This is no small challenge, given that most adult men living today were not themselves initiated or mentored.  They have no idea what to do, how to do it, or why it’s essential.

The chain of generativity going back at least 50,000 years in the lives of Homo Sapiens is now broken.  The wisdom passed from individual to individual, from generation to generation, has largely been lost.  In indigenous cultures across the world it used to be that young men were initiated into adulthood by the elders as a matter of course.  In fact, most indigenous cultures don’t even recognize what we in the West call “adolescence.”  You’re either a child or you’re a man.  There’s no in-between.  The rite of passage, universally applied, is designed as a mechanism to usher all children across that threshold into adulthood. 

This was largely true even in Western society until the Industrial Age.  Boys raised on farms or learning crafts were apprenticed by their fathers and other men.  While they were taught practical and professional skills they were also taught by men what it is to be a man, what civilized behavior is – the rights and responsibilities of adulthood.   Once men started moving off their farms and out of their shops and studios to work in factories that ancient system broke down.  Couple that with the destruction of indigenous cultures across the planet by colonialism and imperialism and there now remain few organic links through the chain of time to the practices and wisdom of the past.

The byproducts are everywhere to behold.  By not initiating and mentoring our young people we are paying a steep economic and social price: teenage pregnancy, school dropouts, drug and alcohol use, depression, ADD, ADHD, youth crime and violence… some estimate the cost to U.S. society at $1 trillion a year.  The irony is that doing these “dysfunctional” things – getting pregnant, testing limits with alcohol or drugs, committing crimes, joining gangs, dropping out of school… young people, especially boys, are only asking, crying out really, for initiation.  

Initiation is a biological, cellular level need.  It accounts for most of where the pushback against parents and other authority figures comes from.  Teens need to individuate.  They push back to learn the limits of their own bodies, the reach of their critical judgment, their connection to nature and to spirit or god.  This is how they learn who they are, what is unique about them.  It’s also how they become validated.  To be initiated is a fulfillment of their genetic inheritance – to be brought into the community of adults, to take their seat at the village table, to be honored, accepted and treated as equals.  

Both men and women need initiation and mentorship.  But I believe men need it  more.  Especially today.   [Generalizing alert!  I will now be generalizing about men and women.  Please note that I am in no way saying all men or all women are like this.  If these distinctions don’t fit for you, dear reader, great.] 

It’s really important that men have a sense of mission or purpose in life.  I have written about this subject recently.  They have a built-in desire to want to serve someone or something, to know that their life has meaning and is being of positive purpose.   There’s also a longing for them to feel part of a team or group, to work together to realize a common purpose.  A man’s gaze tends to be outward, toward making an impact, toward how he can effect change in the world.  This is a large part of how a man gauges his own power, by measuring his ability to effect change.   Obviously this drive can take very positive and very negative forms.  But this drive is much in the nature of men.  

Very few people understand this anymore.  Many men, in their own bitterness, depression, drug, alcohol, sex, work, food, and TV addictions, have given up on themselves.  At some deep unconscious level they know what they’re missing in life, how they themselves were never taught by other men how to be a man, how to reach for and find fulfillment in life, how to understand and utilize emotions effectively, what spiritual connection and contentment feels like, where meaning is to be found.  No one was there for them so why should they be there for someone else? 

This refusal finds expression in all sorts of directives older men often give to younger men: “Don’t follow your dream!” “Settle for less!” “Happiness is not important.”  “Take the money!” “Grow up; resign yourself to reality.” “Get a real job.” “Don’t take risks!”  The truth is many older men are simply threatened by the exuberance, vitality, dreams, love, innocence, and happiness of younger men because it reminds them of what they’ve lost, how they’ve settled for so much less.  Those older men still have a little boy in them who knows and remembers but those little boys are usually buried alive under mountains of passion-killing directives. 

Which reminds us that the flow of gifts in a properly functioning culture is not just from the eldest to the youngest.  The flow goes both ways.  The healthy functioning of adults is dependent on youthful energy, ideas, and input.  “Although, ‘it takes a whole village to raise a child;’ it takes the struggles of youth to raise a whole village."  “If the deep conflicts of youth are ignored and left unresolved, the new adults will be unable to solve deep conflicts in the culture.  If the adults feel they were not nourished, their elders will be ignored, and forgotten.”  -- Michael Meade.  So if there is no generativity there is no nourishing of life in both directions – for either the younger or the older.  And on and on it goes

The men who have not buried their little boys, who still receive nurturing from their elders, who have kept the flame of innocence, passion, and love alive in the face of enormous challenges – not least of which is a dominant culture that stultifies humanity, demanding that all answers be found solely in consumerism – those men are heroes.  Yes, just being alive, truly alive to a world of possibility and adventure, and yes, to suffering and sorrow too, in a modern world that increasingly resembles THE MATRIX, that makes you a hero. 

