Beginning tomorrow (Father's Day) I will dedicate 30 consecutive days of my Facebook status updates to questions/meditations for today's man. I have been inspired by my beautiful friend Camilla who, starting on Mother's Day, 2010, dedicated 30 days of her FB status updates to astonishingly profound questions/meditations for the modern woman. I hope I am half as inspiring.
I however, have been inspired by more than my friend. For one thing, I am a man. I am a Black man. I am a gay man. I am an educated man. I am a 50 y.o. man with a plethora of life experiences. I am a man who cries in public...often and without shame. I am a proud man who is not concerned with those who choose to interpret that pride as arrogance or egocentricity or as being misplaced or foolish.
I am a man who loves women, truly loves women which may be easier for me because I am freed from the general desire to objectify women sexually. I also love men---deeply. I do not objectify men sexually either, even though I've made love to many, been sexually attracted to many more and currently make love to only one--who I also do not objectify sexually.
Ten years ago I began composing a manuscript for a book about men. It was inspired by an especially beautiful conversation between a group of men in Tucson, Arizona one cool summer desert evening. We were all and remain very good friends. We all were and remain lovers of men, though I am the only man from this group who makes love to men. The conversation lasted for many hours. When the time came for us to separate, I received the idea for the book. I have seriously and lovingly worked on the book ever since. That was 2000. I do not know if the book will ever be published. That no longer matters to me. Whether it is ever published or not, it will stand as one of my clearest ways of understanding the immense diversity among men and my commitment to telling some of those diverse stories in words, gestures, actions or in divine silence.
Working on the book all these years has cemented my intense love for men. It has also given me a much sharper critical eye where men are concerned. It has created what I am certain will be a lifelong commitment to understanding The Sacred Masculine and its relationship to its inseparable partner, The Sacred Feminine.
And so this project I am embarking on for the next 30 days becomes the latest way in which I make manifest that commitment to understanding. I engage in this project with love, respect and presence. I do plan to ask some very pointed questions along with the giving of credit to men in some ways we are not often given credit. I intend to provoke thought. I intend to bring about some deep questioning. I hope some gaps will be bridged. And I hope some of those bridges will become well traveled.
Om Shanti Shalom,
sage mahosadha
© Raven/Sage Mahosadha
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