The Masculine Heart

05/24/2023

Dear Men, Brothers All,

You are Beautiful. And you are deeply, deeply Loved.

I realize that so many of you who will read those words and will find them very or even extremely difficult to hear, much less believe. You will balk. You will shy away from them. You will, some of you, not even be able to fathom that these words could realistically be directed at you. They however, are. This is Heart-to-Heart language.
Many of us are dealing with an entire lifetime of self-doubt, self-hatred, a belief that we are "no good," that there is really nothing other than our physical bodies and money and perhaps certain other "skills" that we can offer to the world or to those who play important roles in our lives. We suffer because of this. This is the primary suffering. Our mental health suffers. Our spiritual well-being suffers. Our relationships suffer.

We have been given very strange and challenging messages over the years. We have been taught that our anger, our rage, our ability to be violent, both physically and in all other ways imaginable, our ability to be defensive--are our gifts, what we truly have to offer at the altar of life and interpersonal relationship. We have been lied to in this respect. Deeply, deeply lied to.

We have found it extremely challenging to trust other men. We have been taught to view all other men largely as potential enemies, potential threats, people to challenge, attack, belittle, compete against; combatants in countless imaginary battles and countless wars both real and imagined. This is often first true of our own biological fathers. If we are spared that wound, we are quickly given other men to burn to ash in our quest to not be hurt emotionally, mentally, and in other ways.

Obviously our relationships with other men are not the only casualties in this war, though they often are the most intensive. How can we truly love, appreciate, respect, honor and share the flame of Love with another, if our Hearts have not been broken open--not been shown another way?

All women suffer because of our wounding. So does Mother Gaia and all that emanates from Her.

A New Day, however, is on the Horizon.

The old ways of closed Hearted nihilism are waning. They will no longer serve us. Indeed, they never did. However, now they won't only not serve us, they will engender a fissure that will become more and more difficult to heal if we do not begin this healing in earnest, Now.

Now is the time. It will not be easy. It will not be a joy ride. There will be pain. There will be suffering. However, it will not be the suffering that we have heretofore endlessly endured. It will be a temporary suffering that will be burnished in the fire and transformed by the alchemy of the...Open and Vulnerable and exquisitely Beautiful...Masculine Heart

Welcome Home, Dear Brothers!

Love,

Brother Andre' Maria

Photograph by Valery Poshtarov .poshtarov
Father and Son photo series (Bulgaria)

04/30/2023

Celebrating my friend, Steve Kuehn's ordination to The priesthood and First Mass, this weekend. Amen! Hallelujah!

04/21/2023

https://fb.watch/k1hDlngs7C/

03/31/2023

https://www.tiktok.com/.com/video/7213131558184570118?_d=secCgYIASAHKAESPgo8yrK1EkNq5roeRdxoosku%2Fb5HWxnNyYBvJSEdK%2BMGkUQ1JmVrK5S3DbcF1zvG6nc3KiCcVOQQipF6Q%2FXuGgA%3D&_r=1&checksum=dd7df5f11a7d41e198f9687fbbce1216d69100264029fcf79b458f65049be28e&fbclid=IwAR2ATJuKH1TnoC9IdfaUelGUHITDpD5QCHoZ7-WICkBWQJL6qdLG-icLPSI&preview_pb=0&sec_user_id=MS4wLjABAAAAGSU4Vq6A_Qg00GlvKPzXyYitFKir8JZ8kNdfSs3eTV0TNa8kw3zGBSHB0leRpnGx&share_app_id=1233&share_item_id=7213131558184570118&share_link_id=3BF5E529-7A5C-49E3-B4A8-73FECDEAF58D&sharer_language=en&source=h5_m×tamp=1680184292&tt_from=messenger&u_code=dljea96m2l15e3&ug_btm=b0%2Cb2001&user_id=7031381914833847302&utm_campaign=client_share&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=messenger

“Who Gives A Black Man Permission to Feel” A spoken word by Preston Perry

03/25/2023

This post is posted by Michael...

If you’re lucky, at some point in your life you’ll come to a complete dead end.

Or to put it another way: if you’re lucky you’ll come to a crossroads and see that the path to the left leads to hell, that the path to the right leads to hell, that the road straight ahead leads to hell, and that if you try to turn around you’ll end up in complete and utter hell.

Every way leads you to hell and there’s no way out, nothing left for you to do. Nothing can possibly satisfy you anymore.
Then, if you’re ready, you’ll start to discover inside yourself what you always longed for but were never able to find.

— Peter Kingsley, ‘The Dark Places of Wisdom’

02/05/2023

Breathe in the cold
Exhale the cold
Nothing is as being told
Let love unfold
Breathe in the cold
Exhale the cold
Awaiting is your Soul
Never sold out
Breathe in, breathe out
Baptism is my new exerc ice
Freezing thoughts
Dispersing clouds
Sun comes through
Because of you
Rain pours down
Cause you wear your crown
The Gods are listening
Shivering
Breathe in the cold, exhale the cold
Nothing is as being told
Relax don't do it, if you want to do it
Yet do it all
Breathe in, breathe out
The Cold is a doorway to the Soul
Right here, right now
On my knees for you, I vow
Breathe in, breathe out
Love,

Wim Hof (The Iceman)

01/26/2023

Brother Andre' here.

I'm going to ask a question.

It's the type of question, I have found, for some reason, in many situations and circumstances, is really challenging to get a lot of different types of people to answer. Yes, I am going to ask it anyway. Because I find it's just a really fundamental question for people to answer, when I take into consideration what I would like to do with this page. So... Men...