But say you’re doing more than that.  Say you’re teaching yourself and others about what you missed out on, seeking and finding ways to initiate yourself, getting and giving mentorship, truly coming to be all you can be.  That’s even more impressive.

Let’s say you’re doing still more.  Let’s say you’re reaching down a generation or two and extending your hand to a younger man, to a group or groups of younger men.  Then you’re a Hero’s Hero.

There aren’t many.  But fortunately, there are some.  I'll list here shortly some of the men (and a couple women) doing heroic work today to bring back initiation and mentorship in our time.  I unhumbly include myself in this list because I’m now working on a film highlighting their heroic work, formerly called New American Heroes.

What is your life purpose or mission?  What are the gifts you have to share with the world?  Native Americans talk about the medicine that each individual uniquely has to offer.  What is your medicine?

Mine?  “I co-create a world living in truth, without despair, by fiercely loving myself and all beings.”  Let’s break that down piece by piece. 

“I co-create.”   One of my shadows is the traditional male “go it alone” shadow, “I can do it all myself.”   I call that the male disease.  Going it alone is a recipe for burnout and failure.  It’s important for me to remember that.  God knows I’ve burned out and failed enough!

It’s important too to note that a mission should be bigger than what any one man can reasonably accomplish in his own lifetime.  This is not a time for false modesty, to think small.   This is a time to think big, real big.  Many lifetimes big.  Seven generations big.  Think the cathedrals of Europe.  Many men worked their entire lives on one small part of the structure and died never seeing it complete.  Pride in the workmanship and holding the vision are what’s essential.

“A world living in truth.”  How sweet would that be?  What do I do to make it happen?  Certainly my films, even the fiction ones, seek the truth about the human condition and social realities.  But it’s not just about what I do, it’s who I am too.   I practice speaking truth in my daily life, whether in personal or professional situations.

“Without despair.”  It’s important to keep despair in front of me at all times.  That’s one of my great shadows.  It’s all too easy for me to throw up my hands and say “what’s the use?  It’s all going to shit anyway.”  Or “I’ll never succeed.”  For this reason I drastically limit the amount of news I take in.  How people can read/hear/watch the news every day and not want to kill themselves or someone else is beyond me.

Defining myself solely as a filmmaker is also a one way ticket to hell.  Defining myself only in what I do, rather than in who I am, moment to moment.  I have to consciously limit the directions my mind goes when I work:  “How much money must I raise to make this next film?”  It’s never enough.  But if I wring my hands in despair rather than get busy raising money that’s on me.  “Why doesn’t X return my phone calls?”  People promise all kinds of things and fulfill very few.  But if I obsess about how they can possibly be so far out of integrity rather than cut my losses and move on that’s on me.  “Look at X, Y, and Z colleagues… they’re receiving far more funding than I, their film is screening in far better venues, they’re going to much nicer festivals, they’re getting better reviews…”  There are plenty of filmmakers who receive far more support for their work than I.  But if I focus on that and don’t marshal the tremendous resources I do have that’s on me.  It’s all about resisting the lure of being the victim and challenging myself to become the man I’ve always wanted to be.

“By fiercely…”  Why “fiercely?”  Another of my shadows is being the nice guy, doing  whatever it takes to get someone to like me.  Being the “people pleaser.”  So “fierce” is a good reminder to me that sometimes it’s necessary to not be liked.  Being liked by the people I am with is often not a priority relative to what’s really important.  To crank up the intensity, the volume, the presence, to do what’s right, what’s  necessary to serve the greater good.  It requires fierceness to speak up for what’s right in a world comfortable with lies and illusion.  Holding firm boundaries requires fierceness.   So does confronting self-righteous authorities.  So does protecting loved ones from danger.

The word “fierce” also serves to remind me that life is not for the faint of heart.  It’s hard.  I’m not reductively Darwinian so I don’t believe “only the strong survive.”  But the pain, the disappointments, the losses, the fears of life can be immense.  It’s essential to develop some emotional, physical, psychological, and spiritual resilience, some fierceness of attitude and outlook to weather the storms. 

“Loving myself and all beings.”  Given much of the above, you might already have guessed that “loving myself” is the greater challenge here.  My guess is it’s difficult for most Westerners.  (Unlike many (most?) Asians for whom it’s almost unimaginable that a child would not be absolutely treasured, honored and welcomed into this world, building a healthy foundation of self-esteem.)  Though it cannot be unlearned, fortunately the habits of poor self-esteem can be mitigated against.  Meditation, regular exercise, men’s groups, positive affirmations, mirror work are some of the tools that have proven helpful for me.   I’ve also learned to recognize what I need when I need it.  So when I feel dumped on by someone, or at my wit’s end with a frustrating situation, I can reach out and ask my wife or a friend for a hug and some encouraging words.

