This is why I can’t read fast: I pick up books like Savage Breast,* and one of the first things I read is so mind-blowing I sit with my jaw dropped, staring into space for ten minutes.
Here’s what blind-sided me: The author (Tim Ward) helped me see how our war-gods make it nearly impossible for men to commit to women:
O First, the war-gods warn moms that they daren’t make little sissies out of their sons (sissies make wonko warriors).
O So, when they’re about five or six, moms push their sons away (“No, you can’t help me bake cookies anymore…” “No, you can’t use my sewing machine to make clothes for your doll anymore – and give me that doll, go play with trucks…”) [my examples, not Tim’s]
O Now here’s what hadn’t occurred to me (duh!): boys FEEL pushed away.
O This feeling is raw, it hunkers down in the deep recesses of their hearts, a permanent sore. From then on, whenever they feel intense love for a woman, alarm bells go off: “Ding, ding ding! Remember the last time you felt intense love for a woman! She pitched you out on your noggin!)
I haven’t said it nearly as well as Tim, but you get the drift.
Remember, too, what this chain does to mothers, whose hearts are torn away when they sacrifice their baby boys to the War Gods.
This chain has probably been written about in dozens of textbooks, but the way Tim puts it, you really get it. He traveled to eight or nine countries searching for the Goddess; he says She's totally changed his life -- including his relationships with women. I wanna buy copies of this book and hand them out on street corners to the men who walk by.
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* Savage Breast: One Man’s Search for the Goddess
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Thnx to dkg for the foto
6 comments:
Followed you over from my dear friend Anne of the Gods are Bored,, and like your blog alot,,, now I will have to go out and get this book,, thanks for the info,
Scott
I was privileged to meet Tim Ward at his workshop during the Glastonbury Goddess Conference. A warm open man who has obviously made quite a journey of discovery. I would highly recommend "One Man's Search for the Goddess" as a must read book.
I don't ever remember being "pushed away" by my mother but maybe I was just lucky in having very nurturing parents in love with the beauty and the mystery of our Mother Earth.
Paul
United Kingdom
My mother, being a devout follower of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, spent like two days helping me sew a pair of gloves last year, even though neither of us knew how. ^_^ And a hood, and three capes. It was very good fun =)
I'm not saying that it can't happen. I'm just saying it needn't.
er, I meant to say that I'm sure that it happens where moms push their sons away for that kind of reason, but from personal experience I know it doesn't need do. And I have a mother who's head over heels for God. Could be a fluke, but my intuition suggests that worshiping God has only added to her nurturing love.
Paxton - It's great that your mom didn't push you away, but I'm watching a cousin of mine go through it right now and it's heartbreaking. He's only 9 and his dad is already saying things like "I am not going to raise a vegetarian germaphobe" when the boy wants salad instead of ham for dinner and cares about how the food looks. There's a double whammy - the mom's stop nurturing, which hurts, then the father puts demands that can never be met on the kid. Boys can't win, which I suppose is the reason winning is everything in a patriarchy.
Yeah, I agree that it's sad =(
I just wanted to chime in and say that it's *not* a foregone conclusion, or the inevitability that you make it sound like.
In other words, when you say "Boys can't win" I hasten to add "expecting, of course, the ones who do."
Lots of people I know have suffered because of the whole Iron-fist lifestyle, though. =\ (about equal to the number who have suffered because of the opposite).
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