#83, Men, agents of and pathway to cultural metanoia (neither sheep nor goats)

In This Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis writes, “In relation to God, we are all female.” (quoted by Scott Peck, People of the Lie, p. 12) On the same page, Peck writes these words: “ is not neuter. He is exploding with life and love--even sexuality of a sort….Certainly I consider God androgynous.”

In many Christian churches, as recently as last Sunday (digitally) sermons about “sheep” and “goats” are delivered, with the underlying, implicit and deceptive dualism that ‘those who believe and follow Jesus Christ are ‘sheep’ while those who fail in that undertaking are deemed “goats”. Stereotypically, as documented on many websites including travelChinaguide, sheep are “meek, usually very quiet and gentle, holding themselves aloof from the world. In a herd, all the sheep tend tpo listen to their leaders and show esteem to them. Because of the obedient character, sheep are among the most popular animals beloved by mankind.”

Goats, on the other hand, as outlined by Susan Schoenian, a sheep and goat specialist at the University of Maryland on the website, Sheep 101, “goats have 60 chromosomes, sheep has 54 (humans 46);…goats are independent and naturally curious; sheep prefer to flock together and are more aloof…most goats have horns…mountain goats can jump 12 feet in a single bound, according to National Geographic…in bright light, the pupil in a goat’s eye is rectangular rather than round.

In the parable of the sheep and the goats, in Matthew 25: 31-46, “Jesus uses the example of a shepherds who separates his sheep from his goats in order to help his followers understand what judgement will be like. Jesus explains that people will be separated into two groups: those who have lived good lives and believed in God will be put on one side and have a place in Heaven; those who have rejected the belief in God and sinned in the their lives will be placed on the other side and will go to Hell. (BBC)

In Luke, another reference to the lost sheep, being found this time by Jesus, refers to sheep as sinner, depicting God’s desire to find sinners and bring them back into the fold.

It is more than a little tricky and potentially deceptive to hold fast to a single stereotypical image of sheep and/or goats, as a relevant theological exegesis. Literalism, reductionism, the absence of ambiguity, and simplistic menu’s that offer and promise salvation are worthy neither of a homilist nor of a deity worthy of the name. The risk is in the absolutism, the certainty, the absence of context, nuance, complexity and necessary reflection that engenders the spiritual path one dof life’s most challenging and potentially rewarding, as well as most mis-apprehended paths.

In a first-year seminary class in Field Education in 1988, one adult student uttered, pontifically, “We all know that Hitler will not be to Heaven.” Naturally, the room of some incipient clergy, a dozen fundamentalist biblical literalists, and half a dozen ‘liberal’ non-literal, searchers seemed to erupt in tension. The first group loudly concurred with the pronouncement; the latter group denounced it. As one of the latter group, today, I am deeply concerned with a faith that hangs on a literal reading of scripture, and then is propagated in pulpits among “Christians” across North America, as the absolute, sacred and incontestable truth.

In his 1983 best-seller, People of the Lie, Scott Peck, a Christian psychiatrist details many biographic narratives, including one of his own. In his search for those responsible for the My Lai massacre in Viet Nam, through the corridors and offices of the Pentagon, Peck could find no one who took responsibility. Legendary, too, are the reports that the American people were lied to about the actual facts on the ground in that war, as a political refuge to protect the administration against protesters, who resisted the conflict, and eventually prevailed in its terminaltiy, along with the withdrawal of then President Lyndon Johnson from the forthcoming presidential election in 1968.

In his book, Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind, David Livingston Smith, philosopher and evolutionary psychologist elucidates the essential role that deception and self-deception have played in human-and animal-evolution and shows that the very structure of our minds has been shaped from our earliest beginnings by the need to deceive. Smith shows us that by examining the stories we tell, the falsehoods we weave, and the unconscious signals we send out, we can learn much about ourselves and how our minds work. (from Goodreads.com) In a comment on the text, “Athena” writes these insightful observations:

As stated by Dr. David Livingston Smith, PH.D, ‘while it I strue children are taught not to lie, they are actually more frequently8 taught how to lie in a socially acceptable manner,’ Every time you receive a gift, you must put on a Duchenne Smile and pretend you are grateful, no matter whether you like it or not. Every time an event upsetting to adults occurs, you are taught not to laugh or grin foolishly. We were taught to hide our emotions and show only what ‘should be shown’ to others. Why? To make a good impression. To make friends. To impress teachers and employers. To form connections. To exploit society. To increase the change of having a ‘successful life’. Lying is biological. It gives one an upper hand in society.” (from Goodreads.com)

There is no inference here that those homilists who preached about sheep and goats were dissembling, deceiving or even necessarily distorting, merely simplifying, eliminating the complexities, the counter-thoughts and the rigorous theological exegetical work which those (virtual) congregants were hungry. Those people in the offices of the Pentagon, too, were refusing to take responsibility, leaning firmly and confidently on the notion that a ‘committee’ is as close as anyone will ever come to finding the author of that historic massacre.

Searching for truth, unwrapping the veil of self-deception each of us has in our perceptions, as well as the ensuing assessments evaluations, judgements and the new insights that poke their green stems through the earth of our previous conscious awareness, while itself exhausting and potentially psychically crippling, also affords the authentic psychic archeologists and anthropologists of our biographies new and ultimately freeing notions of what really happened and what those happenings mean as formational of one’s identity.

There is a new NBC series entitled Council of Dads, in its infancy, in which a dying man creates a ‘council of dads’ who will be there for the family if anything should happen to him. One ‘daughter,’ an aspiring writer searches for the real story about her past life, including an ‘adoption’ and ‘re-think’ and then somewhat heroic parenting by her now sober father. Her part in his sobriety is life-giving, surprising and her discovery hangs over the now-deceased father’s closest friends, prior to disclosure, as worrisome. Dancing around the full story, once again, is indicative of our social conditioning, while “breaking through” is considered a relief, even if its full apprehension may at first be challenging.

Thematically, the hidden and protective shield all of us, men and women, put on our traumas, our alcoholic ‘uncles’ and our unmarried aunts, as well as our ancestors’ most dark nights of their souls, robs us of the rich legacy in which we have all been nurtured. None of us has an ancestral narrative free of pain, conflict, danger, sickness, disease, faulty judgements, or even aberrant and shameful moments. Keeping the vault of those events locked in the attic of our memory, or some photo album, or some official and buried documents, diaries, tombstones, and classmates’ accounts robs both those imperfect and even despicable people of their full disclosure.

