The Hidden Spirituality of Men
by Matthew Fox • Oakland, CA

How many young men have never connected with the spiritual side they do not know exists within them? How deeply have our schools and our religions truly failed us? Psychologist Marion Woodman observes that “most young men in our culture have no spiritual heritage into which their elders are going to welcome them.”

One of the best-kept secrets of our culture is that many men are deeply spiritual and care deeply about their spiritual life. It is a secret, because it is hidden sometimes even from the men themselves!

For many men, work itself is often a pursuit of the spiritual, an expression of their spiritual life. Their devotion to their family is the same. For many, spirituality may be expressed as a devotion to their country, a willingness to give all for their country or their family, or even for their “tribe” or gang. There are political warriors, committing their lives to justice, whether social, ecological, racial, gender, and more. In fact, anyone who gives life their all — be they doctors, taxi drivers, businesspeople, teachers, nurses, writers, mechanics, or carpenters — is announcing his or her spirituality, which is giving life one’s all. Biophilia. Love of life. Lovers of life. Lovers. That is spirituality.

And yet, so few men would ever call it that. Why have men, to greater and lesser degrees, “hidden” their spiritual lives? The reasons are almost endless, but often each man’s reasons interlock in a tight web that keeps spirituality unacknowledged and unexpressed. Here are just a few:

• Western culture is still a dualistic patriarchy that values thinking over feeling, material wealth over spiritual, scientific fact over intuitive knowledge, men over women, and heterosexuals over homosexuals.

• Men are rarely rewarded, and often mocked, for openly expressing their deepest feelings of joy, sensitivity, and pain.

• Many men carry wounds inside they would rather forget or put aside than admit are there.

• Modern religions are out of touch with their mystical traditions, whose language and concepts help us cope with our deepest experiences, our “dark nights of the soul.”

• Men, who are “not supposed to cry,” learn to hide their grief as well as their joy.

• In times of war, governments do not welcome the authentic, questioning spirituality of warriors, but want the religious obedience of soldiers.

• Men sometimes work so hard that they do not have time or space for exploring their hearts.

• In an attempt to respect the women’s movement, some men feel compelled to silence themselves and hide any “unacceptable” maleness.

• Homophobia robs men of their capacity to relate deeply to other men. Even men who overcome homophobia must often keep this secret in an excessively heterosexist culture.

• Men sometimes confuse religion and spirituality, and in the process run from their own journey with Spirit.

• Men lack rites of passage that demarcate movement from boyhood to adulthood, and such rituals that modern religions maintain, such as confirmation and bar mitzvah, fail to do the job.

• Communication between boys and fathers is often cold or nonexistent in our culture, and too many elders “retire” to the golf course rather than mentor younger generations.

• Fatherless homes offer few role models for young men to emulate.

• An “original sin ideology” makes men doubt their beauty and right to be here, and teachings about God as a punitive Father create a toxic, punitive role model.

• Men don’t know how — and are not trained — to deal with their anger and outrage in healthy ways.

What Is Not Hidden

If, for any of the above reasons, the spiritual life of men remains hidden, what is no secret is that men today are in trouble. And these troubles affect everyone. The warring of our species continues, from Iraq to Sri Lanka, from Lebanon to Somalia; the United States government sells more weaponry worldwide than even entertainment. As this is happening, the rest of creation is suffering at our hands and before our eyes. Global warming is also a global warning: a warning that we are not doing well as a species and as a planet. One out of four mammal species is dying out, and where are our leaders? Where are the elders? Where are the men?

Women are socialized to feel little or no shame about being vulnerable or dependent. But for men, seeking help suggests weakness and incompetence. It is antithetical to the traditional male role. Power and control are critically important to men, dating back surely to the day when a man’s job was to hunt dangerous prey. In their minds, seeking help means ceding power and control to someone else. It means allowing themselves to be vulnerable.

Just as we enlisted fathers to empower their daughters, we need them now to empower their sons. Then maybe we have a chance at changing the centuries of hard-wiring that makes boys and men so much more violent than women — whether toward others or toward themselves. And maybe more of our sons will live long enough to pass along those lessons to their sons.

It is time for men to grow up spiritually. As a species, we can no longer be stuck in our adolescence. We need to explore ancient wisdom and deep teachings about the spiritual life of men, about the Sacred Masculine, and how we touch it and how it touches us.

If it is true that the spiritual life of men is, for many, hidden or concealed, buried or covered up, repressed or forgotten, secret even from ourselves, then great things might follow if we dare to unbury and open up, reveal and unveil, uncover and herald, and speak out loud.

Excerpted from The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Spiritual Masculine © 2008 by Matthew Fox. Printed with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com or 800-972-6657 ext. 52.

Matthew Fox is a scholar in residence with the Academy for the Love of Learning and is the author of 28 books. He was a member of the Dominican Order for 34 years and holds a doctorate in the History and Theology of Spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris. Fox is currently lecturing, teaching and writing and is president of Friends of Creation Spirituality, the non-profit that he created in 1984. Visit www.matthewfox.org.