Pope Benedict XVI may not look favorably upon Matthew Fox, but Fox, the prolific and profound spiritual writer doesn’t need him in his corner when he can take solace in the works and words of the great theologian St. Thomas Aquinas. Apt for this former Dominican to have the 12th century philosopher mystic, also a Dominican priest, be his distant mentor as Fox pursues a path to awaken the “sacred masculine” in men.
I talked with Fox about his most recent book (he has written twenty-eight), The Hidden Spirituality of Man: Ten Metaphors To Awaken the Sacred Masculine. Fox believes that men’s spirituality is a best kept secret of our culture—hidden sometimes even from men themselves.
However, he considers that there are hopeful signs. Fox recently met a man attending a workshop he was presenting on the theme of his book. This participant related that in his prison work he discovered that the inmates responded to Fox’s work in remarkable ways: telling Fox that his writing about men’s spirituality opened the prisoners to their “own nobility.”
And that is precisely Fox’s intent: that men come to connect to their own greatness, not in a narcissistic grandiosity, but by trusting their own creativity and their own spiritual path.
In our discussion, Fox commented on all the publicity given Michael Jackson and his death. He observed that people give away their own greatness: Fox noted how people project onto celebrities their selfhood, and, in doing so, fly away from their own “nobility,” dismissing their own worth. And Fox berated the media, especially TV, for promoting the celebrity fixation, and then the danger becomes “turning life into a series of celebrity chases.”
(Of course, the reverse of this is true also, we project our shadowy, not so likable parts of ourselves on others also and take comfort in their fall from the pedestal of grace as well.)
Fox urges men to come back to their greatness and their vulnerabilities in order to return to the spirituality that is rightfully theirs. However, men’s return to their honest spirituality is not so much about the life beyond, but about living in harmony with the earth. Fox considers that men need to reconnect with nature, not in having mastery or dominion over nature, but in learning what the Earth needs to teach everyone. And this return to connection with nature will heal the aggression and shame that has plagued humankind for thousands of years. “Shame,” says Fox, “is about not belonging and feeling excluded … people don’t feel at home.”
The next step in the shame cycle then becomes hostility. Fox calls upon men to change their relationship to the earth in order to transform the shame cycle that devolves into hostility and aggression. Fox warns, that is the old wrong-headed path: “We need to deconstruct what we had as our models of masculinity. … all great men, like Gandhi, Martin Luther King … took aggression and violence and redeemed it.” (Hmm—perhaps Fox might consider giving a workshop to the most venomous voices of “meanspeak media?”)
Fox goes on to remind us, “We are not just sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, but of the apes. There is violence in our past.” Fox’s counsel is that we need to face our shadow and our wounds of the past. Calling upon stories from the great Sufi poet, Hafiz, Fox reminds us how the pearl is created. The pearl begins as an imperfection in the oyster, and becomes transformed to a gem. So too, a man’s imperfection can become transformed. The ocean works on the imperfections of the oyster to create the pearl. Likewise the Spirit works within a man when he allows himself the solitude to uncover his own creativity, his heart’s pearl.
However, Fox notes, the spiritual warrior encounters forces that want to destroy the pearl of the heart. That is, without acknowledging the wounds of the past, both individually and collectively, men cannot connect with their creativity and their spirituality, their own deep wisdom.
I consider how many veterans (not just of our present warfronts, but also of past wars) suffer this deep woundedness. Fox acknowledges the need for grief work and for rituals to express and to contain feelings that arise. All people, but perhaps men especially, carry within a well of grief. Fox contends that our culture seems bereft of rituals that carry us through this grief—men more so.
Again, I am reminded of how a mother’s grief for the death of her soldier son is, at least, honored. The father is often left on the sidelines, disenfranchised in his sorrow.
With Fox’s work, we see that men must share in the creativity of care. As Fox says, there are hopeful signs with the coming generations. As men and women become partners in parenting, shedding cultural myths of dominance and submission, they may also become partners in a greater spiritual awareness as well.
Matthew Fox’s book, The Hidden Spirituality of Man: Ten Metaphors To Awaken the Sacred Masculine, gives spiritual direction, not only to men who want to heal their soul wounds, but also to women as well—women who want to understand their spouses, their sons, their fathers. We are all in this together. May we all come to hope for a future without shame and aggression in which we find interconnection with the cosmos—a universe in which all is sacred: “On earth, as it is in heaven.”
Matthew Fox outlines ten Archetypes of Authentic Masculinity and lists exercises for developing each.
Father sky:
The Cosmos lives!
Where is cosmology in your life? When did you last gaze at a starry night?
The Green man.
How are you caring about the earth? In the little individual things such as how you eat, what you recycle. In the larger picture of policy and politics.
Icarus and Daedalus.
How does the father-son dynamic play out in your life? How have you soared with your wings? What are your stories of crashing?
Hunter-Gatherers.
How can you be healthier with your anger?
Spiritual Warriors.
What is your inner work that calls for courage? Can you see prophets such as Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, as warriors?
Masculine Sexuality.
How are you integrating spirituality with sexuality? Sexuality as a mystical experience?
Cosmic and Animal Bodies.
How are you honoring your physical body? What is your self-care?
The Blue Man.
What are you doing to bring your innate creativity into being? How is your creativity connected to your compassion?
Earth Father: Fatherly Heart.
How are you manifesting the qualities of a fatherly heart? The qualities of: caring, generous receptive encouraging playful, affectionate forward thinking magnanimous protecting instructing.
Grandfather Sky: Grandfather Heart.
What shall be your legacy? How are you facing death and its meaning? Where do you need to ask forgiveness or to give thanks?