But “loving all beings” is no small challenge either.  There is a long list of people in government and a longer list of those in business who really challenge me.  How do we love people that threaten us with their greed, their self-absorption, their cruelty, their ignorance, their indifference?  The first step is to recognize that we don’t have to like them.  Liking and loving are entirely different matters.   Secondly, any person’s cruelties can be traced to their ignorance.  They simply haven’t been taught any better.  At a dharma, or Buddhist level, they haven’t been taught how absolutely interconnected we all are.  Lastly, everyone suffers, even torturers, billionaire bankers, war-loving generals, presidents and politicians.   While still adamantly opposing their destructive practices and policies, our challenge is to make room in our hearts for their own suffering. 

The way I was raised made it difficult for me to accept that any rich person could possibly ever suffer.  Working with rich people over the years has taught me otherwise.  Not to minimize the fear that faces the 40+ million Americans who won’t eat three meals today, or the 50+ million who have no regular, sufficient medical care, but there are an awful lot of wealthy people steeped in nothing but fear over how they’re going to protect their wealth in our declining economy.   Not to mention any number of myriad other problems.  Christina Onassis’s suicide at 24 was a real eye opener to me in this regard.

I co-create a world living in truth, without despair, by fiercely loving myself and all beings.  And you?  What’s your mission?

Rogiro

Men need to enroll women into supporting men’s growth work.  Men need to help women understand how growing and healing men, how empathizing with and understanding men, better serves them.  It in fact serves women and children and other men - all of us. 

I served for a year as unpaid Center Director of our Northern California ManKind Project community in 1999.  I took a call once from a woman who was concerned about her husband joining our weekend workshop.  It was bad enough that the man couldn’t make an empowered decision on his own to do the weekend.  He referred his wife to me so I could convince her that it was OK for him to do it.  That alone was enough to make him a prime candidate for our work.

But instead of talking with him I spent about a half hour on the phone with his wife.  I answered every question she had, addressing her every concern about the weekend.  But rather than get relief and grow calmer, she seemed to become more and more agitated.   Finally, I realized that she was going to find some reason to object to our work no matter what.  Sure enough, after I didn’t satisfy her with my answer to one very specific question, she suddenly started hurling abuse, projecting all sorts of accusations – that I was sexist, misogynistic, and worse.  So she finally got to the place she wanted to go to all along:  she slammed the phone down in disgust, saying “my husband will never do your weekend!”

Women think they are protecting themselves when they interfere with “men’s work.”  But they’re actually making their own lives harder.   They’re making themselves and their partners unhappier.  And it all comes from fear.  My guess is this woman was deep in fear that her husband would come back a changed man in ways that would feel threatening to her.  Perhaps he’d no longer love her.  Perhaps he’d no longer defer to her. 

Why is it a man’s job to educate women about men’s work?  Because women have good reason to fear when men go off together.   All too often going off together has been an excuse for men to get drunk, go whoring, to prey on the weak.  All too often the victims of those gatherings are women themselves, or children, or men of color, or gay men, or men suspected of being gay.  All too often men return lesser men than when they left.

But what about when men go off together to teach each other how to become better men?  That happens too.  It used to be common for every indigenous society to initiate its boys into adulthood.  To teach them the rights and responsibilities of adult citizenship.  In a sense this was the very fulfillment of the village – to create generativity, to protect the village from future harm from within, to ensure its survival and continuity.  The challenge is to make initiations and healing work for men so commonplace that women will implicitly understand and accept it. 

In her otherwise brilliant book  STIFFED, feminist author Susan Faludi makes the critical mistake of deriding men’s healing work.  She reduces men doing their work – going off to the woods together, resurrecting their imprisoned “Wildman,” summoning their “Inner King” – to their most superficial and reductive meanings, to their most juvenile connotations.   This is a terrible mistake.   But it’s a mistake many women make, not only feminists.  Men need to teach women that it’s safe to let these judgments go. 

For some reason men’s drumming circles seem to be a common target of derision among women.  Why?  What’s wrong with a drumming circle?   There are few better ways to get men grounded, out of their heads and into their bodies, and out of their isolated sense of self into a common experience of group.  It can be a powerfully communal, growthful, even joyful experience.

This was demonstrated to me when I was making a feature film in Iowa some years ago.  The morning was going badly.  The crew was taking a long time to set up; things were chaotic.  I asked my musician friend Johnsie, who was on set that day to help our stars with a choreographed scene, if he’d start drumming.  Amazing!  Within minutes I could feel the crew grow more synchronous.   Stress and dis-ease vanished off faces and I saw smiles.  In no time we were quickly prepared and ready to shoot.

Do women fear men drumming together because some primordial impulse kicks?  Do they fear there will be violence, that they will be subsequently attacked?   Perhaps.  Certainly in different cultures around the planet drumming was often a prelude to battle.  But may it also be another product of Zero Sum thinking? ie., “If it’s good for men it must be bad for women.” 

