OnBeing Man
A path for men in the second half of life, walked with other men.
The First ThresholdThursday 29 October in Warrens · Saturday 31 October online
The man who came by night
There is an old story of a man who came to Jesus after dark. His name was Nicodemus. He was respected and learned, a leader among his people. By every measure that mattered, he had done well. And still he came by night, when no one would see him, carrying a question he could not ask in daylight.
Jesus told him that a man must be born of water, and of Spirit. Nicodemus did not understand. How can a grown man be born again? He went away still carrying the question.
Much later he appears once more, at the very end, bringing spices to the tomb. The question had gone on working in him.
Perhaps you know him.
He is somewhere between forty-five and sixty-five. He was taught early what a man is: be strong, provide, carry yourself well, keep your troubles to yourself. He learned it in the yard and on the block, at church and from the men around him, and he did it. He built a life. People lean on him.
Lately, in the quiet when the house is asleep, something in him has begun to stir. He has not failed. He has lost nothing he can name. It is more that the life he built no longer carries the whole of him, and he has nowhere to say so.
When we listened to men across the Caribbean, more than half told us they often feel the pressure to hold everything together. Nearly a third said they rarely or never have a safe place to talk. On Being Man begins there.
Two births
The first birth, of water, brings a man into work, responsibility and a name. It is good, and it is needed. A man cannot lay down a self he has never built.
The second birth, of Spirit, does not come simply with age. It is a waking. He learns to rest without feeling he has vanished, to receive as well as to give, and to know who he is when he is producing nothing at all. Nothing new is added to him. What was planted in him long ago is given room to come up into the light.
Where does your life rest just now?
Ask where it actually rests on an ordinary Tuesday, not where you wish it rested or where it once did.
For some men it still rests on doing. Their worth rides on providing, achieving and holding everything together, and rest feels less like rest than like a threat.
For some, the old certainties have started to give. Questions arrive without words to answer them, and the map no longer quite matches the ground.
For some, the inward work has already begun, quietly and alone, with no one to walk it with.
And for some, there is now something to hand on, and the wish to give it well.
None of these is higher than another, and you may stand in more than one. Wherever you are is an honest place to begin.
A path, walked one stretch at a time
On Being Man is a journey of men with men. Nothing in it is graded, and nothing is completed. Men meet every two weeks in a small circle, in a room in Warrens or online across the water. The path moves through six phases. Each ends at a threshold where a man decides for himself whether to go on, to pause, or to walk that stretch again. He is only ever asked for the next stretch.
The work is Christian in root and open at the threshold. Each man brings his own faith, or his own searching, and nothing is pressed on him.
It begins with one evening.
Thursday 29 October, half past seven, in the room at Warrens
Saturday 31 October, six o’clock Barbados time, online across the water
The task is not to make a man less capable. It is to make sure his capability is no longer the only place from which he knows who he is.