Mya Angelou on being interviewed on npr (March 27, 2013), says this about her early life:

At one time in my life, from the time I was 7 until about 13, I didn’t speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn’t speak, I had been molested and I told the name of the molester to my brother who told my family. The man was put in jail for one day and night, and released. And about three days later, the police came over to my mother’s house and told her that the man had been found dead, and it seemed he had been kicked to death. They made that pronouncement in my earshot, and I thought my voice killed the man. And so it’s better not to speak. So for six years I didn’t speak.”

The words are so graphic, so tragic and so poignant that no one on hearing/reading them can help but be moved. Her book, Mom & ME & Mom, details her tortured and redemptive relationship with the mother who sent her away at three to live with her grandmother, then took her back and only decades later did the two women evolve a relationship based on profound intimate and difficult personal disclosure.

Each of us, both men and women, have turbulent troubling stories in our family history whose entanglements have both ensnared and confounded us for years, while continuing to confront us with questions about the why of another, the what meaning can be attributed to, the light that continues to lie in the darkness of unknowing. And one of the significant questions of a life fully lives is whether the environment in which we dwell is supportive of our ‘dig’ into our own family’s fossils.

If the truth, however, of the public square, is considered so destructive of the stability of that square, and the people occupying offices and positions that are dedicated to the institution’s integrity and authenticity that it must remain hidden, and then wrapped in the ideological ‘gift-wrap’ of a particular administration, in order to guild the lily of that administration, then the truth-telling of the ordinary folk also unpalatable. The model of dissembling, reduction, deception and covering up has overtaken the public discourse.

Just this morning, the Attorney General of the United States, in defending the historic implications of the Justice Department’s withdrawal of charges against Michael Flynn, for National Security Chief to trump, for lying to the FBI, made this statement:

“Well, history is written by the winners!”

And therein lies the cultural, governmental, and now legal justification for any and all decisions of the current administration. And who are the winners: the men who occupy the seats of power in the U.S. administration, and the sycophants and acolytes who uphold the men and the public utterances of those men, while the world watches fully cognizant of the back story that reads just as tragically as the biography of the little girl we know as Mya Angelou.

There is a difference between a literal death of a man and the literal interpretation of a poetic parable. And that difference can help us to discern the complex realities of the events in our lives and the metaphoric, mythical and interpretative readings of those incidents which provide the contextual, psychic and rhythmic melodies, including their overtones, that elevate each of us from a stick-drawing or a cardboard cut-out to a living, breathing, thinking, feeling, sensing and pulsating human spirit, that cannot be contained in a literal reading of any holy book.

While our diaries, journals and letters hold some of our secrets, they are a garden of flowers, fruits, and even weeds seeking discovery. And, in this springtime of our pandemic, when time seems to hang barely above the freezing mark, when hundreds of thousands of humans have perished, and their families have been left without the gifts of the story-telling that remained locked behind the closed doors of polite behaviour, smooth and comforting words, constrained smiles, and tightly clenched lips and fists, this weekend, Mother’s Day offers yet another opportunity to have the conversations we have dreaded for decades.

Who knows what new chapters will be written, based on stories previously secured in memories so shamed and fearful that their complexity precluded release?

And, while women are more comfortable than men with the details of their lives, men too are not without the psychic muscle, discipline and emotional maturity to being their own walk into the beach of their previously resisted lake, river, or ocean of being.

#82 Men, agents of and pathway to cultural metanoia (Too Tall Poppies and other disposables)

Let’s take a look at some of the ways/situations/encounters/exchanges in/by which men sabotage other men! We have spent considerable time looking at how individual men self-sabotage. Yet perhaps the depth and persistence of conflict/competition and the underlying psychic “soil” from which these situations grow and develop, while not open to excavation, or certainly elimination from the hard wiring, warrants a deeper and more exhaustive look.

Men sabotage other men directly and indirectly, in different ways.

On the “direct” front, a rather recent model, originating from Australia, has been termed the “Too Tall Poppy Syndrome.” Premised on the concept that all poppies (workers) should grow to the same height, this syndrome finds anyone who is working above and beyond the minimum/modest/moderate level in an employment situation, is attacked, in what many would argue is an blatant attempt to “bring him/her down” to the level of the ordinary workers’ performance. We have all witnessed this dynamic under a variety of rationales, some example of which include:

·        He/She is just sucking up to the boss by demonstrating excessive energy and ambition and creativity

·        He/She is working to impress for a superlative reference in the process of seeking that promotion

·        He/She is what in some contemporary North American workplace cultures just being another of those FNG’s (----ing New Guys) who is, like that new broom trying inordinately hard to make a first impression

·        He/She is demonstrating a new operating procedure taught to all new recruits, that just ridicules the way we have been doing things for centuries (even if the new methods are designed to protect workers from injury)

·        He/She thinks she knows everything and wants to show everyone around here up

·        He/She came here from the big city where they all think they know it all, and wants to ‘convert’ everyone to their sophisticated level

·        He/She is a grad of “X” school where they all believe they own the world, and the boss likely believes his/her ‘brand’ will improve the prospects for investor participation

·        He/She is from country “x” or “y” known as (here fill in the most superficial, reductionistic stereotype of that country) and we all know how they operate

·        He/She just arrived in this country, and needs to spend a few years proving him/herself, before attempting to exert any influence, even if that influence sis healthy for the enterprise

·        He/She comes with a high recommendation from a personal friend of the boss, and that is enough to delay, block, preclude his/her successful entry here

Debilitating and undermining activity is costing billions both in lost revenue and lost opportunity to cut costs not to mention the wounds such activity inflicts on the psyches/emotions/aspirations/confidence and potential loyalty of the target worker. And the only “reward” is the personal “self-aggrandizement” of the perpetrator, and that in itself is another of the faux-rewards many seem ready willing and able to fall for. The polar alternative, of gushing supportive and potentially condescending words over a co-worker is, equally, despicable. As in so many other facets of public discourse, there has been a growing trend of binary options as the only two available for the average person.

The poverty, not only of generosity and objective mentoring, but of the plenitude of approaches from one worker to a colleague, comes from a dry desert of expectations about how we are expected to treat each other in our  workplaces, and even in our homes. Is it our imaginations that have been starved of examples of empathy, help and support? Or are we so insecure, generally, that, in order to strengthen our sense of ourselves, we have to bring another down. Are we frightened of being “ostracized” by co-workers if we befriend a new worker, or especially a worker from a different ethnicity, culture, language or faith? Are we needing to ‘fit in’ with those workers currently working alongside us that what is a new person, idea, suggestion, process, strategy, tactic, especially if it comes from one of those “tall poppies,” that we easily and glibly and predictably dismiss, disdain, undermine, sabotage both the person and the idea?

