Working Papers
Personal
December 7, 1971
INTRODUCTION
A mood combining elements of urgency and awe as we
approach the questions of male and female roles stems from the
painful consciousness that, in our own period, something of the
gift of each sex has been lost to history. If we raise the ontological
questions, asking what constitutes the uniqueness of the experience
of the male and female through their struggle with life, we shall
reopen the possibility of claiming for the future the gifts out
of the depths of consciousness that each has to give in creating
the emerging civilization. This ontological approach assumes that
the life struggle one goes through produces an unrepeatable perspective
on reality which. when released creatively, enriches the corporate
consciousness. The critical issue for us, as we move towards recreating
the social montage of images of femininity and masculinity, is
to ensure that the depths of consciousness, both from the male
and the female perspectives, inform those images, so that men
and women in the future may be released to celebrate their specialness
within the wide range of human style. The life struggle for both
sexes is conditioned by physiological, cultural and experiential
factors, at the same time it involves directly relating the self
to the mystery, a relationship best pointed to in the images.
The interaction of these conditioning factors in the midst of
an unconditional stance of the self before God produces the qualities
of consciousness, or the modes of perceiving reality, predominant
in men and women.
CONDITIONING FACTORS IN THE WOMAN'S LIFE STRUGGLE
The woman's life struggle is powerfully conditioned
by the child-carrying physiology. Culturally she is habituated
to images of continuity, formed in ordering, forming and
preserving values. Her fundamental experience of herself is as
the Other, as participant in the human journey from the
unarticulated metaphors of the interior deeps rather than through
the mainstream of the literary idiom, which has always used the
pronoun "he" to hold the human as well as the masculine
experience. She relates herself directly to the mystery out of
her deeps and stands as the priestess at the altar, calling
upon God for his latest revelation, expecting its inevitable surprise
which requires the shattering of past images. The Divine rapes
her; and her religious mood is awe.
THE FEMININE MODE OF PERCEPTION
The feminine mode of perception which results from
the woman's life struggle emphasizes the particular. Just
as she carries one child at a time and relates to it emotionally
as a unique personality long before she experiences its human
form, her tendency in responding to events is first in terms of
their momentousness, their separate significance, rather than
in terms of their sequentialness or their implications for the
future. Her vision is predominantly aesthetic, seeing first the
beauty or inherent worthiness of objects, and only secondarily
their usefulness, relating them to other objects and a task. Her
knowing is primarily intuitive, recognizing what is familiar first,
that in acknowledging the depths, the meaningfulness of events,
persons, objects, rather than their ordinariness or their location
in relation to others. For the feminine perception the individual
contains and represents the whole: to grasp the universal is to
plumb the particular to the bottom.
CONDITIONING FACTORS IN THE MAN'S LIFE STRUGGLE
The man's life struggle is conditioned by his sperm
implanting physiology. His cultural habit is that of discontinuity,
forged out of the necessity to separate himself from every
preceding generation. He experiences himself as the subject
of activity in time, not participating in, but initiating history;
he is the articulated, the form-giver in creating the consensus
of an era's consciousness. He relates to the mystery as co-creator,
standing alone, his fist in the fact of God, demanding that the
future be new. He assaults the Divine; and his religious mood
is audacity.
THE MASCULINE MODE OF PERCEPTION
The masculine mode of perception which springs from
the man's struggle stresses the gestalt. Inasmuch as he
ejaculates seed to engender children and conceptualizes sons and
daughters before he experiences the personhood of a child, he
tends to respond to patterns in events rather than to their separate
meanings. His vision is rationally abstract, interrelating
events and observing their implications, or weighing the usefulness
of objects before appreciating inherent meaning or value. His
knowing happens through positing models and testing them
over against the bombardment of other realities, so that he is
always seeking the commonness among disparate entities, manipulating
their relationships rather than probing them for revelation. For
the masculine perception, the whole bestows existence and meaning
upon the individual: to describe the universal is to understand
the particular.
