BOYS WILL BE BOYS

Today, my body is a jumbled mess of sensations and vibrations. I have the post partum feelings of birthing a novel. I have the stimulation of all the synchronistic encounters I seem to have daily within the magical city limits of Sedona. I have the pure joy of spending time with friends who seem to know my soul and who reveal themselves to me without shame. I have the bottomless well of surprising and transcendent experiences.

Today it all adds up to ecstasy and bliss, and I am of no use to the world, so don’t ask me to look under your hood or to untangle your illusions. Praise God, I am of no use to you today!

And I don’t know where this writing will take me, because I am sitting down with no plan, no preconceptions, and no agenda.

I said I would say something about the men’s group I frequent, so let’s do that. I have mentioned here before that a critical movement in my own spiritual awakening was the experience of what might be called an emotional break which led to an opening. The form that delivered the opportunity for breaking appeared to me as a woman, and that is fully consistent with my past patterns and history with women.

I told my friend and teacher that I had a history of giving too much and giving in too easily to the will of women in my life. She said, “Yes.” So I asked, “Can you see that?”

And like the fragile flower that she is, she delicately replied, “Ray Charles could see that!”

I knew she was being sarcastic, because Ray Charles is . . . dead.

So it is fitting and appropriate that a woman showed me where to break. But when I needed a safe place to land; a place where I could put my opening on display without fear. That was provided by the men in my Sacred Circle, the gratitude circle I attend on Saturday mornings. I had permission to be vulnerable there, because so many of them had opened already and showed their soft underbellies, something men are conditioned to avoid at all cost in our culture.

It bears telling, that the women in the circle were the ones who first showed us the advantages of being open and defenseless. And being men, we quickly co-opted the practice as our own.

So that brings us to the small group of men who have just started meeting on the deck of Mark’s cabin on a jagged bluff overlooking Oak Creek. The 360 degree vistas are of rolling, high-desert tundra, mountains, and endless sky. We grill meat, and tell off-color jokes, and belch and scratch our asses when they itch. I said I wouldn’t tell about all the swearing, or the farting, or about peeing off the side of the deck. So I won’t.

It seems that although we are men who are attempting to embrace our own feminine energy, the adage still holds true, that “boys will be boys.”

We also played flutes and softly beat a drum. We sat quietly and absorbed the blessing of the setting sun, and we watched the stars come out, one by one. We marveled at the brightness of Venus, and discussed the movement of the planets, the stars and the constellations. And I thought, “All these gentle men.”