There is a perhaps infrequently paradox in the act of saying “No” (in any of the millions of ways and circumstances we say it out loud or silently). When we say  “No” to another, we are in truth, also saying “No” to ourselves. That paradox may not be easy to digest, to assimilate and to accept.

Nevertheless, think about it! We see something, hear something, learn something that strikes us as “irritating” or off-putting, insulting, demeaning, presuming, assuming and often based entirely on a rumour which is, itself, based on another bit of gossip. And when that ‘something’ has a name and a face to which it can be easily attached, then that person, in our cast of acceptable characters, drops a peg or two, perhaps even consciously or unconsciously we push that person off the dock of our “associates” list. And in the course of our own process of alienating the other, we, in fact, eliminate ourselves from the potential to heal the rift, shed light on the partial, and potentially damaging “something” and ‘move forward’ as the counsellors keep telling us we all need to do.

This is not to argue that men, more than women, are demonstrating what a Russian professor of Comparative Education, at the University of Ottawa, ridiculed as the Russian method of solving problems: eliminate it. It is to concur with that wise and unforgettable professor (Dr. Ramunas) that elimination is a highly preferred method of considering, assessing and disposing of a problem, especially a personnel problem. After all, in a masculine mind set, the “task” take precedence over the “person” and the “person” is more susceptible to judgement than any of the other “resources” in any plan, given that a person is both likely to “screw up” (given our own experience of screwing up and projecting that potential onto all others), is right in our face and is potentially unlikely to change whatever it is/was that set us off in the first place.

Human nature, that most complex, mysterious, fascinating and perplexing of creatures, is both the most significant and the most costly resource in the corporate/organizational/social/political panel of instruments/influences. And, the cost of ensuring the predictable, dependable, profitable performance of the process (no matter the theatre), through human labour is considered the “highest” and most easily disposed cost item in the budget. Every single male (and female) in a position of executive responsibility has weaknesses, vulnerabilities, a past, and a highly polished and perfected sheen on the Mask s/he has created to “pass muster” in the long litany of interviews, drinks, papers, theses, projects, teams and achievements that litter his/her biography.

And each of those leaders has a clear picture of the kind of person s/he has found it both comfortable and smooth to work with, as well as a cast of characters who have been troublesome, conflicted, or as we now euphemistically put it, “high maintenance.” (Men especially use this term to describe a ‘high maintenance spouse” whose intricate eccentricities he will also often admire and smile in recounting.)

“High maintenance” workers, like magnets, attract such descriptives as “hard to manage,” “threatening to power,” or “narcissistic and unmanageable,” and as soon as signs poke through the ashphalt of the CEO/corporate culture’s consciousness, those in the inner circle begin to take note. This worker is not fitting into our culture. S/He is not learning how we do things here. This worker is one we will have to watch carefully, and potentially find a way to usher him/her out.

Executives have a myriad of creative, if manipulative, road maps for completing the divorce, including such demonic approaches as, “Do you think he will leave if we load his plate so high that he simply cannot accomplish the job?” Another favourite, “S/he seems very friendly with one of our favourite (men or women) and that friendliness is dangerous, if not grounds for beginning a file because we will need evidence when we dismiss.” Perhaps, if neither of these would prove useful, we might find another tact: “Things have gone missing in the office/back shop/supply room/ and it seems to happen coincident with the appearance of this person in that area; we need to take note!”

Oh, I can hear the cries of “Why are you so contemptuous of quality control? After all, all businesses, corporations, and organizations depend on a smooth running of the operation, as designed by the originators, and our history has always honoured both their persons and their ingenuity. We have found that we function more effectively (and more profitably) with those who conform to our expectations, without acting like a burr in our shoe. And when we find those counter-productive and counter-intuitive to our culture, we simply have to eliminate them.

This will not suffice as an academic treatise on workplace tensions. It is, rather, based on a litany of experiences, both personal, and reported, from a rather extensive working life, spanning seven decades, and literally dozens of supervisors. From a grocery clerk, to civil servant, to salesman, to beer store clerk, to teacher, coach, vice-principal, assistant department head, student, intern, chaplain in training, counsellor trainee, entrepreneur, clergy, mailman, and project manager, many male and female co-workers and supervisors have crossed paths.

And, if there is a single observation about people in positions of power and responsibility, from my experience, that merits reflection, it is that most, if not all, are highly attuned to their “polling” (whether formal or more importantly informal). If individuals who seem to ‘count’ among the working staff, take issue with the executive, that is a warning sign. If workers who are known to be both diligent and committed take exception to decisions of the “top,” that too is a signal of warning. If a new idea is proposed, depending on the proposer’s reputation (and not on the merit of the proposal) the idea is either investigated or dropped like a nuclear device.

Preserving one’s position/power/legacy/reputation, by the chief executive, is the primary objective of those in power. (Of course, it will be argued that if that edifice begins to crumble, there will be inevitable damage to the institution!) Nevertheless, the status, income, power and impunity with which most Chief executives currently operate is so far removed, and so highly remunerated, as to warrant a severe dart in that balloon. We have become a culture of single-operator tyrants, in a culture in which their circle incestuously and gratuitously genuflects at that altar of executive power. And, once again, males are predominantly responsible for this development, along with the concomitant development of eviscerating worker rights of both safety and compensation.

And the most recent pandemic continues to document for all to see, the almost unbelieveable divide in danger/safety as well as in income/influence. Those our culture/society/economy/ most needs are those most seriously and negatively impacted by COVID-19. Those in power, (with exceptions) too often incarnate contempt for those on whom the health of everyone depends, shown by withholding protective equipment, and/or failing to resource needed ventilators.

It may well be time for the economy to be overturned, with a profound recognition, both in attitude and in corresponding policy and law, that vacuums the inflation from the perks and the investment options, the power and the single-and-unquestioned power and authority of an individual executive. The voices of all of those “tall poppies” who do not precisely “fit” into the corporate culture are needed now more than at anytime in my lifetime.

And this is one space where tall poppies will find embrace, support, welcome and encouragement. They may find opportunities for seizing the ‘whistleblower’ megaphone; they may find opportunities to expose the alcoholism of their chief executives in favour of time out for treatment and no longer a protracted denial and cove-up; they may find voice and alliances for other, especially men, who no longer are willing to be assassinated through rumour, innuendo, or especially political opponents.

 And, just yesterday, the world learned that the strategists of the upcoming campaign of the current occupant of the Oval Office have brashly announced that their prime goal and modus operandi will be to “assassinate” the character of the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden.

