Director's Message for April 2011

Greetings Sacred Path Community,

Our 24th Annual Sacred Path Men’s Retreat gets under way in just a few days. It kicks off this Thursday in the afternoon through mid-day Sunday. At this point we have over 30 participants registered and a support staff of nearly 20. Yes, you can still sign up, and your presence will add dimensionally to the successful outcome of our time together on the mountain. It looks like we’ll have a community of 50-60 good men joining to bring out the best in each other.

In addition to our large group community time and small group Tribe meetings we’ll hold a number of breakout sessions. Thomas, Andrew’s cousin, will be pouring water for our Inipi (Sweat Lodge) ceremonies, and he plans to “do Lakota style doctoring” with all of the participants. I will speak about the significant global changes and the quickening we’re experiencing as well as the importance of spiritual purification and ways to prepare ourselves for this time of great awakening and transformation.

Among the other choices you’ll have for your work on the mountain: John Mafrici will facilitate the Sacred Breathing process; Steve Branker, Associate Director of MCLA, will take us through the Love letter clearing process; Nick Rath will be present to conduct a breakout session on fathering and Herb Rubinstein will facilitate breakout sessions featuring his passion for flying model scale planes. It’s an opportunity to tune into your inner child and further your bond with a youngster. He’s going to bring a number of planes with him and demonstrate and support participants as we build our own and learn to fly them. Read more in the side bar re: Herb’s plans to bring some new fun into your life.

Dan Franklin, my friend, colleague and Associate Director of MCLA, is launching his new web site and monthly newsletter. You can click on the link that will take you to his site and first edition of his newsletter and you can register to receive his monthly mailings if you wish. Just click here: www.danfranklinmft.com

On June 3rd and 4th we’re looking forward with anticipation to welcoming Leonard Orr, the Father of Rebirthing, for an evening presentation and a day-long experiential workshop for men and women. We will send out a special mailing and registration form in two weeks. For now, if you haven’t already marked your calendar, please do so. You won’t want to miss the opportunity to meet Leonard and learn from this amazing soul.

Please don’t miss this opportunity to join your brothers for the retreat at the end of the week. If you’ve been waiting to register or not sure if you could make it, I truly hope that you’ll realize that these are rare occasions to give something special and needed to yourself. What are you waiting for? Accept the gift...you are the present...open it now.

In the spirit of brotherhood,
Stephen

To download and print the fill-in registration form for the April 7-10 retreat, click HERE

To register for the retreat online, click HERE

Herb Rubenstein: Building and Flying Radio-Controlled Planes

Of all the cool things out there that you can do with your son, I would submit that building and flying a radio-controlled plane is one of the best bonding mechanisms there is.

At our workshop, we will explore this subject in depth. I will bring a simple plane that can easily be built in a couple of evenings, not some glitchy thing from the hobby store but a real plane that you build yourself, so that you are intimate with every detail and can repair it in minutes. I am talking about a 3-d style slow flyer that you will be able to control right away, and if it crashes – well, you know every connection, joint and component.

Because your kid is probably better on the joystick and has hundreds of hours of experience racing cars and maybe even planes, he will probably master the techniques of flying before you do! This is a great confidence builder for a kid. After all, when the two of you play basketball, who always wins? But flying an RC plane is an area where a kid is going to kick his dad's ass! The kid can be the expert and show his dad what's up – role reversal at its best.

I look forward to sharing my experiences and showing off my planes – and hopefully getting some recruits into the world of RC planes.

Herb

Neal Gabler: Day of the Lout

from the Los Angeles Times Entertainment Section, February 13, 2011

Unsophisticated, lazy, misogynist males may be the primary models for today's young American men. Ugh.

If you've seen a beer commercial in the last two years — and how can you avoid them? — you know the type. He's a twenty- or thirty-something, sort of a slacker, with a beautiful and adoring girlfriend who just can't seem to pry his attention away from his suds. She expresses ardor, he looks ardently at his mug or can of beer. She wants to talk romance, he wants to talk anything but. She gets exasperated; he snuggles obliviously with his beer as she departs in a huff.

Most modern takes on manhood say that guys will do anything to bed a woman, but this is a new kind of man, and he seems to be everywhere these days, not just on beer commercials but in movies, on TV, on hundreds of morning radio shows and in bestselling books, to the point where he is generating a culture of new masculinity. He may even be the primary model for young manhood in America today.

He's a lout, from the English word for "an ill-mannered fellow," which was itself derived from a verb "to stoop," and his emergence says something important about men today.

The male image has gone through all sorts of transformations, especially over the last 50 years when feminism evolved and obligated men to adjust to the new circumstances of coequal women. The old strong, silent type, essentially a breadwinner and breeding stud, gradually gave way to the sensitive male, the engaged male, the homebody male who shared child-rearing and household duties with his wife.

Of course, some men found this emasculating and actively resisted the process. Some tried to laugh it off. But culturally speaking, there may have been a less overt resentment that has been simmering for a long time and that may account for the recent eruption of the lout. He seems to be a form of passive-aggressive revenge against what some men see as the indignities feminism has forced upon them — indignities that have been exacerbated by economic hardship.

The lout is not exactly a reversion to the old macho stereotype. He isn't tough, muscular, steely, monosyllabic, able to build a car engine or a house singlehandedly or sail around the world solo. He's not a sophisticate either, a Dos Equis most-interesting-man-the-world type. He doesn't dress to the nines or know his wines or drive a Porsche, and he isn't able to make witty cocktail party repartee. A lout is someone who is proudly stuck in a kind of adolescent parody of manhood that conflates insensitivity and machismo.

Louts luxuriate in their lack of sophistication. Louts travel in packs or just hang out with one another. Louts dress in T-shirts and jeans and eschew fashion. Louts guzzle beer rather than sip wine, and they are most likely to be spotted in bars or lounging on living room couches watching football. Louts don't talk feelings; they talk sports and beer. Louts have few needs and no shackles. Above all, louts may ogle women and snicker about them, but women are pointedly never their top priority. At most, women are objects, just like in the old days. That's the revenge part. Louts don't have to make any concessions to women. Louts barely need women. Just give a lout a Bud and his buds and he's happy.

Of course, embedded in loutishness is the idea that the lout is irresistible to women even as he disdains them — in fact, because he disdains them. In this view, women, who have allegedly been overpampered for the last few decades, just love louts, even when they pretend they don't. As this male fantasy goes, men are so cute when they act like galoots. So not only does he not have to make concessions to women, he can do or say whatever he wants without any consequences because in lout culture insensitivity is the new sensitivity.

I'm Gone Now: A Love Poem

I'm gone now, but I'm still very near.
Death can never separate us.
Each time you feel a gentle breeze,
It's my hand caressing your face.
Each time the wind blows,
It carries my voice whispering your name.
When the wind blows your hair ever so slightly,
Think of it as me pushing a few stray hairs back in place.
When you feel a few raindrops fall on your face,
It's me placing soft kisses.
At night look up in the sky and see the stars shining so brightly.
I'm one of those stars and I'm winking at you and smiling with delight.
For never forget you're the apple of my eye.

Mary M. Green