Retreating with Men

This past weekend I did an overnight men's retreat with my church, All Saints, with the blessing and encouragement from my super-human wife to go even with a three-week-old at home. And even still when she woke up Friday morning with emergency tooth-pain that required fixing a cracked filling that morning and scheduling a root canal for later this week.

I went looking forward to the time with men from my church as we camped out on a farm about forty minutes from Durham. I've been working with college students for twelve years now. Sometimes my wife thinks that fact has stunted my social skills in relating to men my own age.

This semester on campus we're talking a ton about the importance of relationships. We were made for community. When we don't have it (as so many students at UNC do not), we are handicapped in our ability to deal with the most important questions in life: identity (who am I?), spirituality (who is God?) and purpose (what the heck am I doing here?).

All of these questions were meant to be explored in the context of relationships where we are actually known. I've realized over the years that I spend much of my life creating community among 17-22 year olds and yet often have a hard time finding space for it in my own life.

What I was not expecting going into the weekend was to be blown away by the teaching. Our rector, Steve Breedlove, dealt masterfully with the subject of what it means to become fully human--in our specific case, what it means to become fully men.

It is so easy in discussing the issues of gender to fall off to one extreme or the other. The conservative extreme is to fall into stock stereotypes and gender roles so ridiculously specific and overly-defined that it's laughably easy to think of people who are the "exceptions" and so to dismiss their definitions. The liberal extreme is to so focus on the exceptions that they argue that it is impossible to make any statement about gender whatsoever.

Steve handled this exceptionally well. He talked in terms of "a spectrum" and "tendencies." But he was unafraid to offer up real distinctives about each gender. He talked about fallen male-ness and fallen female-ness out of Genesis 3. But he did so with utmost respect for both men and women. He cast vision for redemption and hopefulness that was not watered down in vague "try harder" humanism but rather the fact that life and hope must win in the end because of the empty tomb of Christ.

I came home Saturday night grateful to have spent time with a quality group of men, the caliber of whom I appreciate the more I spend time around them. And I came home freshly encouraged to work, husband, father, and friend more freely and joyfully--with lots more to think about as I continue to figure out what it means to be fully a man.

And I came home deeply grateful for my wife, who blessed me to go--root canal, three kids, and all.