What are the ONE, TWO or THREE main or biggest or most important (to you) or most burning issues/things/concerns/questions...about life as a man, in 2023 you would like for me to address here, on this page?

Thank you!

01/21/2023

I've interacted with an extremely and intensely diverse group of men, in this lifetime. Some of this was intentional. Some not. I have loved them all. Even if I did not like them all...

In the early to mid-2000's, I was heavy, heavy into "the biker lifestyle." I have absolutely no regrets.

At that time, I was already deeply engaged as a Sacred Masculine teacher and mentor. And also being involved in the biker world added significantly, to my gaining a deeper understanding of the totality of the kinds of men that exist in the world. There are some...some Sacred Masculine teachers and such, who have *never* veered outside of the academic and ivory towers of Sacred Masculine study and application. I knew, from the very beginning, this would *never* be my fate.

I've done Sacred Masculine training's at top tier universities and corporations. However, I've also done them, informally, within the biker world, within the martial arts world, within the street fighting world (bareknucle boxing world), among homeless men in major American cities, in Europe with people who just barely resided within legal confines, etc. In many of those cases, I obviously was not standing on a stage and talking. Most times, I was simply mixing among men in those worlds and paying very close attention to the interactions, etc. And learning how to interact with those men. It was a deep and steep education.

For several years I made a trip to Europe---mostly The UK, France, Belguim. In those countries I was mostly socializing with men, just on the edge of regular people. Many lived in of all kinds of underground cultures. Quite an education.

Photos.

1. Fred and me (and Fred's dog) are in Brussels, Belguim...Grand Place, in one photo. Fred was one of these men living on the edge. So much so he rarely let a picture be taken of him with his face showing.

2. One man I stayed with in Europe had a piano. I took off my rings one time as I got ready for bed and I placed my rings on the piano keys. He rearranged them. And he took a picture of them. Obviously, this was a time when I was deeply in the biker world. I wore rings on every finger, including my thumbs. But even then, I still wore a few rings that represented my spiritual life. One of those rings say Om Mani Padme Om, in Sanskrit!

3. I've interacted with groups of men where there was a "code of silence." There are things I know about those men's activities that I will absolutely take to my grave. Yes. Or I'll likely end up in an early grave myself.

4. It would be very challenging for me to identify some "type of man" who I have not availed myself to interacting very deeply with. Sometimes I was even disgusted with some of these men's activities. If they wished to get out of the lifestyle they were in, I assisted them.

01/19/2023

A well-loved and Beloved lay Franciscan brother has joined the ancestors:

Following text by Dennis Duene Ruiz:

Funeral of Fratel Biagio Conte, a lay missionary who lived among the poorest of the poor in the Sicilian City of Palermo. Born into a wealthy family, he left everything at the age of 26, as a hermit and pilgrim he imitated Saint Francis of Assisi.

He founded the "Mission of Hope and Charity" in 1993, which assists and houses more than 600 homeless and migrants in a dozen of structures.

*Around 10,000 mourners* are present in the Funeral Mass (live streaming in Arcidiocesi di Palermo) in the Cathedral of Palermo.
“How can a city be without God?” (fratel Biagio)

“It’s fratel Biagio who asks us to become SANTI SUBITO: we follow his examples” (Mons. Lorefice)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Following text by John L. Allen, Jr.
cruxnow.com

On Jan. 12, a Catholic layman named Biagio Conte, better known as “Fratel Biagio,” died in his native Palermo in Sicily at the age of 59, after a long battle against colon cancer.

The son of an upper middle class family, Biagio attended private schools and entered the family construction business until he was seized by a profound spiritual crisis in 1990. At first he went off into the mountains to live like a hermit, then set off on foot for a pilgrimage from Palermo to Assisi, a distance of almost 700 miles, in search of inspiration from St. Francis.

Having lost touch and fearing the worst, at one point his family went on an Italian missing persons TV program called Chi l’ha visto? to appeal for news, compelling Biagio to go on the show live to apologize.

Upon his return to Palermo, he began begging around the central train station to raise funds to care for the homeless persons who congregate there. Out of those efforts developed the “Mission of Hope and Charity,” a sprawling outreach ministry which today embraces three separate facilities in Palermo, collectively serving around 800 persons and 2,400 meals every day, as well as offering shelter, hot showers and basic medical care.

When Pope Francis visited Palermo in 2018, he had lunch at one of the mission’s centers, spending time with the homeless who ate there and with Conte.

While Conte never sought political or ecclesiastical power, he was adept at holding the powerful to account. More than once he organized protests, including his own lengthy hunger strikes, to demand that city officials step up their efforts on behalf of the poor.

For years, Conte was forced to use a wheelchair to get around Palermo because of crippling pain in his legs. In 2014 he traveled to the famed healing shrine of Lourdes and, after immersing himself in its waters, regained the ability to walk. The Archdiocese of Palermo would later declare that doctors “were unable to furnish a scientifically plausible explanation” for his recovery, effectively declaring it a miracle.

“While everyone else in his generation was shouting ‘God is dead,’ he turned his gaze to heaven to see God, that merciful and compassionate God who, in the end, he found in the poor, in migrants, in those who’ve lost everything, including hope,” an admirer once said of Conte.

“He walked, he rejoiced, he sang, he suffered, like St. Francis, who showed him the way.”

For additional posts on Fratel Biagio, please see my Friar Andre' Maria personal page. Thank You! Blessings!