All the smart women I know, and I know plenty, cherish their men for doing their work.  They realize how it makes the women themselves safer, happier, more loved.   They realize they need not be threatened.  They realize how they will be well served by a man’s growth. 

Why?  Because a powerful man understands that his life has to be lived at least partly in service to the feminine if he wants to live a life of mission.   Protecting the realm, promoting harmony, creating abundance for family, community, nation, usually means at some point serving women and children.  It means doing more than just keeping them safe, it means making the necessary sacrifices to promote their well-being and growth.  It means helping them thrive.  A powerful, mission-driven man understands that.  

The paradox is that it takes a cauldron of powerful masculine energy to get a man to that point.  It takes men going off in the woods together, it takes men joining each other in exclusive circles of support, it takes drumming circles, it takes, if not “men’s clubs,” then safe places where men can go to be alone with other men. The fact is men need to be taught by men how to be men.   And it takes very strong containers to hold a man’s passage.  Men will buck and resist, partly because they fear that no container can possibly hold all the grief and rage they carry.  But hold it we can and do.

Smart women understand that there are multiple venues and circumstances where men teach other men, and boys, about being men.  The more formal ways are mentioned above. But there are plenty of informal ways.  Going camping, hiking or hunting, weekend workshops, men’s support groups.  Sports can do it.  The military can do it.  Work can do it.  Yes, even a few drinks at a bar with the guys or hanging out in some man-cave can do it.

The proof is always in the pudding.  Does the man (or boy) return from the gathering with a wiser, more mature attitude?  With a more loving and available heart?   With more humor and light?  Or does he return angry, closed, protective, resentful, fearful?  Or worse, completely drunk or stoned, aggressive, and violent?

A wise woman always recognizes when a man needs to get out and be with other men.  He’s getting short with her and kids, he’s not listening anymore, or worse, he’s put his fist through the wall.   A wise woman will urge her man to get out.  This was beautifully demonstrated to me on a men’s weekend back in 1996.  When asked why he was there one man from rural Wisconsin said, “My wife saw how impatient and angry I was getting with her.  She told me ‘It’s time for you to go be with the men.’”

So women, when it’s a man’s time to go to be with the men, support him in that choice.  And if he doesn’t return a better man for it then it’s time for him to consider joining different men under different circumstances.  But it’s important that women support his seeking.  Men going off with men to teach each other how to be men is an act that should be honored.

And men, it’s our responsibility to teach the women in our lives the difference between serving our shadow self and serving our growth.  Teaching by words and by example.  If we prove to them we’re actually doing right by them, getting that support will be much easier.  Women can actually be proud when they see their men going off to be with other men.  Imagine that!  It’s not that hard to make happen.

I don’t want to define men and masculinity in terms of doing right by women.  I want VOICE MALE to take the lead in defining men and masculinity in our own terms.

I grew up a feminist in a household dominated by a powerful Mom and an older sister.  My father died when I was 9.  The culturally derived nonsense that my uncle bequeathed me at the funeral a few days later - “Freddy, you’re the man of the house now.” - kickstarted my lifelong quest to define masculinity meaningfully. 

Feminism, gender equality and fairness all made implicit sense to me, along with all other forms of social justice - race, religion, sexual preference, class...  But in lessons I learned during adolescence from my Mom, like “You need to learn how to be a good husband to your wife,” there was always an implicit if not overt tone of shame.  My mother and sister never missed an opportunity to recount parts of the endless list of male crimes against women and girls, against humanity in general - the crimes of patriarchy.  Were these statements accurate?  Yes.  Was I somehow to blame for them?  No.  Yet I was made to feel that I was somehow to blame by virtue of being born male. 

In college I read Susan Brownmiller. "[Rape] is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear."  I also read numerous other feminists.  Partly due to this education in feminism, partly because I projected the worst aspects of my father on to Type A straight males, I shrank from powerful men from my teens through my 30s.  I unconsciously sought the company of women, gay men, intellectual men, and “weaker” straight men – projecting on to them an emotional openness, vulnerability, and flexibility I didn’t sense in Type A straight males.  But the true bottom line was this - I unconsciously feared any man remotely hyper masculine.  I labeled them as “macho” and dismissed them.  

That was the legacy of masculinity I carried until I was 40.  In the last 16 years that has changed.  I now see weakness and strength in every man I meet, I see fragile, tender hearts in the toughest of men, I accept gruff and inarticulate speech as openly as I do professors’, I see unlimited capacities for love and caring among incarcerated murderers, corporate executives, soldiers, policemen, corner drug dealers, plumbers and roofers… even (and this is the greatest challenge) politicians.  I have a much greater understanding and acceptance of how men can be wounded and harmed by women, including by domestic violence, I appreciate how divorce and paternity laws can hurt men as much or more than women.  Just as women have been objectified and marketed to, I now see how men’s physical and psychological differences are also marketed as “flaws” that need “fixing” by doctors, medicines, and an unlimited array of products.  To some extent, men are also “objects” of history.  But saying that patriarchy also screws men is not news.

