Musings on Masculine Spirituality pt1

The Apple tree: Men are searching for an apple. Not only are we searching for an apple, but we are looking to plant an apple tree right in our own front yard so that we do not have to go looking all the time when we need an apple. I have decided to use this illustration to make an abstract idea a little more concrete. Put bluntly, men are searching for their masculinity; “the stamp of approval that we have what it takes to take on the world”, the inner confidence that we are indeed men to be reckoned with, strong, capable, and wise. This is the apple. Unfortunately, men are looking in all the wrong places. We are looking to the pear trees, cherry trees, peach trees, and orange trees to give us the apple we are searching for. But only apple trees bear apples. Masculinity only comes from masculinity.

Also, most men do not have a point of reference in which to draw their spirituality. Spirituality is the actions we take to settle or fill the inner madness, the unquiet, the built-in discontentment, the inner drive for something bigger, the “God shaped hole,” the search for our identity, to put it in one word; fulfillment. And since men are masculine, searching for the approval and bestowing of the masculine, men experience a masculine spirituality. Masculine spirituality then is: what men do to search for and fulfill their identity as men.

Everything that men do to find this identity is spiritual by nature. Whatever we do in search of our apple is our masculine spirituality. This can be a healthy spirituality leading to life, security, and health, or it can be an unhealthy spirituality leading to death, insecurity, and degradation. Searching for the apple is a healthy thing, a natural thing, something we were created to do. All men are involved in the search. Searching for the apple among other fruit trees, or mistaking other fruit for an apple is where many men fall flat on their faces in failure.

Far too many men think that they can draw their masculinity from something other than the masculine. If masculinity is the stamp of approval that you have what it takes as a man to take on the world, then you can only get this stamp of approval from those who have experienced it. You can only give away what you possess. Most men today do not possess masculinity, so they cannot instill it into the next generation. In short, masculinity bestows masculinity. Apples bear apples. If masculinity is an apple, and the men who can bestow it upon others are apple trees, then, unfortunately many men are searching for an apple from a pear tree, their work.