Men As Learners
and Elders (M.A.L.Es)
a program offered by
the Center for Action
and Contemplation
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Men As Learners
and Elders (M.A.L.Es)
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By
Richard Rohr, OFM
Printer
friendly 3 page PDF file In the open mindedness
of not knowing enough about anything. … How quietly, and not
with any assignment from us, or even a small Mary
Oliver, “Luna” There is one strong form of
Biblical prayer that has been almost completely overlooked by the Christian
tradition, maybe because it feels more like pre-prayer than what we
usually think of as prayer at all. Let’s
call it lamentation or grief work, and it is almost perfectly described in the
Mary Oliver epigraph above. Lamentation prayer is when
we sit and speak out to God and one another—without even knowing what to pray
for—stunned, sad, and silenced by the tragedy and absurdity of human events.
It might actually be the most honest form of prayer.
It takes great trust and patience to remain in this state, so I think it
is actually profound prayer, but most of us have not been told that we could, or
even should, “complain” to God. The
Jews were very good at it. I
suspect we must complain like Job, Judith, and Jeremiah or we do not even
know what to pray for—or how to pray. Or
we do not suffer the necessary pain of this world, the necessary sadness of
being human. Walter Brueggemann, my
favorite Scripture teacher, points out that about one third of the Psalms are
psalms of “lament,” but they have been the least used by Catholic and
Protestant liturgies. We think,
perhaps, they express sinful anger or negativity, when grief and loss are
actually something quite different. We
think they make us appear weak, helpless, and vulnerable, and most of us don’t
want to go there. We think, perhaps, they show a lack of faith, whereas they are
probably the summit of faith. So we quickly resort to praise and thanksgiving,
even when it is often dishonest emotion. We
forget that Jesus called weeping a “blessed” state (Matthew 5:5).
We forget that only one book of the Bible is named after an emotion:
Jeremiah’s book of “Lamentation.” Until I did my research for
Adam’s
Return, the book on male initiation, I did not realize that grief
work was a key element in many, if not most, male initiation rites.
“A young man who could not cry was a savage,” incapable of empathy
and solidarity with the larger world. If he did not learn sympathy early in
life, he would be damaged goods by the end of life, incapable of smiling—
because “an old man who cannot laugh is a fool.” A man incapable of tears
would be a toxic member of any social unit.
How different from our modern world which considers weeping in males to
be weakness. One of the central rites in
our Men’s Rites of Passage is a grief ritual that very often is the central
event that moves men into liminal space and a readiness for transformation.
Robert Bly insists that grief work is the privileged and powerful
entrance way for most men—out of their controlling heads and finally into
their bodies and hearts. Remember
Pat Conroy’s book and movie “Prince of Tides”? Until the tidal wave of
loss is felt and suffered by most men (and women), they quite simply do not
understand the reality of the spiritual world or their own inner world. I remember my own unsettled
and shapeless state after the death of both of my parents. I felt I was living
in a different world for some months. Everything looked and felt very, very
strange. I felt emotionally askew
for a long time, and I was ready for almost anything to fall apart and
disappoint me. It did not make me
angry or isolated, as much as humble, open, ready for help, so appreciative of
the kindness of strangers and friends. Very
small things actually delighted me, although I was afraid to smile or really
enjoy them. I lived in a “holy tentativeness,” which made the listening and
learning curve very high during that time. It was the same after I received my
own temporary death sentence from malignant melanoma in 1991.
My ego structures were very permeable, very open to both deep darkness
and lovely light. The entire Afterword to the
book Quest for the Grail was written in the weeks following my
Mother’s death in early January of 1994.
There I had to resort to haiku and poetry, but even my prose became more
poetic. It was all coming from a
much deeper and truer place. It was
the gleaming and generous state called lamentation, even though it did not feel
very “gleaming” at the time: “Her
dying, crooked body taught me sacrament, “Back
in the air, I hope in the year ahead to
write a small booklet on this subject, offering perhaps what I think could be a
very new and needed liturgical style. A
prayer form for people longing for peace and justice in church and country, but
without any need to blame, accuse, or give answers. We need a liturgical setting that could be lay led, circular,
and without closure, or even final “blessing.”
It will take practice, but then we can be sent back into our world honest
and shared, emotionally cleansed, heartfelt and soulful, out of our controlling
heads, and ready for guidance, and not even needing to know the shape or
the when of resurrection. Again I resort to always-with-the-right-word, Mary
Oliver, and this time from her poem, “At Black River”: “Then
I remember, death comes before the rolling away of the stone” I think perhaps we have
rolled away the stone too quickly—with our happy alleluias and
too easy appreciations—as a result we are neither softened nor
solidified by all of our losses. Our pain, sadness, and tragedies are not teaching us but only
deafening us and blinding us. And
they are our greatest teachers, even though we are never quite sure what it is
that they have taught us. We only
know we are larger, deeper, and ready to live without the stone. Return to: Return to: |
Last modified: May 17, 2008 |