Though I’ll do my best to combat all forms of crimes against women I’ll not accept personal responsibility for any act I myself did not commit.  Though I’ll be there to support any woman as best I can through whatever suffering she may have received at the hands of men, I’ll not take it on emotionally as my own.  I will recognize whatever systems privilege me as a white American heterosexual male but I will sharply delineate what is institutional and cultural privilege and culpability from what is personal or interpersonal privilege and culpability.  I will not accept personal blame, guilt or shame for 1000s of years of women’s past and ongoing suffering.   

Now that I’m unafraid of “measuring up,” I delight in the company of the entire rainbow of human male expression, in whatever context I may find men.  Now that I’m less afraid of conflict, I’ll confront men when I think they’re being aggressive. Now that I don’t fear my own tears I can fall more easily into the arms of another man and cry.  Now that I don’t criticize my own love of sports I can accept sports on its own terms, rather than seeing them as mindless escapes from real world issues.  Now that I don’t take on shaming energy from others and I’m more averse to times when I shame myself my own heart is more open and available to both men and women.

What I will accept is the responsibility to be the greatest man I can be – to stand with both men and women to resist all forms of sexism and misogyny, to resist sexual abuse and violence against women wherever and whenever it occurs, to resist all lingering forms of exploitation and discrimination against women, to do all this and more.  But I will do it not because it’s the right thing to do but because it is part of what is great and noble about being a man.

When I read some articles in VOICE MALE I feel a haranguing tone. Is there some mother projection going on here?  Probably.   My mother’s tone was similar.    But I don’t think it’s all projection. 

Some articles just feel haranguing: “Do this because it’s right.  Do this because it’s just.  Do this because you should.  Do this because it’s good for women.”  None of these reasons are wrong of course.  But it’s not just an issue of tone.  They’re incomplete.  They end up speaking to only half of why we as men should join these worthy battles.

The other half, the missing half, is why engaging these battles will serve me and my growth as a man.  Why it will help me understand my own limitations and my own greatness.  Why it will support me in my mission in life. Why it will link my heart with other hearts.  Why it will fulfill me and make me happy.  It’s personal rather than political.  It’s poetic rather than polemical.  It’s psychological rather than sociological.  It’s mythic and archetypal and soulful rather than mundane and professional and altruistic.

I want to be invited to live up to my greatest potential, not scolded.  I want to be called to my greatness, not made to feel somehow insufficient.  I want to be inspired to be that righteous, worthy Knight I’ve always wanted to be, and I want to be celebrated for the heroic measures I already take and will take more of.  In VOICE MALE, in fact in all “men’s work,” I want to experience some joy at arriving at the future I am co-creating – the joy at recognizing I can and will “Be all I can be” – and have that be as palpable and powerful a motivating energy as the plea, however virtuous, to do the right thing. 

Emma Goldman, one of my adolescent heroes, famously said, “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”  I feel the same.  If I and all my brothers can’t delight in the men of honor we are now and are still becoming, if we can’t celebrate and be celebrated for the highest virtues of masculinity we demonstrate, if we can’t revel in something sacred that binds us together as men, if we can’t define ourselves meaningfully as men without the necessity to include women in that definition, then what can we be?  What will we be? 

Women started and to some degree have succeeded at the feminist revolution.  I believe men should not define themselves through that revolution.  We need to make our own. 

It’s about finding a third way.  It doesn’t mean patriarchy revisited.  It doesn’t mean opposition to patriarchy rehashed.  It means accepting the challenge to create new forms of masculinity.  Forms that maybe some samurais understood, that maybe some Knights of the Round Table understood, that maybe some warrior monks and priests understood, that maybe the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King and Ghandi and Harvey Milk and Malcolm X understood: Men who find the greatest fulfillment in life, the greatest realization for their potential as men, doing service to the realm, fighting for justice, aiming squarely for more harmony and good on the planet. 

I call all men my brothers.  I stand shoulder to shoulder with all men.  But my heart calls out to those men who find that righting social wrongs need not be done because it’s the right thing to do but because it fulfills their greatest potential as men.  That is the great beauty in masculinity.  I stand tallest when I stand with those men.

Lunch in Grand Tetons National Park

The primary purpose of an RV is not to get from Point A to Point B.  The primary purpose of an RV is to ENJOY getting from Point A to Point B.  The best way to do that is to go slow and be open to making discoveries along the way.  We did this.  With consistent resolve.  Personally, I want to stop at every scenic overlook and historical marker.  This can become an irritant if you’re not enamored of views, afraid of heights, wanting to get on with it.

