Spirituality for Men

Spirituality for Men

Richard Rohr OFM
Our religious institutions are not giving very many men access to credible encounters with the holy or even with their own wholeness. We largely give men mandates, signposts, scaffolding and appealing images that tend to create religious identity and boundaries, but from the outside….
True spirituality is not taught, it’s caught. Once our sails have been unfurled to the Spirit, henceforth our motivation for the journey toward holiness and wholeness is immense gratitude….
You can unlock spiritual things only from within…. Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment instead. It is such a willingness to live with bewilderment that characterizes the true wise man.
All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain…. Our wounds are the only thing humbling enough to break our attachment to our false self….
If we know our original blessing, we can easily handle our original sin. If we rest in a previous dignity, we can bear insults effortlessly. If you really know your name is on some eternal list, you can let go of the irritations on the small lists of time. Ultimate security allows you to suffer small insecurity without tremendous effort. If you are tethered at some center point, it is amazing how far out you can fly and not get lost….
It is hard to hear God, but it is even harder not to hear God. The pain one brings upon oneself by living outside of evident reality is a greater and longer-lasting pain than the brief pain of facing it head on….
The way to transmute the pain of life is to reveal the wounded side of things, evil, even, and then place the wound inside of sacred space. The Bible is about naming, facing, and then forgiving the wounds of history….
Jesus was trying to present the value of a life of vulnerability in which one would have practical and needed experience of the same. It would be a life without baggage, so one would learn to accept others and their culture….
You know after any truly initiating experience that you are part of a much bigger whole. Life is not about you henceforward, but you are about life….
Jesus was trying to present value of a life of vulnerability in which one would have practical and needed experience of the same. It would be a life without baggage, so one would learn to accept others and their culture instead of always carrying along our own country’s assumptions and calling them the Gospel.

From Adam’s Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation (2004)