Hate speech has long since fallen by the wayside as a determinant of civility. So has truth fallen as a measure of value and integrity. So too has the quality of one’s policy proposals drifted into the floor of the polluted ocean of public opinion, like so much detritus, plastic, and garbage.

We are left with a minimalist, pre-adolescent, immature, indefensible and unsustainable prospect of a presidential campaign unworthy even of the name. And, once again, men are at the forefront of the kind of battle we will be offered.

Other men, (there have to be more than those members of the Lincoln Project, former Republican, non-trumpers) who see the world in ways similar to the perception from the north shore of the St. Lawrence river, just across the bridge from New York State, where the current governor is offering a humane, intelligent, compassionate and also non-eliminating, non-reducing masculine voice to the effort to mitigate the heinous and lethal plague, COVID-19.

Is there more than a ‘mindful’ masculinity in the cultural womb awaiting the appropriate and needed mid-wives and agencies to give it birth? It says here that a healthy masculinity, for which we all work and pray, will come more likely from men telling our stories, than from prescriptions of processes and attitudes and behaviours.

#81 Men, agents of and pathway to cultural metanoia (honouring Liz Plank's advocacy of men)

Liz Plank, author of For the Love of Men: A New Vision for Mindful Mascuinity,  studied gender relations in London where the professors and the classes were comprised primarily of women, with a couple of men seated in the back of the lecture halls. As she considers the current definition of masculinity to be the greatest threat to humankind, she has taken it upon herself to advocate for men around the world.

The current definition of masculinity, she terms as testosterone poisoning depicts a kind of backlash to feminism, and we heartily concur.

    The absence of men at women’s conferences, (“Oh they should show up and shut up!” as she reported hearing that specific quote when attending a woman’s conference and the fact that

    research illustrates men drive much farther than women (because they/we will not ask for directions) and that

    men do not recycle nearly as much as women

    men lose their jobs over the last couple of decades much more frequently than women…

these data points, while true, and useful for conversation and for stimulating interest in a subject that men have been resistant to exploring in any meaningful, thorough, and penetrating manner, are part of a contemporary snap-shot. The use of guns, the politicization of all public issues into zero-sum conflicts, the insouciance about the existential threat of global warming and climate change…these too are relevant to the discussion about contemporary masculinity.

So too are the panoply of scenarios, addressed previously here, that dig and then plant a masculine footprint indelibly into the foundations of western culture, although not necessarily with a malignant or narcissistic motive. Our culture’s appetite for the sociological/political/gender politics menu of current affairs is legion, and it is especially voracious in the United States. In a culture so highly individualized, competitive, addicted to the latest ‘thing’ (fad, star, theory, invention, innovation, song, movie, television drama), what tends often to get lost is the broad and long sweep of history. Occasionally, a public statement will surface which evokes another public statement from a previous public figure, and certainly comparisons are being made to the numbers of deaths that resulted from the Civil War, the Korean and the Iraq/Afghanistan wars with the loss of life resulting from COVID-19.

The span of the last three-quarter of a century, dominated as it is by the rise of feminism and the concomitant turtling of probably the more healthy examples of masculinity along with the insurgency of a toxic and even lethal masculinity, to both genders and to their families coalesce in the emergence of an author/scholar such as Ms Plank. For her eloquent, detailed, empathic and challenging advocacy for a ‘mindful masculinity’ all men are rightly grateful. Men can be ‘faulted’ for many things, one of them being the resistance to talking about ourselves as a group and, unless covered by confidentiality, even about ourselves. There are, fortunately, some men who have resisted this reticence, in a manner similar to our’s.

Also, as previously noted in this space, some of the “work” being conducted to seed, nurture and celebrate health masculinity by men, focuses on a return to a rigid “morality” of promise-keeping while holding to the heroic images of war, athleticism, competitive bread-winning and corporate mergers and take-overs. This masculinity is also at the core of the climate denial, gun-toting, capital punishment advocacy, gay-hatred, racial bigotry, immigrant blocking, populist nationalism energies that have moved from creeping to “power-walking” in many centres around the globe.

Domination of anything or of anyone depends upon a limiting of the boundaries, possibilities, a constriction of the mental images, the imagination and the ‘frightening’ prospect that others, regardless of political ideology, or religious belief, or ethnicity may and even do have ideas as good as and likely even better than those we are propagating. Both left and right, in the political spectrum of North America, share responsibility for the current state of national and geo-politics, the failures to work more collaboratively on many issues that, taken together pose challenges for which many argue current systems and institutions are unprepared to confront.

On the gender issue, it is not only the right (Republicans, nationalists, populists, racial and ethnic white supremacist bigots) who have set the table for the formal and informal study of a process whereby equality and equity of genders might foresee a higher potential for international even global co-operation, in the interests of something as significant as human survival. On the left, too, has been demonstrated such a narrow, perfectionistic, judgemental perspective, including policies, processes, accusations and decisions that have literally ruined lives.

One can see a convergence, for example, of the corporate (masculine-dominated) culture’s definition of human resources as little more than raw materials for the increasingly sophisticated and chemically/synthetically/engineered production machine. Link this lethal mind-set to the notion that men, individuals and even more collectively, abhor seeking and accepting and then acting upon reasonable, supportive and especially corrective counsel from any source, especially from medical professionals. And then, that a mind-set that encompasses the parameters of a bottom line (in any enterprise, revenues, expenditures, profits, losses, and probabilities envisaged on the bases of these rather short-term benchmarks), and it is far too easy to envision a controlling, dominating mind-set of immediate gratification measured by literal, empirical, and most often fiscal numbers.

Those whose functions are considered “costs” are naturally deemed much more expendable than those functions deemed “revenue generators” without even a reasonable appreciation for the need of the latter for the tasks and the performers of the former category.

In processes where “people” are allegedly the “raison d-etre” for the existence of the enterprise, like education, religion and worship, social service agencies, health care and even in the last resort, treatment of individuals who are judged to have committed crimes, in prisons and purported rehabilitation, all of the professional who serve are “costs” in the sense that without their contribution, the agencies would cease to exist. Nevertheless, in America, the corporate, for profit, (cost-based) equation not only operates, it dominates in those organizations. The unhealthy masculinity that prevails among those whose responsibilities include the healthy management of such institutions, based on a cultural perspective that seeks first the ‘trust fund’ development, sustainability and cost-based operating budgets can and will barely bend to include such reasonable supports as employee assistance programs. Workers’ associations, unions, and conditions of employment are considered exclusively as “costs” and rarely as requirements, even though lives have been lost in previous historic fights for labour rights.