The Tao of RVing comes down to balancing whatever’s most needed or wanted in each and every moment with what presents itself as an opportunity.  Choices become less agenda driven and more circumstantially based. 

“Oh, there’s a nice looking wifi café.  Let’s stop and do some work.” 

“This is a beautiful rest stop/state park/scenic overlook.  Let’s stop for a hike and a meal.” 

“I’m tired.  There’s Walmart.  Let’s go to bed.” 

“OMG, what a cool outdoor swimming pool!  I’m going in!”

Sure, many decisions are still driven by needs.  But much less often.   The other times they’re driven simply by wants referencing what appears.  We didn’t stop at every Sonic we saw.  But we certainly visited a few. 

I find this immensely freeing.  What sets me free on the road is not a matter of escaping the routines of home and work, it’s escaping a life driven by agenda.  “I must do this.  I must do this.  Now I must do this…”  Ad infinitum.  Freedom’s not another word for nothing left to lose.  It’s another word for nothing left to gain. It’s entering a new expanse of mind.  When I start to hold loosely if not outright abandon the agendas I hold, I receive a breadth of ease that is otherwise unattainable.  “If I don’t call this guy back by 6 pm tonight our deal is off.”  Maybe.  Or maybe that’s just what you tell yourself.  Calling him back in a day or two might not be so bad, in fact it might give you more time to reflect on what needs to be done.   Meanwhile, you can enjoy a walk by this beautiful lake…

Now my only challenge is to continue the Tao of RVing while back home sitting at my desk.

The Writer & Captain Trips Leaving in their RV

ü  McDonald’s = bathrooms!

ü  Starbucks = remote offices!

ü  Walmart = free hotels!

ü  Gas stations = tithing depots!

But after 50 years of adventure travel (read: “roughing it”) traveling in an RV has introduced me to a whole new level of comfort:

ü  Caught in a bad rainstorm?  Just pull over, make your favorite cup of tea, and wait it out.  Or, don’t wait it out and enjoy your hot tea while you drive on.

ü  Hungry after a long, dusty horseback ride?  Pour yourself a cool one from the fridge. Fire up the generator and make some quesadillas.  Do all this and never leave the parking lot.

ü  Tired and dirty after a long day’s hike?  Enjoy a long, rejuvenating hot shower – and yes, do it from the parking lot at the trailhead if you want.  Then change into some nice clothes and go for a fancy dinner at Yellowstone Lodge.

ü  Thirsty for nice drink while you drive?  Grab some ice, mix the seltzer and juice, maybe slice in some lemon, then enjoy it from the cockpit while you drive through glorious remote mountains.

ü  Enlarged prostate? Weak bladder?  No worries – whenever nature calls you can pull over.   Your bathroom is always with you.  

ü  Back hurt?  Need a break?  Shut off the engine and stretch out in the back and snooze on your queen mattress.  Your bed is always made.

ü  Too hot?  Turn on the air conditioning.  Too cold? Turn on the heat.  Too hot or cold while sleeping?  Take off or put on another blanket. 

ü  Need a change of clothes, a different pair of shoes?  Just go to the closet and grab what suits you.

ü  Need the internet?  Park outside a library or Starbucks and go to work on your table in your traveling office.

You are the Master of your Universe!  (Were the first Imperialists RVers?)

No more tents blown over by strong wind.  No more removing rocks and twigs in the middle of the night from under your mattress pad. No more being confined by cramped sleeping bags.  No more holes and tears in sleeping bags.  No more wet sleeping bags.   No more sleeping bags period!

Heaven, I’m in Heaven…

Nothing is more important to me than rites of passage and mentorship of young people.  I see the two as equal halves of one unified whole.  I tend to think of mentoring relationships as something akin to alchemy.  We already know the rudiments of success: more listening than talking on the part of mentors, more blessing and acknowledgment than criticism, asking questions more than giving answers, modeling rather than teaching, showing rather than telling, regularity and consistency more than thrills and chills, being authentic…  But short of shepherding a young person through their own rite of passage, ritually launching them forth into adulthood, there are no mechanisms, no roadmaps for doing this.  Til now.    

Andy Mecca and his team, leaders in California and nationally in the campaign to institutionalize mentorship, have created a mentorship curriculum.   The only one I know of.  Their audacious, commendable and achievable goal is to reach 10 million children in ten years with LifePlan. 

What is your Life Plan?  If you’re lucky, like me, you’ve cobbled one together through years of careful observation of others and an exhaustive process of elimination.  And if you’re really lucky you’ve had a rite of passage that taught you what your mission in life is.  But what of the young people you know?  Who’s helping them find their Life Plan?  Are you?

European Film Festival Award for Best Spiritual Documentary 2011

My good friend Kathleen reading my speech.

At the European Spiritual Film Festival in Paris last night we won our first festival prize!  Best Spiritual Documentary 2011.   Here is the speech that was read by my friend Kathleen at the awards ceremony.

