One of the best things about a party, food and drink
aside, is the potential to encounter new people, new ideas and information, or
new perspectives. Even if you know everyone who comes, you can’t anticipate
what recent or past experience might be on their minds, from starting a new
job, buying a dog, seeing a marriage counselor, or scheduling bypass
surgery.
Recently I attended a party with well over 100
people, all primed for the 5th annual Easter egg hunt at Rob and
Kimberly’s house. Mimosas and Bloody Marys were prudently provided for the
adults who would accompany dozens of children in search of 1,015 plastic eggs
filled with goodies. I sipped a beverage and chatted in the kitchen with a
family friend while waiting for the critical mass of children to coalesce before
they were loosed into the sprawling back yard.
Gethin is an interesting guy, mid-40ish, lanky tall
with curly hair and the kind of English accent you fleetingly think might be
Australian, well-matched with a delightful woman, his wife Megan. They’re the
sort of people you enjoy asking “So, how are things?” because the answer will
always be something you’d never thought of
doing/reading/buying/watching/pursuing.
Thinking he would get a kick out of hearing about a
book I recently re-discovered, I launched into a lively description of Fire in the John by Alfred Gingold, a
relentlessly funny spoof on the men’s movement of the 1980s, specifically on Iron John: A Book About Men by Robert
Bly. I anticipated Gethin joining me in merry ridicule of the attitudes and
practices the book described, and even related details I’d heard about one
group that spanked a member as he re-enacted the birth process.
I realized I had not heard Gethin laugh and glanced
up at him. To my astonishment I saw that not only was he not laughing, he
looked serious, even grave. Sensing the possibility that I had inadvertently
caused offense, I asked, “Are you familiar with this stuff?” “Yeah, I am,” he
said. “Sometimes the rituals are helpful.”
I was completely taken aback. There was no one in
this crowded, animated room I would consider less likely to sympathize with the
men’s movement as I understood it than Gethin. When I tested him, saying surely
there was no justification for spanking a grown and unhappy man, he said, still not smiling, the group must
have been applying the principles wrong.
Clearly it was time for me to listen, not talk.
I learned that Gethin was working on a documentary
on the extraordinary effectiveness of certain sensitivity practices in, of all
unlikely places, Folsom Prison. He described life-changing reformation of
dedicated murderers and lifers walking out of three years in solitary
confinement, of hardened, brutal gang leaders weeping in response to the
opportunity to be loved and understood.
The release
of hatred and violence he had witnessed seemed as unimaginable as walking
through a solid wall. In fact, he had watched walls being walked through by
looking at selfhood and manhood in a different way, a way I had laughed
at.
“You said something earlier that made sense to me,”
he said. “You said you felt you were meant to write the book you are working on
right now. And I feel I was meant to produce this documentary.” We looked at
each other and smiled, in part, I think, at the realization that this was an
unusual conversation, a first in a way. Still smiling, we shook hands, not as
party guests having a fine chat, but in solidarity as story tellers, in
acknowledgment that, in fact, we loved the responsibility of bringing truth and
perspective into the wider world. He would tell the story of prison inmates
reclaiming their souls and I would tell the story of a nautical archaeologist
excavating ancient shipwrecks. We smiled at the appalling amount of work that
lay ahead of both of us.
However, on this chilly pre-Easter morning, we were
called to a far more simple task, and we turned to it, walking outside to watch
young children racing across a sprawling back yard in search of one thousand
and fifteen plastic eggs.