MALE/FEMALE ONTOLOGY: THE PRIMORDIAL IMAGES
INTRODUCTION:
Within the pre-mythological intuitions of most of
the world's cultures are powerful patterns of images which hold
in only partly articulated form the culture's primordial awareness
of distinct male and female forces operating in the creative process.
These images merit serious attention for, because they are pre-rational,
they speak more powerfully and with more complexity what every
man knows or can know about sexuality as the creative principle.
What illuminates the transestabishment vision in these images
is their common trinitarian paradigm; with amazing consistency
cosmic forces are personified as male and female, shown in perpetual
conflict over against one another, saved from self-serving perversion
or cataclysmic destruction only by their mutual engagement in
bringing to be the future. The Christian imagery that marriage
signifies the mystical union between Christ and his Church is
a late formula resting on eons of intuition that the male and
female forces receive their meaning in history only when their
primary vow is to God; that is, that their interrelating is possible
in freedom only when it is on behalf of creating the future out
of the movements of the destinal powers, rather than to each other.
THE YIN/YANG: PARADOXICAL REALITY
The Chinese Yin/Yang symbol is so all-embracing that
it celebrates reality itself as paradox. The Chinese identified
the Yin/Yang as an emblem of Tao, the way of life itself, wherein
all opposing forces in the universe, especially the male and female
principles, are held so that their irreconcilable tension is not
only acknowledged but embraced as food. The two halves of the
Yin/Yang do not resolve into harmony. Rather they participate
in another whole new form, different in nature and qualities from
either Yin or Yang. It is no accident but a deep grasp of ontology
that the Chinese call the outer circle of the symbol "the
World Egg".
THE SEA/SUN: COSMIC FORCES
Imagery of the Sea and the Sun figures in the mythology
of origins and frequently portrays feminine and masculine creative
modes. The female Sea is swirling chaos, formless and ever-changing,
brimming with energy, unpredictable, deep beyond measure. As a
malevolent force, it threatens to flood and drown the universe.
The Sun follows a predictable course in the heavens, is constant,
luminous, piercing, intense. In its destructive potency, it threatens
to burn and consume. Not coincidence but intuition of the human
deeps leads to the primordial images of the final destruction
in the form of fire and flood. Yet myths of origin rely upon the
creative harnessing of the powers of the Sea and the Sun as the
source of life itself. Indeed, in our contemporary explanation
of life on earth, the first living matter was created in the interaction
of sea water and sunlight upon inert matter.
THE GREAT MOTHER/DYING SON: GENERATIVE PARADIGMS
A great number of mythological fragments relating
to the process of social continuity contain images of the Great
Mother and the Dying Son. These archetypes underlie the mythological
personages of Isis and Osiris, Kali and Vishnu, Orpheus and Eurydice,
the recently Mary and Jesus. The stories refer to a process of
social generativity, productivity of the means of life, or the
reconstitution of the realm. Whether she appears as Earth Mother,
Queen or Love Goddess, the female image represents the eternal
ongoing rhythm of life and death. The male figures, usually dramatized
as Kings, demi-gods, or artisam inventors, follow a cyclical life
pattern of death and rebirth or resurrection. They represent the
singular risk necessary for creating the new generation, the new
crop, the new social order, and they dramatize the necessity of
death as the price. In every version, the female counterpart is
both that which requires the death of the male and that which
calls him again into life. The image represents the domestication
of masculine and feminine forces, for the pattern of their relationship
yields the fruit of the earth.
THE DARK/LIGHT: SENSORY MODALITIES
Imagery of darkness and light has frequently held
the feminine and masculine contributions to human intellect. Pushed
back to their ontological bases, they indicate sensory modes that
correspond with intuitive and rational approaches to perception.
Feminine images are associated with the dark, with unknown powers,
with access to the Mystery. Nietzsche's Dionysiac elements in
the creative process are predominantly feminine. Masculine images
collect around the light, intellectual clarity, the realm of Ideal
Forms, and are held in Nietzsche's scheme by the Appolonian side
of creativity. Operating together, these masculine and feminine
intellectual approaches yield wisdom.