"I want to thank the European Spiritual Film Festival for this recognition.  I’m delighted that this story of the people of Zanskar touched your hearts.   They certainly touched mine. 

Please consider yourselves duly appointed ambassadors of Zanskar.  You can go right now to SaveZanskar.org and offer assistance to the monks to complete their school.  You can visit our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter, sign up to receive email updates on our website WarriorFilms.org… Please let your families and friends know about the film.  In these days of media saturation, pummeled by stories of horror and messages of cynicism, please take heart and be of good cheer.  Know that we can follow the lead of the Zanskaris and find peace in the pursuit of simple, worthy ends.   Thank you."

What used to be considered a cinematic documentary and what used to be considered a TV documentary have now reversed places in the popular culture.  Due to the abdication of TV journalism nowadays people go to the cinema for news.

When I grew up it was common to find good investigative journalistic documentaries on TV.  I remember “The Selling of the Pentagon” which CBS broadcast in prime time in 1971.   Though its critique of the military-industrial complex was by no means commonplace, the program was absolutely in keeping with TV’s standards and practice of investigative journalism of the time.  Where are you going to find a program like that on TV today?  You don’t.  You go to the movies and watch Michael Moore.

The success of Michael Moore and Davis Guggenheim and Alex Gibney and Robert Greenwald and so many other documentary makers today can be attributed at least partly to the default of TV journalism.  As corporate power over TV networks grew – an ever shrinking number of ever greater sized corporations controlling ever greater numbers of media outlets – the reach of investigative TV journalism shrank.  Their standards shrank and their willingness to confront state and corporate power shrank.  First the major commercial networks stopped.  The non-pay cable channels never had the budgets or gumption to pick up the slack.  The last gasp, PBS, largely stopped investigative journalistic docs in the mid-90s following a previous wave of Republican attacks.  So what you used to see as standard TV has almost exclusively become the province of cinema.

Now when you want to hear an alternative political opinion, when you want to see an investigative report on the possibility of fraud in the 2000 election, on global warming, on electric cars, on medical care, on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on Wall Street… you go to the movies and pay money for the privilege.  I can’t think of a single other country where this same dynamic exists.  Perhaps somewhat in Canada where state-run media has been unfunded in recent years, though not nearly as severely as the U.S.  Certainly not in Europe where these kinds of programs are still considered the exclusive domain of TV.  (For years common logic had it that Europeans won’t even go to the theaters to watch documentaries.  In the past 10-15 years that’s shifted slightly, but not because of the abdication of journalistic TV docs.)

Think about it.  What used to be brought into your home for free now you go out and pay for.  (Or stay home and pay for on Netflix or, occasionally, on HBO.)   Back before the deregulation of media industries, back before corporations were re-affirmed in their “rights” as “individuals” to free speech, back before the erosion of civil liberties protecting free speech for real individuals, when the public ownership of airwaves and bandwith was a commonly acknowledged cultural value necessary to sustain a great democracy, when edification by TV was considered as meaningful a priority as entertainment by TV, it was a popular cultural axiom that TV might actually live up to its advance billing as part of the 4^th Estate – the guarantor of informed citizenry.  Were it only so today.

This cultural sea change has also fostered an accompanying set of aesthetic differences.  What used to be considered a journalistic TV aesthetic is now considered cinematic: interviews,  (endless interviews!), experts, narration (especially first person), fast editing, lower production values (poor sound, shaky camera images, flat colors), information, argumentation, charts, graphs, maps, talk, talk, talk…  Were they to form today there’s no one who would get the foundational irony of the name of the band Talking Heads.

This is not to say that these films are often not very well made and very important.  Given the dearth of journalistic docs on TV and the general supplanting of real news with infotainment, with pundits yelling at each other and bullies and comics ruling political discourse, they’re perhaps more important today than TV docs were 40 years ago.  They’re oases in political deserts.  And many of them are supremely inventive.  One of my favorites, and an early benchmark in this genre, is Manufacturing Consent.  For me the film revolutionized how complex intellectual arguments could be made suspenseful and visually arresting.

But with the ascendency of journalistic docs in theaters cinematic docs are hardly given a place anymore.   What do I mean by cinematic?  Lingering long shots - like landscapes – slower paced editing, complex sound layering, subtleties, even contradictions, of story and character, and above all narrative.   Even the best documentaries in theaters today are polemics.  They’re arguments for a specific position, often political or ideological.  Rare are the ones that simply want to tell an interesting story.  Much rarer is it to find the ones leaving you to decide what the story means.    

Look at Werner Herzog.  If ever a filmmaker deserved the big movie screen canvas it’s him.  Yet even his films live theatrically for the briefest of times, if at all, before heading to TV. 

