Who: 2 facilitators (Daniel & Z'Ryah) + TBD participants
What: A 6 hour exploration of times in our lives when we've turned away from painful feelings and the parts of ourselves that are hurting. A gentle invitation to soften towards ourselves instead.
Where: Indian Boundary Park in NW Chicago https://share.google/9BupouaL9AF6xDz1e
When: Saturday, May 30th, from 10am-4pm
Why: Because we believe that the more beautiful world we know is possible will require men to have more intimate relationships with themselves and their own emotional pain.
How much: Sliding scale $0-$300, NOTAFLOF
Registration: https://bale.as.me/?appointmentType=85138001
This offering is for male-identified and male-leaning people who long to relate to themselves in softer ways. For those who feel a connection between cruelty within and cruelty without; for those who can see, or want to understand, how shame withers tenderness. This offering is a prayer born out of the loss of a father (to divorce, to depression, to death) and born out of the reflections of elder hood. This is a collaboration between two masculine people in different stages of life who share the same prayer: for men and male-leaning people to soften towards themselves. To turn towards, rather than away from, the grief and the pain within and to learn to cradle their own brokenness with tenderness. To learn to hold it so well, and so beautifully, that the holding becomes its own prayer, its own song, its own offering. This offering is a support system and a network of relationships that a part of a much larger cultural shift, calling us in and inviting us to learn to carry what is ours to carry in a way that beautifies the world.
The premise of this offering is that many men and male-leaning people are in emotional pain and do not know how to care for themselves well in the midst of their suffering. Instead of caring for themselves well, they turn away from themselves and their pain, and harden: reaching for control rather than vulnerability, seeking stimulation rather than connection, and perpetuating the intergenerational cycles of male suffering. The premise of this offering is that by teaching men how to have a more tender and intimate relationships with themselves and their pain, it will change how men relate to their friends, loved ones, colleagues, employees, strangers, and the world.
This is a big prayer to hold, and we are beginning in a very modest way: with one six-hour workshop. As with all prayers, we don’t know what will grow from this seed, and we aren’t trying to control it. We’re trying to put this prayer out into the world, and then step back and listen to what the world says in response.
If some part of this prayer is alive in you as well, if you have witnessed men you love turn away from themselves, if you have hardened towards yourself and struggled to know how to respond to your own suffering in a way that’s beautiful, please join us. We would love to make this prayer with you.