounds, once
hidden in shame, are displayed as healing badges of courage and survival.
There may be tears, but to me they've always seemed to be tears of intensity,
not despair. It would be
impossible to unwrap everything all the way to joy - or to just the heart and
ultimate union with the divine. Life just doesn't work that way. But I've
seen how much joy can be exposed in the space of a week or a weekend, and how
enduring that joy can be over time. We benefit, of course. So do our families
and colleagues. Our communities, from our home towns to the entire planet,
benefit when, out of joy and confidence, we begin to right some of society's
wrongs. ©Copyright 2002 by Tim Baehr Menletter
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