No Man's Land

Modern men rest in a No Man's Land between Killer and Doormat.

The little girl in our mind is scared of ALL other men. And of our Selves as man. So we do strange things. We hang out mainly with women (other "girls"), who we feel safe with. And we constantly look for approval. From women as mothers. And from men as forefathers. We avoid male friendships. And when we do hang out with men, it is with hesitation and skittish wondering. A deer amidst the Lions. We are constantly wondering if we will be eaten.

And this disconnection comes at a very significant cost. We don't ever actually connect with other men or our selves. Our source. The thread that ties us to our ancient roots is shredded. We thrash and fight with our wives, and our kids. We fall into Great Depression in this chasm. We need desperately to repair the thread. To weave it back together with other men.

We need to marry off our little girls. Let them go. And find ourselves again. Deeply rooted in honour and power. We need to get together with other men in rituals that connect us with who we are. That ground us. And in this weaving, the women and men in our lives will find themselves. It is in grounding with the Earth that this power can be re-stored. Without apology.

The Men's Room

Little girls learn at a very young age that men are not to be trusted. Don't talk to strangers. Especially men. Be very careful. Avoid them. Above all, do not Trust them. They are perpetrators. And then when  little girls come of age, they are expected to leave their home and marry a man. Now that you've spent your entire life learning to fear men, now go out and find one to spend the rest of your life with.

That's got to mess girls up. Don't. Don't. Don't. And then Do. I do.

And it's got to mess men up as well. We learn we are not to be trusted. We learn we are Rapists. Killers. To be feared. Avoided. And so we do one of two things. We step into that role as Dominator. And inhabit it in all its terror. Turning our homes into battle fields. Fighting ruthlessly with our wives. OR we become Not Killer. We become little girls.

We do everything we possibly can to avoid the killer label. We walk on eggshells around anything to do with Men. We become super nice, accommodating, pleasing, apologizing. We say Sorry for everything. For inhabiting this man body. We live in constant apology. Sorry for this Penis and for all the Penises before me.

Tapping the Axe

We define who we are by the things outside us. We attach our sense of self to these things. And we form our whole personality around this perception of self. Our mind is so brilliant and clever and cunning. And it is Self-interested. It is interested in surviving itself as Mind. So much that it collapses "us" into it. So that we think we Are our thoughts. We see the world as if we Are our Mind. And it feeds off of this collapse.

"Sin" from the original Greek, actually means "missing the mark", like a Marksman missing his target.

We can only guess that the Thing Jesus got has something to do with this distinction. That we are Not our mind. That the possibility of who we Are and who we can become is so profoundly more vast and interconnected then the ridiculously small and insignificant keyhole that the Mind views the world through. We have missed the Mark.

And then our job becomes tapping the axe that cuts the kindling of this split. And it is a Practice. Chopping. Feet apart. Bent legs. How we hold the axe. One hand firm on the base. The other sliding down as the axe descends. Using our whole body. Splitting the wood. Aware of the persona that is our Mind who we think is Us. And that there is something else. A space in which we find ourselves, everyone and everything else. A space in which we create who we are. From Nothing. That is Freedom. That is waking up. Being Alive. And that thing, that gap, the awareness of that wedge, and the possibility within it, will change the world.

Broken Telephone

I just got Jesus.

Standing in the shower, the spray of the water washing over me.

And in that moment, I got all of spirit. All of spirituality. A space opened up, and I could see it. Like an atom bomb. Mushroom cloud. Exploding out and in. Connecting.

With Buddha. Muhammad. Krishna. All of it. And all of them. And us.

My whole life, I have seen Jesus, either with disdain and doubt, or with wonder and curiosity. I've gradually shifted from seeing Jesus as foreign alien, to a "cool guy" with a following, like a Universal Entourage. What is it about this man that has galvanized so many people in so many different directions for so long? Whose message was so confronting that he was killed, deleted, removed. And was so powerful that almost the entire planet defines Time by his birth. Every time we say the year, it is in reference to him. That's got some mojo. And he must have really pissed some people off. What was so confronting? What was so threatening? It must have had some weight to it. Some significance. Some Truth about us as humans.

But what was it? What was the essence of his discovery? All we have now is the interpretations, the many views of this thing he opened up. This thing. What is it? And how do we re-discover it given all we have are signposts, shadows, remnants? Filtered first through the humans around him, who shared his message. Wrote it down. Told stories. "Hey, there's this thing!" This cool guy discovered this thing. THE thing about us as humans and our connection with the Universe. Shout it out. You gotta tell people. It will liberate you. Free you. And yet Jesus' thing has suffered the fate of all messages following the path of human whispering. He has been lost in a kind of cosmic broken telephone. You know how distorted one message gets when passed through 10 kids in a kindergarten classroom. Imagine billions of people over 2000 years. It's distorted. We can guarantee that.

Wireless Wires

Rowan: Dad, how does your phone know where we're going?

Me: Great question! I don't really know.

Rowan: Like how does it know? Really know?

Me: Yes. I think it has to do with satellites.

Rowan: What's that?

Me: No, it's like energy waves from these towers.

Rowan: How about this... what if it's like these wires that come from the place that we're going, and they come all the way over (moves arms in an arcing motion), and then they go right into your phone.

Me: OK.

Rowan: And then the phone just follows the wires.

Me: Yes, I think that's it.

Rowan: And then we get there!

Me: Yes, indeed.

The Crash Position

There is a moment when a plane lands on the tarmac. The wheels touch down. And there is a collective breath out. Sometimes even a full round of applause. Like we have survived. To live another day. To continue. And in this moment, there is a letting go, a release, like we made it. The woman beside me loosens her grip on the pillow she has held tight the entire flight. And relaxes. As if holding on is a way to get control. And letting go is a way to go back to sleep. There are only two options. Hold on for dear life or put my head on the pillow and wait.

Living in the crash position.

Just in case something happens. Really? Do we really think the crash position is going to save us? If the plane starts to shake, to fly through turbulence, holding tighter is going to help get us through it? Like the tighter we hold, the more we can reach through the bowels of the plane to that steering wheel, and get it under control, calm the turbulence, change the wind patterns. And if the plane does go down, holding on, and putting our heads between our legs is going to help us survive? Really?

We're just going to miss the ride.

What if we were to release the grip? Uncurl our fingers from the iron-clad lock on the things around us. The things we cannot control. Ever. What if we were to embrace the journey? Breathe. And look out the window. And take it all in. The shadowed clouds stacked like mountains. The patchwork of farmer's fields stitched together by a collective of quilting elders. What if we were to remove the pillow and wake up? What might happen?

We can only let go to find out.