THE SOCIOLOGICAL DYNAMICS: THE CLASSICAL MYTHS
INTRODUCTION:
Cultural commonness evolves out of elaborate myths
which give form to the style of participation of the male and
female creative principles in the sociological dynamic. In the
Western heritage, two primary streams of mythology bear these
images: the Hebrew and the Greek. These systems of mythology represent
a hard won consensus born out of ancient intuitions and selectively
hammered out into a kind of cultural canon, giving lasting form
to the deepest sensitivities of our race. If we examine two main
sources, the Hebrew story of Deborah and the Odyssey of
Homer, analysis shows that both masculine and feminine styles
of engagement in history include a continuous and discontinuous
element; and further reveals that the discontinuous male appears
in relationship with the continuous female; while the discontinuous
female appears in relation to the continuous male. To diagram
this relationship, the wedgeblade is a helpful image, for these
myths contain the dynamic of the emergence of the Not Yet out
of the No Longer.
In the two myths, the discontinuous one stands in
the vision of the Not Yet and calls the continuous one to engagement
in serving the emerging new order. The contribution of the discontinuous
posture, whether male or female, is an illumination of consciousness.
The contribution of the continuous posture is the preservation
and rearrangement of the social order so that it may incorporate
the new vision and give it form. Between these two dynamics is
the total expenditure of life, or the election to the cross. Both
postures participate in this.
THE RESTLESS VOYAGER
In the Odyssey, the masculine principle is
the Restless Voyager, the discontinuous element, creating the
new within the sociological dynamic. Odysseus, as the Audacious
Explorer, journeys for twenty years. venturing on every shore,
whether friendly or hostile. As the Visionary Schemer, he plots
his way out of every entrapment that threatens to lure him from
his destination. As the Prophetic Forerunner, he ventures into
undiscovered territory, charting out new lands. Finally, as the
Homeless Wanderer, he represents a style of detachment as he obeys
the prophecy and abandons his homeland.
THE WEAVER QUEEN
The discontinuous style of the Restless Voyager calls
forth the continuous style of the Weaver Queen. Penelope remains
in Ithaca during the twenty years of Odysseus's travels. As the
weaver of the fabric of life, she represents the shaper of fate,
the creator of the cultural patterns and social relationships.
She stands as her own woman, independent of her husband, yet refusing
to accept a dependent role in the home of her father or any of
her suitors. She constructs her own schemes, weaving her tapestry
during the day, and unweaving it at night, cleverly postponing
the day of its completion, when she has agreed to choose a new
husband. In her solitude and long-suffering patience, she endures
all. As the Sovereign of the kingdom in her husband's absence,
she maintains the realm.
THE ORACULAR PRIESTESS
In the Hebrew story of Deborah, the discontinuous
posture occurs in the feminine form of the Oracular Priestess.
Deborah discerns the divine judgment and declares to Barak, the
Hebrews' military leader, that the Will of the Lord is for him
to lead his mean into battle. She calls Barak to venture in to
this particular action and names the appropriate time. Here she
parallels the Greek Sybil, or the figure of Cassandra in the Iliad,
as the one who articulates the demand or doom of God, the primordial
"nun" who serves first the Mystery, but she also embodies
the perpetual seductress, luring the male into the next phases
of history. Finally, Deborah rides beside Barak into battle as
his companion in arms, and creates the song of triumph celebrating
their victory.
THE WARRIOR KING
The Warrior King, the masculine posture of continuity
is the sociological dynamic, is visible more or less completely
in the figures of Barak, Agamemnon, Oedipus and Theseus. He is
the fighter against or on behalf of the gods, the one who stakes
his life on being able to bend history. As the Embattled Ruler,
he risks his kingdom in one crucial action, and in some myths,
emerges as the inevitably defeated "Marked Man". Blind
Oedipus at Colonnus best represents this but Jonah, Cain, and
Agamemnon are others. This one whom God has broken often appears
as the chosen one. A homeless exile, he is nevertheless loved
of God, and represents the unavoidable contingency of human participation
in history. When he is the victor, as in the Barak story, the
Warrior King is the defender of the realm, the one who re-establishes
the kingdom.