Denying pensions, for example, to clergy for the first five years of employment, is a case in point, illustrated by the American Episcopal church, for all of its clergy. Similarly, for allegations, accusations, and negative reports, only the most cursory, superficial and pre-determined and pre-judged investigations are conducted inquiring among only those whose evidence will never unveil the full story. And the dominant and prevailing mind-set is one by men, who themselves, fail to fully explore and then challenge their own masculinity, and confront the kind of feminism that has so dominated the “gender issue” as exemplified in the women’s conferences conducted by women, in the absence of and silence of men.

Growing up in a house in which my mother was inordinately abusive, while my father was (also inordinately, passive and compliant, I have questioned, from a very early age, which “force” or “attitude” or “agency” or “behaviour” was more toxic, dangerous, threatening, and venal. And the question of deconstructing multiple situations involving men and women directly, including male suicides and their attempts, male dismissals often executed by men at the behest of women, male sexual improprieties often decades after abuse at the hands of their female guardians, female manipulations of men especially ensuing from previous hurtful encounters with other men….and the too frequent dismissing of whatever the biographies of both the accusers and the accused as peripheral or worse, irrelevant to the immediate ‘case’ is potentially another of  the misguided, mis-apprehended, mis-evaluated and certainly mid-judged modus operandi, primarily by male decision-makers.

Whether the avoidance of complexities, ambiguities, costs, and the perplexing conundrums of most, if not all, encounters of conflict between men and women, and the responsibility of adjudicating their appropriate and measured and reasonable resolution, fairly, with equanimity and with a full knowledge and grasp of the complexities of human relationship, beyond the most superficial underlies these injustices is a question that requires brains and research more able and resourced than this one. One thing seems clear, however. The penchant for quick, easily-disposed and least costly dispositions prevails and such a model is more likely based on a masculinity that defers from wading into such swamp-like complexities.

The very fact of the social, political and cultural attempt to equate a business/corporate/for-profit model to a school, a church, a hospital or a children’s protective agency is, for this scribe, a non-starter. And yet, such an equation, however ridiculous, and however costly and certainly however ineffectual and wasteful of human beings, their creativity and their spirit, prevails, with the persistently held support of most men and many compliant women.

Would a more healthy and ‘mindful’ (to borrow from Ms Plank’s book) masculinity be more likely to ‘see’ and to consider and even to ‘accept’ the significance of a revisioning of this application of the corporate, for-profit model to their schools, their hospitals, and their social service agencies and perhaps even extend such thinking and modelling to include a vibrant mental health option?

In a more geopolitical perspective, would a more mindful masculinity be willing and able to begin to deconstruct the military behemoth, and the production of its mountainous and light-speed innovations of national security, in order to balance the legitimate needs of clean water, clean air and access to quality education and health care of the people of the planet? Certainly the very opposite is unfolding before our eyes, with examples of  turtling by despots, opportunism in scamming process of purchasing and transporting needed medical equipment, in hoarding of needed supplies, in the imposition of the Defence Production Act to force workers in meat-processing plants to return to unsafe work spaces, to feed the uber-wealthy their filet-mignon.

A similar arrogance abounds among the powerful in many quarters (all of them men) in a seemingly impregnable defiance of smog, coal-fired generating stations, plastic suffocation of oceans and their wildlife and habitats, and the selfish, narcissistic pursuit of nationalistic “greatness” at the expense of ordinary lives and livelihoods. And, again, it is primarily men who stand in the way of urgently needed change, adaptation, collaboration and all of it can only be based on a level of compassion, empathy and even love for self and for other.

Unless and until men come to the place where love is released from the bedroom, the intimate cruise, the intimate and elegant dining room, the dance-floor and the elegant and exclusive designer shops and the infant nurseries, the mid-wives, the “obgyn” doctors and the eternal obsession with the pursuit and success of winning a female mate, then the love of all others, including the love and appreciation of the bounty of the planet will go blind to their eyes, deaf to their ears and dumb to their sensibilities.

It may not be rocket science, deserving of the next Nobel Prize, as will be the eventual winner of the race for a vaccine for COVID-19. However, a return of masculine, as well as already far ahead feminine, values, perceptions, attitudes and beliefs, to the verities that have sustained humanity for hundreds of centuries, that value respect, dignity, honour, and yes, love…is our only hope.

And any attempt to intellectualize, compartmentalize, Balkanize, and then to specialize and elevate the specialists to a sacred point of the social, cultural and political pyramid of value can and will only perpetuate a hierarchical, prejudiced, bigoted, unsustainable and seemingly irreversible division of a few who belong and matter and a growing and overwhelming army of ordinary, and likely displaced billions of people. We are already facing the largest mass movement (for it will not remain static or immovable) of displaced persons in human history. And the root causes of that impending collision between those of us who “have” and those of us who have nothing can and will increasingly be traced, legitimately, back to the root of the inordinate power of unhealthy self-sabotaging masculinity.

And the sooner men join Ms Plank in a collaborative and effectual chorus of change, the better off will all of our grandchildren be!

#80 Men, agents of and pathway to cultural metanoia (debunking gender stereotypes)

What is the difference between how adolescent girls gravitate around a “star” like moths to a porch light at midnight, and how adolescent boys gather around smaller, more tightly knit peer groups like teams, gangs, clubs and hobbies? Is this a simple sign of the relative importance of the “personal” over the “task/challenge/accomplishment,” with the former being more important to young women with the latter more important to young men? Or, is there something more basic even than that superficial guess? Has history portrayed the “heroic” man so profoundly as the “answer to every young woman’s dreams” and then reinforced this meme with images of war heroes, athletic prowess, medical, scientific, legal, engineering and even political metaphoric halos then replicated by the Hollywood backlighting of the forties and fifties? Or, is there something more biological, more psychological, more innate that any non-researched discussion will not and can not disclose?

The Greeks had a word for “fondness of men”: Philandry

They also had a word for “hatred of men”: misandry.

Liz Plank’s nonfiction investigation into masculinity, For the Love of Men, explores an epithet she utters to anyone who will listen, “Over the last decade or so, I’ve liked to tell anyone who will listen that the biggest problem facing America is the scourge of testosterone poisoning. (Amazon review of Liz Plank’s  “For the Love of Men”) This is an obviously feminine-based observation she has followed with research. And her book and work offer counterpoint to the other side of the dynamic: the obsessive “rush” among young women for selected male “stars.”

