What is Distinctive about Masculine Spirituality?

Is there a difference between the ways that men and women approach and grow spiritually? Is it better to call it masculine and feminine since the behaviors are not exclusive to one or the other sex? These questions have been in my mind for few years now, and while I don’t have an answer yet, I am beginning to identify some patterns.

My relationships in providing and receiving spiritual direction have primarily been with women. My spiritual directors have been women, my peer supervision group is women, even my therapist is a woman. I have great respect for all of them, for the understanding and skill they have offered, and all that I have learned. But there have been times when I wondered if they understood me.

Earlier this month I participated in retreat for male spiritual directors. The conversations had a distinctive flow, and in a very short time I felt like those who listened to me really did understand at a deep level. The way we told our stories, slowly sorting through things in our mind and cautiously exposing our feelings was different from how women tell their stories.

In Melting the Iceberg: Spiritual Direction for Men*, Don Bisson describes his perception that men often begin with an insight. Don describes a process in which he asks the man to personalize the insights into his present life struggles which causes the man to move to the center of his passion. As the conversation continues, often there is an “ah-ha” experience, and the man reconnects the insight into an emotional stance where he feels more whole.

My struggle has always been to integrate my head with my heart, to bring them together to create a new whole and basis for faith. Often what first emerges in my awareness is an idea or new insight. Then I grapple my way through my thoughts and emotions by journaling, looking for the ways the thoughts and emotions confirm or contradict each other. I will try out pieces in conversations to see how others respond. I monitor my reactions and try to relate the inner work to outside experiences. I try to listen for how God is acting in all of the conversations and relationships.

Writing for this blog has become another way to move through the process of pulling the thoughts together. By recording the fragments as they appear, and letting them keep arranging themselves as I write, discarding what doesn’t fit, I play with how it all fits together. Each of these essays reaches a point where I decide it is “good enough” as I try to let go of getting it “right” or perfect.

But is this common for other men? Don’t some women also find the same kind of dynamic flow and process? Is it just because I start in my mind, when many of the women I know seem to start with the emotions and their heart?

I don’t know, but the questions keep me on the journey.

*Donald Bisson, FMS. Melting the Iceberg: Spiritual Direction for Men. Presence: The Journal of Spiritual Directors International, vol. 6, no. 2 (May 2000) pp. 31-37.

Alone in the Presence

I had seen it several times during the Spiritual Director’s International Conference at the end of March. It is one of a series of Prayer Vessels by Monica Armstrong, who had liberally spread her art throughout the meeting rooms. Titled Alone in the Presence, Monica honors the spiritual wisdom of Julian of Norwich.

Julian was an anchoress in 14^th century England, which means that she lived the last decades of her life in a small cell with the door locked so she could not go out nor others come in. Her cell had a window into the church from which she could hear the Mass and receive the sacrament. There was a second window on the outside wall where anyone could come and talk to her and ask for her advice.

The prayer vessel represents Julian’s ministry of prayer, contemplation and spiritual guidance. She lived her life physically in the middle, between the church and the world. While observing the daily offices, she was not cloistered from the world but available to any and all who passed by. The prayer vessel creates a similar physical inner space of prayer and meditation, a part of the world while apart from it.

Julian was a holy woman who experienced visions from God and took twenty years to write her understanding of them in Revelations of Divine Love. Her non-punitive understanding of sin was radically different from the Church of her time. Also, Julian often used feminine images of God, even describing Christ as “our mother.” Her sense of the inclusiveness of God’s complete love led her to state: “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Alone in the Presence provides a striking contrast to Monica’s other vessels in bowl or bottle shapes which are traditionally seen as feminine forms. It stands tall and narrow as a tower, strong and visible, which is a traditionally masculine shape. While I am not privy to Monica’s vision for her artwork, I can speak to my response. It illustrates one medieval woman’s ability to stand, separate and tall, independent in an age when a woman’s independence often meant ostracism or death. She wrote and spoke God’s truth as she knew it, opposing the fear and turmoil of those days when the plague or violence from other people could strike anytime.

Julian’s cell has not survived and the church was destroyed by a bomb during World War II. However as the first woman to write a book in English, her words continue to inspire many who continue to learn from her vision over six hundred years ago.

Alone in the Presence now sits where I can see it while I provide spiritual direction, a reminder of Julian who preceded me in listening to others on their spiritual journeys.