Walking through the door of gender-shame

I grew up ashamed that my gender was ruining things,

Ruining things for the rest of us and for posterity.

And I grew up ashamed that men who are heart-centered

And have known, and always known

That most of their peers sold out

To this lower, ruinous order of functioning,

Creating a vacuum that invites the worst of our gender

To rise to the top. . .

Ashamed that those heart-centered men

Have never found a way to join their voices together,

To raise a great shout: "Enough is enough!"

I spoke about this shame at our last men's gathering

(Where 7 (of the potential 12) of us sit in circle once a month

In a yurt, warmed by a small woodstove)

And (when it was my turn to speak)

I started out explaining how I am a child of the 20th century,

Who, at a very young age,

Snapped to a clear awareness of the dark side of my gender

When I started having nightmares about WW3 . . .

Nightmares from which I couldn't wake, because

The nightmare was real!

That is to say, my nightmares corresponded

To the reality I inhabited.

The adults in my life (in the 1950s) were living their lives

Tacitly terrified that someone would launch a nuclear missile

And that would be the end of it!

Then at around the age of 10, I became aware of

The American bombings of two Japanese cities.

Two!

So I wrote a poem that I didn't understand at the time.

I was only 10! The poem was titled:

"One too many died that day".

The "one too many" was me! My childhood. My "inner child".

I was an empath.

I remember spending hours looking out the upstairs window

Through a three-sided bar-prism,

Into a rainbow-hued world

Where I imagined there lived a boy exactly my age

Who occasionally noticed me looking for him through the prism.

And sometimes I would imagine him waving to me!

That was where my imagination

Found a home for my inner boy-child.

(Back to the present and my shame.)

So I am ashamed of my gender,

The ones who are ruining things for everyone.

And I am ashamed for those of us who know

And have known for some time, that they are ruining things

But have not come together to raise a collective voice,

Of anger, contempt and disgust.

Nobody taught me this history in school but,

With the invention of the bomb, those men

Who have a penchant for ruining things,

Variously gifted, variously broken, variously "called",

Came together to create and employ a weapon

Capable of destroying, not just cities, but worlds!

And by their twisted, confused, broken logic

That was somehow OK.

OK?

In whose universe was that OK??

Think of the doors that opened for what else was OK?

Think of the doors it closed!

That is why, whoever I am, whatever I am,

Whatever becomes of me,

Whatever happens to us,

My life is rooted in shame.

It is rooted in the compost of shame!

I am ashamed

Of what we allowed, and still allow to happen in our name.

That is why I had to share my truth with those other men in circle.

That to be able to live the rest of my life

I have to walk through that door,

The door of shame of my gender.

And the best way to do that was

In a men's circle, with heart-centered men to witness.

And as I walk through

I leave it open.

In fact I wrench it off its hinges!

Please join me.