Rock concerts have, for decades, been magnets for young teen girls and even early adult women. Record sales have traditionally followed such concerts, accompanied by stories of swooning, clutching, screaming, weeping, and fantasizing, none of which warrants derision. It does, however, warrant ‘flagging’ for any young man who might be the target of such adulation as well as for any young man who might fantasize about how to become one of those ‘stars’. Strong men, from military exploits, too, have somehow magnetized the attentions, affections and even the seductions of women for centuries. And when there is any papier-mache exhibition of a fusing of ‘star’ (without evidence of value) with ‘power’ (as is the case with the current occupant of the Oval Office), there is still considerable evidence that some women are susceptible to the lure of such an image (mask, Persona).

It is reasonable to interpret such ‘longings’ by women in the company of what they perceive as masculine “power” (powerful attraction) as projections, the roots of which are the unconscious. It is also reasonable to suggest that many men, if not most, are just as vulnerable to such “attraction” especially if their/our own psyche(s) have been wounded previously. However, such a collision of both female projections and male weakness is no justification for either man or woman to take advantage of the other.

In the current #MeToo, “#Time’sUp, Cavanaugh/BlaseyFord context, the Biden/Read discussions currently occupy much tabloid coverage, not to mention considerable angst among Democratic strategists. Explaining away Read’s attraction to Biden, even if it were true, when she was twenty-three, in 1993, is not adequate either to elevate her story above Biden’s rebuttal or to suggest that she was the victim of her own naivety. Similarly, Biden’s charm as a long-term U.S. Senator in 1993, in whose office Read apparently worked, is insufficient to justify any untoward assignation between them, if any occurred.

The proverbial “he said-she said” oscillation, also, does nothing to prove or disprove whatever allegations have been uttered and/or denied. A historic dig into the Archives may or may not provide empirical evidence to support or refute the allegations. However, what remains absolutely true, is that, once out of the bottle of silence, these allegations will haunt the former Vice-president for the rest of his life, whether or not he becomes the next president of the United States. There is simply an insatiable appetite for human slander in North America and more emphatically in the United States, especially if it focuses on disputed sexual behaviour/harassment/assault and given the overwhelming preponderance of evidence, crystalizing into a widely held gestalt that men are the perpetrators and women the victims.

One of the corollaries of the young women’s adulation of powerful men is its opposite, middle-aged women’s contempt of formerly powerful men who may have shown little or no respect to women in their college years. Link this corollary to the also widely-held conventional conviction that women have suffered gender bias for centuries, also initiated, supported, engendered and fluffed-off by men. And the current series of generations of western women have opened the windows of their microphones with the cry, “I’m (we’re) mad as hell and I’m (we’re) not  going to take it any more!” from the 1976 movie, Network. The tidal wave of tabloid journalism linked political-metaphorical assassinations in support of a seemingly interminable zero-sum political gamesmanship, also primarily authored and executed by men, renders the quote even more relevant, if not prophetic, today than it was when originally written and spoken.

In this context, although rarely evoked in these discussions, let us recall, and pay homage to the Edmund Burke quote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely!” Another equally applicable, if rarely used, aphorism on power, from David Brin, author of the novel, The Postman, reads like this: “It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.”

Whether primarily men who seek office, executive stature, social fame, fat portfolios, or public acclaim, or women who, more recently have joined in the pursuit of power, while traditionally being attracted to and by its incarnation, the responsibility for the abuse of power engages both genders, albeit differently and albeit perhaps even unevenly.

When young women swoon over some ‘hollywood star’ there is literally and metaphorically little harm to either the young women or the object of the adulation. Yet, if and when similar impulses arise in one-on-one situations, irrespective of the age of both individuals, then questions of truth, authenticity, projections and propriety complicate both the relationship and its resolution. Often framed as moral/ethical questions, especially from the perspective of “professional decorum,”  and workplace rules, regulations, sanctions and terms of employment, one-on-one male-female relationships, whether they be mere infatuation or more seriously considered loving (and who is the determining voice of discernment here?), there are complicating biological, psychological, metaphorical, needs/aspirational issues on both sides.

There is, however, unfortunately and paradoxically, a dearth of masculine voices in the aftermath of female accusations, allegations, reports, gossip and rumour, along with what Plank terms a testosterone poisoning. And the question of “who started this?” connection between a man and a woman is  complex, indetermined and therefore left to the individual who raises a complaint. On May 2, 2020, Maureen Dowd, writing in the New York Times, in a column entitled, Joe says it ain’t so, types these words:

“To suggest every woman who alleges a sexual assault is as credible as the next is absurd. The idea that no women can ever be wrong just hurts women. Half the human race is female. Who has never been lied to by people of both genders? Who has never seen the mesmerizing female psychopaths of film noir?” Dowd then goes on to document the developing differences between the way Rpublicans and Democrats viewed and assessed various ‘relationships’ from Anita Hill where Biden presided, to  Clinton and the to Cavanaugh. Our perspective here is not about how the Democrats might fare, having impaled themselves on their own petard of scrupulosity-and-defaming (Clinton’s accusers) or women’s accounts.

In the cultural context however, influenced as it always will be by the practicing political class of the day, the questions of veracity, trustworthiness, authenticity, and truthfulness will continue to flow like muddy water through the underground pipes of the storm sewers that underlie our towns and cities. Sexual storms, in which men as stereotypical (and by far most frequent) perpetrators, and women as stereotypical victims is also an equation that hurts both, just as Dowd argues the idea that no women can ever be wrong hurts women.

If is long past time when both men and women can and must acknowledge authentic complicity in relationships, even if their perceptions of equality, respect and honour need and demand enhanced, detailed and disciplined communication. And in fulfilling the need for enhanced, detailed, and reciprocal communication, it is also long overdue that men can and must no longer hang signs in their dorm windows that read, “No really means yes!” Men and women, even of early twenties, are both conscious of how they feel in the presence of another ‘special’ person of the opposite gender. And we all know that there is a plethora of potential communication paths, from both, that indicates/withholds/dissembles/declares ‘how I feel’. The initiative is and never was or will be restricted to the man; and the responsibility for any encounter never could or will rest exclusively on the man.

Not to share responsibility for attracting, for being attracted, and for ‘acting’ on either or both of these sparks, is just another way by which the perpetrator/victim war in all of its many manifestations continues, repeats, and repeats, without any change in the stereotypes.

Men cannot make women own up to the truth of their legitimate and authentic amorous feelings, any more than some women can accept responsibility for entertaining such feelings, especially if the social and cultural context seems prohibitive. And just because it might be also worth noting that some men will pay less homage to the requirements of the social/conventional/political/ethical context than many women, it is also worth noting that for their part women too engage in rushes of emotions (so conscious of the nuances of those feelings) even if and when the parameters seem to preclude such feelings and their being enacted.

