I went to start a fight.......

Still Dancing!!!!!

Forty-nine years ago today, We ran away to Conyers Georgia to get married. The journey however actually began on August 25, 1961. I went to a teen hangout to get in a fight. Lets just say I was not what you would call a “fine young man” though part of that was true, I was young. Something went terribly wrong with “my plan”. I saw a girl across the dance floor and told a guy I was with I had to meet her and would be “going steady with her in a week”.  I walked up to the blonde doll and asked with my best “pitch” “You wanna dance?” She blew me off not once but twice! It was at that point I became more determined......she told me NO! That’s not happening. I returned with my best stuff and pressed the issue.....I’am in! Yep, she danced! The conversation began with exchanging names, school, ages etc. It was at that point I realized it could be a very short relationship. I ask her age and she said it was her 18th birthday. In response to her question regarding my age, I replied, “I am 19”. Several weeks later standing outside a Pool Room, it’s called Billiards today. I let the hammer down. You must decide, me or him...that’s the other guy. She decided on me then and there. Another several weeks on November 22, it was  my birthday. That is when the truth came out. I was not 20, on my birthday but 16. That of course means I was 15 when we met. I knew it would be a really short conversation if I had said 15 so, “I lied a little”..

It was only a few weeks later that we ran away to Conyers to get married. It has been an adventure to say the least. It was seven years before we came to Christ. I will just say those were very interesting years. Then Jesus came and it has been different ever since. The picture is not from the wedding. There are no pictures at a $10.00 wedding. It is from my junior Senior Prom...yep, my Junior Senior! Maybe we will write a book some day and fill in all the blanks.

For now, let me just say we are still dancing!!!!!

                                      http://themasculinesoul.blogspot.com

Been Bear Hunting Lately.......

Yep, it’s time for the last of my series “Is The Traditional Male an Endangered Species”. I am going to hold that one until next week to tell you about an awesome display of Traditional Maleness I observed today. We are on our way to New York for the Word of Life National Staff Conference and took a little detour onto the Blue Ridge Parkway. We were driving a long at 40MPH Listening to Jesus Messiah by Chris Tomlin and having a little worship time when we saw five “Hounds” in the middle of the road. It was obvious they were not strays as they were all wearing collars and seemed to even have a small antenna on each one. There with his truck was the owner. He called and they quickly jumped into the cage on the back of the truck. Within the next quarter mile, we saw maybe ten more pickup trucks with dog cages and their owners. There were perhaps 25 men and boys  of varying ages.

Shortly we came up on one of the trucks stopped in the road. I pulled up and asked, “you guys hunting or just running the dogs” an older guy (bout my age) replied, “mostly just running the dogs” with a laugh. A quick conversation revealed they were bear hunting though I think he said “Bar”. He asked if we had seen the two up a tree a ways back. We had not, and he told us where they were so we turned around and went back to see them. Sure enough it was where we had seen one group of the guys with the trucks and dogs. The dogs had “Treed” the two young bears. We stopped and chatted for a few minutes and discovered they were all from the same community near Roanoke, VA. I ask if it were gun season and if they planned to shoot grown bears and received an interesting reply. “Yeah, sometimes for meat or if one gets “mean” with the dogs”.

My main point of interest however was the group of Men and the Boys. There were Dads with their sons and some Granddads with their grandsons. And get this they called one of the guys “Preacher” or “Preacher Man”. He was Pastor of a church in the community where many of the men attended. WOW! It was an amazing display of Traditional Maleness. Join me next time for the last in the series. After that we will look at some questions I have been asked in recent Mens Retreats.

                                               http://themasculinesoul.blogspot.com

What Happens With The Boys........

In my last post I raised the question, “Is The Traditional Male an Endangered Species”.
Yes, we are! Now I am not running around with my hair on fire over this issue but, if those of us who remain do not become proactive our demise will continue. In my next several post I plan to explore some thoughts about Masculinity and the need for it in our culture today.

My Point is “What Happens with The Boys should stay with The Boys”

For as long as I can remember there have been groups organizations etc that were just for “The Boys” and those just for “The Girls” though I will leave that for the Girls to discuss.(Just a side note here, I love girls...I am happily married to one...But....) This is not a rights issue, it is about Manliness and Masculinity and Boys being Boys and growing up to be Men. I don’t want this to turn into a history lesson but, did you ever see a  Girl Gladiator? Just picture Maximus as a woman. How bout William Wallace in Braveheart...a woman? I don’t think so. There was a time when all soldiers were Men (again, not a rights or competence issue) but combat is a Man Thing. I was in a meeting in the mid seventies with Dr. James Dobson as he expressed his concerns about the growing trend toward “demasculinizing” boys and therefore men. The big cry then was remove recess from school because there “boys would be boys”. The bottom line, was they wanted Boys to more like girls. (more on this later)
It’s called “neutering” ....(more on that in another post too).
The “Boy Scouts” of America came into being in 1910. It was, as it’s name implies an organization for and about Boys. However in the mid seventies something began to surface. Women were allowed to become leaders and girls began to apply for membership (guess when?) yep, mid seventies.Now the scouts have over 4.5 million not “Boys”, but “youth”...can you say (gender neutral)? If you can’t, you best wake up and smell the coffee before it is too late. Then there is the whole Little League baseball thing........

My point is that there are times when Men and their Boys need to be together without the Girls so they can be Boys and the little Boys can be “masculinized” so they grow up into Men. We need them to grow up to be Traditional Males!

This series will continue next week with a post regarding the “Social re-engineering of Boys” In the meanwhile why don’t you take a tip from Yogi Berra’s quote below and let me know what you think.....

"You can observe a lot just by watching." ~ Yogi Berra

See you next time.................

                                 http://themasculinesoul.blogspot.com

Is The Traditional Male an Endangered Species

I have lived long enough to recognize the massive changes that have and are taking place with men. I have lived long enough to see why News Week Magazine ran it’s feature article for September 27, 2010 entitled “The Traditional Male is an Endangered Species”. I, like many of you am a traditional male and I want you to join me in preventing our extinction. I recently read Dr. Larry Crabb’s book, “The Silence of Adam” which lays out for us Adam’s failure to Man-up. We have been in decline ever since.

Our current decline can be captured with one statistic. During the three decades between 1960 and 1990 the number of children living apart from their biological fathers doubled from 17 to 36 percent.Today some studies have it at over 50 percent. This means fewer and fewer boys are growing up with a masculine influence in their lives. This can not and has not led to great male leadership. The number of instances of molestation, homosexuality and pornography are raging out of control. Boys growing up fatherless and without that distinct masculine influence in their lives are of course, not the only component but, it is surely one of the major factors.

Let me close this post with a couple of questions:
1- What do you think?
2- Are Mens Retreats or Conferences helpful?
Let me hear from you....
You can email me at masculinesoul@me.com