Everyday entitlements

Apprenticeship to Love: Meditations on this crooked path to sacred marriage, March 1, 2026

TODAY'S MEDITATION

We are, today, only a few days from the international day dedicated to the of honouring women. What does this mean, today, when the world is seems so much more hostile to our mothers, sisters, daughters, granddaughters? Our wives and lovers? Our colleagues and friends?

At the very least, this is a good time for me to think about what I am learning from the women and girls in my life. Not to berate myself for my everyday privileges as a man and the entitlements that seem to flow, effortlessly, to me. That doesn’t help me or anyone around me. Better for me to notice these things , and the resentments they continue to foster within me when they are challenged. Or, simply, not allowed to be. Because it is these resentments more than my ignorance that stand I place in the way of receiving love.

…

When I first wrote about this, several years ago, I had just come to understand that this male resentment is the root of fascism. An everyday detail of what I refer to as the feminine in life. There was a moment or two when it looked like my daughters and granddaughters were being allowed to be who they are. But the black-hearted bullies have crept back into everyday life.  And we, as men, some of us actively, so many of us passively, are allowing institutions to limit what women can and cannot do with their bodies. 

Fascism calls to us, as men and boys, not with smart uniforms and jackboots and the blowing of trumpets and waving of flags. Though that too, perhaps soon enough. It calls with subtle resentments. With the “freedom” to be rude and dismissive of others. It shows itself in young men blaming women for lack of attention, and especially sexual attention. It comes from a senses of missing out on what a mythical masculine age promised them. Not just sex and love. But jobs. Money. Purpose. 

…

I am roiled today, in part by what I’m seeing in the world around me. And because last night I watched, for the first time, a movie, A Promising Young Woman. Terrible. Yet it was just a fictionalized account of what was observable during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings during the first reign of Trump. It’s what we’re living through as we watch a president convicted of sex crimes escape any consequence. It’s what I, as a Canadian hockey fan, have to face up to as men and boys’ “hockey culture” continues to prey on young women, with no consequence. It is the ugly eruption of this culture’s hate for women who will not be still. Who “ruin everything,” as one character in the movie put it.

…

We don’t deserve anything —except, perhaps, the opportunity to feel our shame, to regret who we’ve been. Who we’ve allowed our friends colleagues, our brothers and teammates, and sons and nephews to be.

We don’t deserve anything. But we have this to give: Our sorrow, and our amends. 

We can behave differently. We can learn to feel more. To be more open. To create and hold safe spaces for those we’ve “othered.” 

We can allow ourselves to be vulnerable to the beauty and the love that we feel so threatened by.

…

I’ve made mistakes. Many mistakes. Some of these were what I’ll call “honest mistakes” —I was trying to do the “right thing,” and I failed. I needed to mature, to go through failure, to be shown a better way to be a man. But other times, I was not so “honest” in my mistakes. These were times when I knew that I was wrong, yet I persisted, at others’ expense.

What moved me to persist in the face of knowing I was wrong? Selfishness. Self-righteousness. Self-centredness. 

I didn’t think I was being intentionally mean, nasty, cruel, or hurtful. But that is how it was experienced by the others. All I had to do to persist against my self-doubt was to close my heart. To think only of myself. And to think I was deserving. Entitled to what I wanted.

Regret and shame. Not popular things to consider, these days. But what regret and shame are the very tools we need when faced with fascism? In the streets and on the media, but also in our very self-righteous selves? It seems to me that a healthy culture needs these tools. They are a way to remind us of our culpability, and of the consequences of persistent and wilful and wrong choices. At the very least, as a man who would be healthy I need to use these tools. Not be berate myself. To better myself. To open myself to what this world gives me, freely

…

When they call you out for being “woke,” they are simply telling you that they are afraid to feel their shame. They believe it will overwhelm them if they acknowledge the humanity of the “other.” Because that is what waking involves.

To be fair, I think very few of us are not afraid of being overwhelmed. That is why I practice. I train my body and my nervous system to feel it all, to allow the flood to surge through me, and not be overwhelmed. Practicing, I am a little more awake than I was. In my waking state, I am a little better able to hold my shame and my regret and allow them to teach me how to love, and how to receive love.

…

She said to me, out of her long silence, and after it was clear that my commitment to this path and these practices was real: All of this is beautiful and good; but you are careless, and I have paid the price for you to stand in this beauty and goodness.

By then I’d learned a little. Things like: 

• Any sacrifice I made up to this point was small in the face of her sacrifice; 
• Facing my shame, I could ask for forgiveness, and never have expectation that it would be granted; 
• That I would keep doing what I was learning was the right thing for me to do, to keep opening to vulnerability, to invite her hurt and her anger, and to hold her with my heart and allow all of her sorrow to flow without trying to do anything but keep myself stable. Rooted. Grounded. A feeling presence powerful enough to hold and feel it all.

There was no forgiveness. Not then. I lived with knowing that she burned with a quiet anger. By then I had the maturity to pray that her anger was with me, and not with herself for allowing herself to be tender. 

I kept up my practice. I became more aware of her sorrow and pain. It was something to carry. It wore away my hubris and self-righteousness, my carelessness. These things that become the little fascism of everyday marriage between man and woman. 

Her anger her rejection was not a bad thing. Not an easy thing, but a necessary thing. I needed it to feel a shame strong enough to remove the resentment of privilege. Not a bad thing, but a hard thing. Hard enough that I could trust it to do what was necessary.

…

Not all forgiveness comes easily or gracefully. But I know. I can see it in her eyes and how she is. 

I don’t think any one of us should be quick to forgive. Let hurt come to the surface. Let anger burn. Let shame and regret do their work. Let forgiveness come, if and when it does, in its own time. Without expectation.

 …

Feeling shame is a necessary step towards self-redemption. To feel shame, to express sorrow and ask for forgiveness —and to know that I am owed nothing. That I deserve nothing, except the opportunity to feel it all. And especially my regret and my shame. These no one gives to me; I give this opportunity to myself. That I may know myself capable of more understanding, more tenderness, more love.

-Rev. Hans

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀You deserve nothing. (Kendra Cunov)

🌀Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. (Viktor E. Frankl)

🌀You’re not like that now. (My beloved, my Oracle, my Siren)

🌀Now, the practice of yoga begins. (Patanjali, Yoga Sutra 1.1)

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