Both men and women have spontaneous feelings for each other; both men and women act (or not) on those feelings, whether they might be considered appropriate or not by some jurisdiction. And because of the perpetuation of irreconcilable “rules” (with the facts of nature and sexuality), and the dominant nature of select stereotypes (women don’t lie, men want only one thing, women are victims, men are perpetrators) and a public that is both overdosing obsessively on “correcting” the stereotypes and is mired in language of disproportionate blaming/accusing/believing/dismissing, like the uroborus snake, the culture has its head in its tail, and continues to dig a deeper circular trench of contempt, disdain, and blame.

Both men and women, individually and collectively, as well as institutionally, from the perspective of governance, have some serious reflections to pursue. From a governance perspective, it is no longer appropriate for employers of any organization to consider a blanket rule of prohibition of co-workers, colleagues, or any other so-called “power differential” to be the standard for their evaluation.

First, sexual relationships are never simple, nor are they dismissable. Sexual relationships, especially by consenting adults, cannot be excluded from any situation in which men and women interact. Men and women both have to claim shared responsibility for their existence; consequently, truth-telling by both is essential. Hiding behind half-truths, distorted memories, or even mis-representations hurts both the target and the author of such statements. And of course, the exercise of power, (in which inequality prevails) negates and denies the facts of the relationship. It cannot be automatically ruled that a subordinate officer, for example in the military, cannot and will not fall in love with a superior/commanding officer, regardless of the gender of each party. Similarly, a first premise that all professionals cannot have a healthy consenting relationship with a colleague is untenable and unsustainable. And while serious steps need to accompany any such potential relationship, including formal counsel for both parties, initiated by the parties themselves, the rules of the game cannot begin with precluding such possibilities.

Of course, it will cost time and human resources, in order to ascertain the roots and the integrity of each relationship. There will need to be pre-established processes to declare, to comply with discretion, propriety, and a separation from interference with the responsibilities of the position held by each party. And there could even be supporting resources to monitor the development of such relationships, that support, in confidence, from the employer/supervising organization.

If women and men are truly to be considered and to operate as equals, in all situations, both personal and professional, then we have to debunk some paralyzing and life-defying stereotypes and replace them with innovative, sustainable and relevant processes that assure respect, dignity, honour, and longevity of both the individuals and the relationships.

Of course, all of this speculation, including its radical propositions, will never happen in a cultural, political climate like the current one prevailing in North America.

Nevertheless, we can dream, hope and even pray!

#79 Men, agents of and pathway to cultural metanoia (Projections)

“Beware of the projections!” These are the last words of a clergy to his secretary immediately prior to his taking his own life.

The Academy of Ideas website uses these words to depict projection:

Projection occurs when we attribute an element of our personality, which resides in our unconscious, to another person or group. We can project both negative and positive characteristics, however there is a greater tendency to project the former rather than the later….

‘Projection is one of the commonest psychic phenomena. Everything that is scope and influence unconscious in our selves we discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly.’ (Carl Jung: Archaic Man)

Jung…stressed that projection was both an inevitable and necessary component in our psychological development as it is one of the primary means by which we can gain an awareness of elements residing in our unconscious. After projecting an element or our unconscious, the healthy thing to do is to recognize the subjective origin of the projection, to withdraw it from the external world, and to integrate this element of our personality into conscious awareness. Only by withdrawing our projections and becoming aware of the faults we previously projected onto others, can we ever hope to take corrective measures. This process of withdrawal and integration is a difficult task for it takes courage to face up to one’s weaknesses and dark qualities. But while difficult, this task is crucial in the battle of life, for failure to confront one’s shadow leaves these elements free to grow in scope and influence.

Jung explains: When one tries desperately to be good and wonderful and perfect, then all the more the shadow develops a definite will to be back and evil and destructive. People cannot see that; they are always striving to be marvelous, and then they discover that terrible destructive things happen which they cannot understand, and they either deny that such facts have anything to do with them, or if they admit them, they take them for natural afflictions. Or they try to minimize them and to shift the responsibility elsewhere. The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the shadow descends into hell and becomes the devil (Carl Jung, Visions, Notes of the Seminar Given in 1039-34)

In any position of leadership, in any group, one increasingly becomes conscious of the flow of projections, both of the negative and the positive variety. Those from the negative anima(us) generate animosity (duh!) between the parties, while the positive projections seem almost to lift the ‘leader’ off the ground, like a gust of wind into the sail of a wind-surfer’s polyester. Unfortunately, however, neither ‘leader’ nor group member is conscious of the drama unfolding in front of their eyes, and also before the eyes and ears of the members of the group. Teen co-ed adulation of ‘rock stars’ exemplify projections of the highly idealized kind: this person is my “ideal” of the prefect mate; he is any one of or a composite of many adoring adjectives, and the co-ed seems almost to pour herself into the “projection”…A similar dynamic can and does take place in the opposite direction signalling distaste, contempt and even hate, projecting a darker side of the shadow of the projector.

In a recently released biography of Marilyn Monroe, entitled: Norma Jean: the Life of Marilyn Munroe, the writer, Fred Lawrence Guiles, “suggests Monroe may have aborted a child from either then-President John F. Kennedy or his brother, Robert Kennedy, just weeks before she died of a drug overdose in her home….According to Guiles’ book, Monroe was ‘three months’ removed from her last meeting with John Kennedy and ‘only a few weeks’ removed from her last date with Robert, who at the time was the US Attorney General….Days before her death on August 4, (1962), Monroe placed a phone call to Robert Kennedy, with whom she had reportedly grown infatuated. (By Ariel Zilber for Dailymail.com, April 25, 2020)

Without wading into the speculation about whose child Monroe may have carried and allegedly terminated, clearly the projection of a “perfect” woman directly onto what were then perceived by many as one of two “perfect men” cannot be missed. And the tragic implications have resounded and will continue to ripple through even more decades of research, speculation and biographical sketches.

Nevertheless, such a ‘story’ is not without both historic and mythic precursers. The story of Tristan and Isolde depicts another “love-potioned” love relationship, with the “potion” itself freeing both partners from responsibility. Our contemporary passionate love relationships, including a variety of forms, seem bereft of anything so mystical as a potion, while the effects of what we call projections differ little from the profound case of being “smitten” by another, on the part of both men and women, for each other and also for a member of the same gender.