MALE/FEMALE ONTOLOGY: THE HISTORICAL ARENA
INTRODUCTION:
As we look at the male and female principles from
a historical perspective, we are interested in only one thing:
how human creativity happens in history. That is held in this
trinitarian model:
THE DYNAMICS OF THE MALE AND FEMALE PRINCIPLES IN HISTORY
The male and female principles are opposing, yet
complementary, modalities. Out of the creative tension of these
principles, life is born and history is created. At every sociological
level, from the individual to the community and from the Ur to
the globe, it is the interaction and interplay of the male and
female principles that births human creativity. Thus the male
and female principles can never be reduced to men and women.
From the creative tension of the male and female
principles emerges the vitality of history in the invention of
new sociological forms and the embodiment of new consciousness.
When one principle dominates, the vitality of history is blocked.
The dominance of the female principle results in individual withdrawal
or social stagnation. The dominance of the male principle issues
in the style of the bully or social tyranny. The emergence of
the vitality of history is exemplified by the tension between
the earliest matriarchal societies and the forces of the patriarchy
giving birth to civilization. Likewise the embodiment of the female
principle in Judaic culture, held in tension by the early church
with the masculine principle represented in Hellenic civilization,
gave birth to the social vehicle of Christendom. The dominance
of the female principle may be illustrated by the political stagnation
of the medieval period; while the dominance of the male principles
is demonstrated in the economic tyranny of the Industrial Revolution.
COLLAPSE OF MALE/FEMALE ROLES
In our time, the collapse of male and female roles
has raised anew the question of the male and female principles.
The "provider" role of the man has collapsed with the
end of the equating of vocation with achievement. The attempt
to escape or withstand the collapse in hobbies, sports, or sexual
adventurism leads man only to the awareness that finally no thing
is worth his time. The woman, in attempting to assume the provider
role, has followed man into an arena already void of meaning.
She reacts either in housewifery or women's liberation protest.
But finally she sees that no one role gives her significance,
and both men and women are clear that the question is no longer
one of roles. The total collapse of the attempt to hold the uniqueness
of the male and female in specific roles has exposed the depth
ontological struggle. Men and women are in a vocational gap, pushing
the question of roles to the bottom in terms of authentic style.
TRANSPARENT VOCATION AS AUTHENTIC STYLE
Men and women have on their hands only one question:
How does my being create the future; how will I turn my life into
creative expenditure? In terms of the female principle, the question
may be phrased relative to how I use my seductiveness to call
forth new life or of how I stand present to the voice of God in
history. Pulled through the male principle, the question emerges
as: How will I thrust my inventiveness into history on behalf
of all, or how will I dare to create the new face of God.
NEW SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
The ontological struggle of the male and female principles
has entered a new phase in our day. The man is raising for the
first time the self-conscious question of the male principle.
Throughout history, man has assumed that to talk about humanness
was to talk about maleness. The female revolution has made conscious
that the human is both male and female, and he is newly engaged
in forging out his own separate consciousness. In the new context
of the man's struggle. the woman is released to re-appropriate
her own uniqueness, to see it as a gift to history rather than
a social limitation. She is re-engaged in the ontological struggle.
For the first time in history, authentic partnership of man and
woman is possible. The male gift to the female in the midst of
this is to call her out of herself, to push her from focusing
on the personal to engaging in the sociological. The female gift
to the male, from her history-long struggle with female ontology,
is to call the man to join in recreating the deeps.
CONCLUSION: FUTURE MYTH
Men and women together must create the new myths
of male and female that will speak to the collapse of the male
and female roles in our time, and will hold the new state of the
ontological struggle. Only thus will the authentic creativity
of both male and female be released to build the new earth.
What myths would hold for us today the male and female
as the primordial images and classical myths did? Whatever myths
are created
1) They must hold the archaic, for only spinning
on the primordial images and myths pushes to the futuric and prevents
the reduction of male/female ontology to the assignment of specific
role-tasks;
2) They must be evocative holding power for
each sex, calling forth rather than prescribing, enabling offering;
3) They must be collegial, embodying the partnership
of the male and female in missional engagement, pointing to the
corporate creation of the future.