ALL OF US, BOYS, ON THE THRESHOLD OF HUSBANDRY

Apprenticeship to Love: edited March 31, 2026

TODAY'S MEDITATION

Indulge me for a moment while I continue with the seasonal theme of sacrifice and resurrection.

I need only look out my window to see that the world is still an enchanted place. A place making and re-making itself whole, one of the roots of the word "holy," over and over again through the seasonal turn. The Christian magic of a god sacrificing his son for the world's redemption is part of this turning to wholeness. A blessing. The root of "blessings" is "bloodied." Things that involve blood and making whole are not things to be taken lightly. Indeed, the whole business of making sacred involves a deep disturbing.

In this Eastertime season we pause, some of us, to observe a rite of passage: the slaughtered innocent passes through darkness (the tomb) and back into light, and life, again. It's an old story. It predates the Christ story by thousands of years. It is the story of the Spring time. It is the story of Demeter and her daughter, Persephone. And, of course, of Hades. We pass from the seeming dying of Fall, through the dark and silent depth of Winter, into blessed light and warmth of life renewed.

Persephone has been lost and is given up to death in these seasons between waning light, dark, and waxing into light again. In our lives we experience this as grief. A harrowing difficulty. Some experience that bloodies us. Coming through, it is the blood that blesses us, makes this moment sacred.

As Hades releases Persephone to join Demeter again, we mark the passing through of an ordeal. Christian Eastertide marks that passage with ritual sacrifice and resurrection. What ceremony or ritual marks this moment for the rest of us?

...

Someone near to me was raised Irish Catholic. She was the occasion for a conversation recently about Lent, the pre-season of sacrifice. I resolved to observe my own 40 days. I am about half-way through. If nothing else, my small ritual reminds me of what else goes on in this life beyond the daily trials. This is a season of change. I am resolved to observe it. To be, in a small way, blessed (or "bloodied") by it.

...

As someone who works with couples who want to wed, I also observe that the coming of Spring marks a passage into the "wedding season." Here, in the Northern Hemisphere, it is a good time to reflect on the rituals and ceremonies of the season that relate to weddings and marriages.

I ask the couples I work with questions like:

• How are you marking your preparations for marriage?
• How are your preparations for husbandry? Or to be a wife?
• Or, conversely and awkwardly, for so many of us, how are we marking our preparations for the dissolution of the marriages we vowed to sustain "til death do us part?"

...

This morning I read this: The restriction [of marriage] of any outside escape creates the greatest strength inside ...
Cornered commitment induces the greatest strength and purpose. Marriage is a dedication to this purpose. (Guru Singh)

A wedding is that ceremony that offers blessing ("and, to follow SJ, that "bloodying," sacrifice) by the cutting off of freedoms. It is a ceremonial stepping into conscious and voluntary restriction, creating the condition for one's greatest strength and purpose —and testing. It is a sacrifice, making sacred by removing potentials. It requires the couple to have unreasonable faith that in this limiting they will create the necessary tension, pressure, friction, and stress for their individual and collective greatness.

The notion of "wedded bliss," then, is a tongue-in-cheek. A tearful and knowing wink, a sideways glance at the festivities, aware of the profound trials to come. There is a crucible ahead. A fire that will transform. A chamber from which no one emerges unchanged.

...

Consider a man's stag for a moment. Perhaps, at one distant time, a bona fide rite of passage. Today, a "last time" for juvenile excess, celebrated with peers. There is a nod to sacrifice. But it could be more than that. It could also be a ritual of resurrection, of a man born into something greater and more powerful than he or his untested peers can imagine.

A man about to be a husband prepares for the greatest trials of his life. He cannot know this: he is still on the other side of knowing. He is still a juvenile. Unbloodied.

Marriage is sometimes cast as a battleground of the sexes. The man's desire for freedom from constraint versus the woman's need for certainty. The real battleground, however, isn't between the husband and the wife, but between the would-be-husband and his not-readiness for husbandry. In this battle he confronts —or avoids— his juvenile desires for limitlessness, freedom, potential. He struggles with an immature egoism until this unbloodied part of himself is vanquished, sacrificed. Only then can he emerge as a man worthy of being a husband, a man worthy of what marriage offers him.

His peers cannot help him in this struggle. If anything, they are a hinderance. They hold him back. They offer the freedoms and play of juvenilia. They serve their friend by carrying him forward in their one-last-youthful-hurrah. But they cannot help him once he stands at the threshold. Here he stands, alone. He should be afraid. The next step is into the crucible. It breaks all of us.

We –men– may stand alone at the threshold. But there is wisdom available to us. For the men I work with, I say, seek out the company of wise men. Bloodied men. Men who know the crucible of marriage and who understand how it has made them better men.

Neither you nor I can stand with the man about to cross the threshold into marriage. He needs to feel his solitude, and in that, his resolve. His willingness to trust himself and his capacities. He needs to feel alone to know himself. Once he has crossed the threshold, I can, however, welcome him and walk with him.

...

I had too few men calling me from the other side of the threshold. I stood there, alone. Generations of men before me had forgotten what this ritual means and could not welcome me as I stumbled forward.

But I was lucky. Stumbling, and making so many mistakes, and wallowing in my neediness and unwilling to shoulder the responsibilities of regret, I –eventually– found a few wiser men. They have helped me to stand and receive the bloodying, without complaint.

...

It is important that we talk and walk together, we men. I have leaned heavy on the women in my life. Too heavy, for so much for my spiritual and emotional and social health, and at the same time resisting their wisdom. I did not know that they were the oracles and sirens, the poets and the witches, I needed.

It is important that I sit with men. That I bear witness to their sorrows and their travails. That I celebrate their successes, and their capacity to stand after the inevitable failures. It is our lot, to strive and fail, strive and fail, again and again. It is only through this striving and failing that we become bloodied, sacred, and in the bloodying gather some wisdom about our lives.

Where are the men in our lives who have learned this lesson? Are there even any men like this in or near our lives?

Perhaps this is the first work of approaching husbandry and marriage and the matrimony we do not know we seek? To become available to this rare, bloodied, wisdom?

...

I've started to ask men and women about the wisdom in their lives, those who have a bloodied wisdom that helps to guide them. The response so far is not encouraging. If you have a story, a man or woman whose wisdom makes a difference in your life, please tell me. We are, most of us, stumbling. Pretending to know what we are doing. And pretending poorly.

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀Marriage is not expressly between a man and a woman . . . it's between female and male energy and we all have both. It is a dedication of the experience of love . . . the universal ocean that allows all life to exist and knows no limit...
Commitment is like a wild animal, strongest when it's cornered . . . very interesting. It's not so much a projection, as it is a restriction . . . the shutting off of all escapes. This restriction of any outside escape creates the greatest strength inside ...Cornered commitment induces the greatest strength and purpose. Marriage is a dedication to this strength and purpose.
...honour every relationship that's important in your life; shut the doors -- nail down the windows; force yourself to play for real . . . with total purpose. Give yourself the blessing of living with commitment...
(Guru Singh)

🌀The Conscious Warrior is continuously refining his deepest purpose through dedicated time in solitude and in the company of other conscious men. (John Wineland, Precept 10)

🌀I am always impressed by you. (My beloved, my oracle & siren, she who must be ravished by my powerful & unwavering presence)

ON THE THRESHOLD?

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