Unexplained, perhaps inexplicable, yet nevertheless considered completely “normal” in modern cultural parlance, relationships based primarily on projections often, if not always, emerge from some period/incident/reflection/turning-point, in which one person “latches” onto another, as a potential rescuer, a heroic lover, a proof of faux stability on the part of a fragile and unstable man or woman. Their intensity is unmatched by the daily routine of what seem to some as mundane, boring and tedious repetitions of daily chores and responsibilities. And such encounters are not restricted to one’s adolescence; they can and do arise without notice, warning or preparation. Generating usually much more emotional heat than light (insight, comprehension, understanding, balance, and perspective) these relationships are difficult, it not impossible to sustain. Based as they are on the unconscious projections of one or both parties, eventually, one or both parties will awaken to the new now conscious grasp of what has been going on.

A projection of the darkest and most hidden negative monsters, by a man and a woman onto each other can and will result in epic battles of two Shadows, before the combatants come to their senses, realizing that it is not the two adults, but their projections that are ‘at war.’

Speculation here, based on some intuitive probes into the relationship between  psychological projections and the Christian template of a Saviour, Jesus, whose record of “perfection” both elevates him into the stratosphere of human imagination, and generates cauldrons of jealousy, hatred, judgement and eventually even murder/crucifixion. Reading Hillman, (Revisioning Psychology) we read his assertion that Christ has to be crucified, as one of the plethora of stories/gods/goddesses whose voices/lives/archetypes continue to play out in the lives of generations centuries in succession. For many, it would be considered apostasy to link a psychological theory to a theologically and spiritually loaded event that has marked the Christian calendar for centuries.

 Nevertheless, while attempting to walk a fine line separating psychology from faith, the former never replacing or supplanting the latter, might, just might it be reasonable to speculate that lingering and flowing through the rivers of our individual and our collective unconscious this archetypal story of a perfect saviour/rescuer/shaman/clergy/lover there is another and necessary force that
“sees” such a figure as so detestable, so despicable, so dishonourable and so worthy of elimination that the prospect of such an act actually takes over if not physically, but certainly politically, imaginatively, archetypally, and psychopathologically? Projections of our most detested and detestable (and as yet unacknowledged and unclaimed) attribute(s) would naturally find an available, accessible and vulnerable ‘christ’ (speaking archetypally and not theologically) for elimination.

From a basic perspective one might ask who and what comprise our “heroes” and out martyrs, in the light of  the interplay of so intense and overwhelming and incomprehensible sensations of either or both of guilt and forgiveness, the former reaching paralyzing proportions and the latter so freeing as to evoke images of Daedalus and his son Icarus floating through air, albeit on wings waxed and vulnerable to sun heat. The dramatic tensions of such experiences, and the perceptions of their impact are recounted in both mystical and less mystical narratives, in many religious archives.

Martyrs, too, define sacrifice to a cause, and in the Christian tradition, battlefields have been saturated with the blood of Crusaders who were attempting to reclaim the Holy Land from Islamic rule. Can we hear, in the background of our mind, those prophetic words of our clergy above, “Beware the projections!”?

I have watched and listened to the utterances of men of some repute and standing, based on their life’s contribution to a political party or a religious institution who were, it seemed then, and does even more so decades later, out of touch with their unconscious, their Shadow and the implications of their psychic wiring’s broken fuse. Too often, I wondered what actually motivated their decisions, and even their prayers and relationships. Authority figures, especially, (given my own background, previously outlined) found themselves staring down the barrel of a psychic camera lens, in conversation over coffee, some of them actually twisting and turning, physically and verbally, in an attempt to avoid detection at an  emotional or a spiritual level.

In one breakfast conversation at the King Edward Hotel in Toronto, I was being interviewed by a prospective ‘employer’ in a rural church. I was interested and curious about this man’s world view, his place in the universe and his relationship with God. So discomforting were my inquiries that he reported to the bishop immediately after, “He knows me better than I thought I did!” clearly in an emotional state of feeling “metaphorically disrobed.” His attraction to fatalism was the most prominent headline and my curiosity about how fatalism related to faith seemed unnerving to him.

Protection of one’s inner life, especially among those professing a faith, seems oxymoronic in one sense. And yet, for many men, especially in what have been considered establishment churches, where the corporate culture of power, authority, obedience and ‘surrender’ as demonstration of humility, poverty, chastity and trustworthiness abound and where cold, untouched and untouchable aloofness, distance, and disciplined withdrawal from  all encounters of a spiritual nature prevail.

Consequently, personal spiritual issues, like such significant questions as purpose, meaning, identity, perceptions of God and relationship to God often never make it into the conversations either public or private. Instead, questions of budgets, furnaces, fuel costs, attendance figures, revenue figures, social and liturgical festivities and perhaps some acknowledgement of physical pain and suffering. The links between the literal, empirical and the management issues and the spiritual life of both individual parishoners and the culture and ethos of the spiritual gathering place remain outside the purview of the conscious considerations of those in charge, from the local parish to the diocesan hierarchy.

And even there, the duplicity, deception, back-stabbing, gossiping and literal and metaphoric crucifixions that take place by alleged colleagues is staggering and disappointing.  One prominent clergy once intoned, “Well the church does not operate like IBM!” meaning that there are not employment provisions of equity, security, and accountability or certainly not transparency within the hierarchy of church leadership. While it may seem paradoxical to argue for such assurances inside what this space as has consistently disparaged as the “corporatism” of the ecclesial ethos, there is little doubt that “mystery” and mystique and obfuscation and denial and avoidance of most conflicts through elimination, or through transfers, or through power-down tyrannical impositions of authority, “I am now playing bishop!” as one large fifty-something male resonated in an underground parking lot, while jabbing his index finger into my chest.

Perfection, whether incarnated by a deity, or emulated and aspired to by spiritual seekers, is a dangerous yet wildly appealing state. It is the inevitable and concomitant darkness, into projections, and yet never fully acknowledged as significant and relevant in any situation requiring reconciliation and healing that continue to plague too much of what passes for the practice of Christian faith.

These projections, and their denial, are far less prevalent among women than among male church leaders who find comfort importing their corporate ethos, methods, processes and assessment tools into the faith community, with the admitted complicity and even avid endorsement of many male church leaders. Apparently the theological argument is that there is no separation between the things of the spirit and the things of the world, and while that has relevance, there is still an open and gaping and legitimate need for the spiritual leaders of our culture to open their consciousness to the non-separation between the human and the natural, as well as between the spiritual and the secular. And such openness, while challenging, confronting and demanding more detailed, in depth and fully disclosing processes of the contextual and supporting narratives that attend each and every conflict, offering opportunity for new insight, new recognitions and the new life for which the church claims its identity and purpose.

The church has both an opportunity to inculcate complex notions of what it is to be a human, probably more than any other social or cultural organization.