This has also been true for my most recent film Journey from Zanskar.  One Canadian film critic called it “shockingly old-fashioned,” seemingly due to the” problems” of 3^rd person narration and the strong but simple story.  One programmer for a prominent NYC art house thought the film “too TV” to book in their theater.  In fact, the thesis of this entire blog was born out to me the week after she turned the film down when she instead booked Inside Job.  (Please – no need to write in and defend the Charles Fergusons, et al.  Again, I’m passing judgment on the style and trendiness of the films they make, not their quality or importance.) 

Given today’s inverted values I can’t help but think that were Hoop Dreams released today it would never be given a chance in theaters.

The film is a subject I’ve been passionate about for 15 years.  It started with Hoop Dreams, and the questions that lived in my mind following that film – how are teen boys making it into adulthood these days?  Who is there to actually support them along the way, 100% devoted to their well-being, as opposed to using them to serve their own interests?

That interest took a major leap forward in October 1995 when I experienced what I consider to be my own initiation into manhood – the New Warrior Training Adventure.  That weekend workshop offered by the ManKind Project changed my life.  For the first time as an adult man I had the vision, the tools, and the template for becoming the man I always wanted to be.

I began to study and ruminate on initiation and mentorship – how much I needed it growing up, how much all children need it.  Those questions began to shape the screenplay I co-wrote with Steven Ivcich, the film I eventually made called The Unspoken.  There was one “through-line,” one underlying question I had: “If it were possible to initiate a boy into manhood completely outside the realm of traditional culture, what would that look like?”  Frankly, I don’t think it’s possible.  But these are the kinds of questions artists like to ponder. 

Then the Mathew Shepherd murder and the Columbine shootings occurred.  The question wasn’t theoretical for me anymore; it had become dangerously literal.  I felt I had to take a look at teen boys.  I had to find what was going on with them.  How bad is it for them to grow up in a culture devoid of initiation, barely cognizant of mentorship?  How isolated and alone are they?  How cut off from the fruits of initiation  - that sense of connection to others, the awareness that life can be full of purpose and meaning?

What resulted was the TV mini-series Boys to Men?  The answer, in short, is bad.  Real bad. That series became one long statement about just how bad the situation for teen boys in this country actually is. But halfway through making it I realized I was attempting the impossible: I was trying to record an absence, a vacuum.  How do I show something that is missing in someone’s life?  It was then I knew I needed to tackle this subject one more time in a new film – this one about solutions.

So in 2002 I began working on the film that would become Boys Become Men.  I read some more.  Did more research.  Met with wonderful youth advocates like Michael Meade and Louise Mahdi.  I met Luis Rodriguez and Frank Blazquez, founder and director (respectively) of Youth Struggling for Survival – a Chicago based group assisting Latino and Asian teens on Vision Quests – working with Lakota elders on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to teach them the ancient ways. 

I did some filming of Craig Glass in Colorado Springs doing marvelous work with teen boys and their fathers in a Christian weekend workshop called Passage to Manhood.  He uses stories and parables from Jesus’ life to guide the youngsters through their transformation into mature men.  I talked with Rabbi Goldie Milgram in Philadelphia who is reinvigorating Bar and Bat Mitzvah practice with true initiatory intent.  There’s SWET, YMUW, there’s the secular Boys to Men weekend workshop, welcoming boys of all faiths and non-faiths, started in San Diego, now spreading around the world.  There are Hawaiians keeping their native traditions alive, Buddhists, Muslims, and so many more.

We succeeded with our fundraising campaign. Now begins the next stage of work.  It’s time to reconnect with these leaders, to see who’s still doing what.  It’s also time to experience some of the inspiring new work being done by others.   

The aim of the film is to highlight the best initiatory practices I can find, across all faiths and non-faiths.  To film at least ten boys going through five different rites of passage.  To film them no matter where they are in the country and no matter how long it takes to capture the transformative impact these rituals have on their lives.  I estimate it will take about one year for each boy.  A year of their lives in which month two or three they’ll experience their rite of passage.  Then we’ll see the real work begin – translating that transformation into the everyday.  That is where the rubber meets the road.  

We’ll experience exactly when and how each boy’s primary conflict shifts.  If drugs were his problem before his passage is he now resisting their lure?   If he was irresponsible on the job or acting out with a girlfriend is he now being accountable and behaving with integrity?  If he was misbehaving in school is he now getting along better with teachers and fellow students?  Are his grades picking up?  If he was shrinking from addressing a painful issue is he now stepping into his fear and asserting himself around adults?  Perhaps most importantly, we will see if these boys can now tough out difficult situations without denying their feelings.

To film all this will take much more than $25,000.  But we now have what we need to start.   We will pick up the different cloths from these amazing rites of passage weavers and bind them into one story – the story of hope for future generations, for all the sons and daughters to come - that of realizing their greatest potential in this lifetime, of finding their deepest purpose and greatest fulfillment through service to each other and our mother Earth.