Men's Work Weekends That Change Your
Life
It's 6:00 am, and I'm sitting in the half-light
with about 75 men, most in their 40's and 50's, and we're chanting.
The group leader, a Merlin look alike named Doug,
intones the ancient Sufi words with the resonance of an oak barrel, and
we follow along. As we relax into the deep, sonorous tones of the
chant, and feel the sound's vibrations hum along the wood slats barely
holding this old cabin together, we forget my self-consciousness and short
winds and croaky voices...something happens. I...the ideas, opinions
and feelings I recognize as me...seem to dissolve, to become one with the
other voices and the cabin and the flickering candlelight.
I look into the faces of the other men. It
seems as though they're experiencing similar feelings. And then,
in the stunning silence that follows the abrupt ending of the chant, with
only our collective breaths moving in and out, making the candle flame
dance, there's just...that. No next step no expectation of more or
better. No insights, or exploration of group dynamics. Just
silence.
Then, incongruently, Doug lets out a satisfied
laugh and, rubbing his hands together, says "Okay, guys, let's do one more
number and get outta Dodge."
As it turned out, the youngest among us, a 26-year
old named Stuart, was celebrating his birthday this day. So with
Doug leading, we all sang Stuart a slow-building, rafter-raising Mormon
Tabernacle Choir rendition of "Happy Birthday."
When it ended, with the same, almost monastic hush,
Stuart's face seemed lit by fire. As he thanked everyone, I was aware
of the 60-ish, bearded man sitting next to me, tears streaming down his
face. In response to my inquiring look, he said, "If a group of older
men had sung like that to me when I was a young man, how different my life
would have been..."
This scene took place at a men's conference I attended
in May, an annual gathering deep in the redwoods of Northern California.
The conference lasted three days, during which time we attended workshops,
hiked, and did group rituals of singing and movement. We also listened
to various guest speakers, notably Robert Johnson (famed for his books
on Jungian books on gender issues,
He and She, etc.) and
John Lee (The Flying Boy, At My Father's Wedding). But these
planned activities had little to do with what was actually going on, had
little connection to the kind of underground river at whose waters we gathered.
As a psychotherapist and writer, I find colleagues
in both fields generally dismissive or cynical about the so-called "men's
movement." I tend to similar feelings, reflected most succinctly
by a woman friend's comment about "the group with the most access to power
in our culture, the white urban male, claiming now to be victims."
However, as many others have pointed out, the image of some dominant, empowered
male striding the earth, getting his every whim and impulse satisfied,
doesn't exactly correspond to the life experience of your average "guy."
Whether men need a movement or not is debatable,
perhaps, but that doesn't invalidate a man's need to communicate feelings
and compare experiences of what it means to be a man, particularly in this
society.
What I'm saying is, I'm suspicious of how suspicious
most people are of the idea of men congregating to explore their lives.
When women meet in this way, the assumed goal is that of empowerment and
solidarity. If men do so, particularly educated urban males, it's
a conspiracy, a further consolidation of patriarchal power.
Traditionally, of course, this has been true.
Male-only clubs, conferences, and "power weekends" continue to cloak the
exchange of important business or technological information under the guise
of male fellowship.
This exclusion of females (and minority males)
has been one of the dominant culture's most open secrets for a hundred
years. (And not just at the Yale Club. A few miles down the
road from where the men's conference was held, the Bohemians, a kind of
right-wing, Fortune 500 version of the Boy Scouts, meets once a year to
swap choice inside information around the old campfire.)
But the core of what's happening in the men's work
I've witnessed has very little to do with power, at least as defined in
our culture. It has to do with something much deeper in the human
psyche. It is certainly much more dangerous to the status quo.
It has to do with authenticity.
I could feel a sense of authenticity within hours
of arriving at the gathering. In the casual comings-together, the
impromptu bull-sessions
dennis@dennispalumbo.com
