While we hear much of the difficulties of being a woman in the western world today, rarely, if ever, do we hear of the difficulties of being a man. Difficulties there most certainly are, though, not least among them being that while humans have understood for millennia that there is a spiritual side to life that demands we take personal development seriously, today, we act as though that weren’t the case.
This issue is perhaps more pronounced for modern men than it is for women, as seemingly endless discussions rumble on about whether this or that male role model is finally the one to guide men out of their natural darkness into the light.
However, some men in Ireland have taken matters into their own hands and seek to revive old ways and wisdoms that were employed by people in every time and place to try to ensure that boys could reliably become men, and that men who were struggling could find their feet again.
Speaking to Gript, volunteer with MALES (Men As Learners And Elders) Ireland, Alan McCarthy is keen to tell men of every shape and size who feel adrift and aimless in these oft-alienating times that there are others taking their searchings and questionings seriously. Their organisation, started by famed US Franciscan and author, Fr Richard Rohr, has its roots in Judeo-Christian spirituality and began in the 90s.
“It’s been running since the 90s, started in Ghost Ranch in Texas and now it’s in many different countries in the world and the way it spread was people went to the one in America and thought, “I want this for my own country, this is brilliant,” and tried to take it back,” Mr McCarthy tells me.
Having spread to almost 10 countries, “it’s very, very grassroots the way it spread,” he says.
“The Americans will generally help out in new countries to set it up. It’s been running now for 25 years, I think we’ve got tens of thousands of men have ‘initiated’ in the programme and we’ve spread to almost 10 countries.”
“Initiated,” into what, exactly? Well, masculinity, Mr McCarthy says. MALES Ireland has been running retreats for men for some time now, days-long outings into the heart of the Irish landscape that they might find the silence and space to reconnect with themselves, each other and the wide world they find themselves in.
They do this as part of their ‘Rites’ (as in, of passage), which involves a five day process incorporating many elements of traditional practice such as drumming, ritual, fire, silence, small groups, wilderness, solo-time, teaching and more. Mr McCarthy tells me that thousands of men have taken part in Ireland and around the world.
“The retreats are a couple of days and they involve time out in nature, many rituals and ceremonies and much time sharing in circles,” he says. Much of the time is spent in “groups of maybe five or six men and sharing from a deep place in the heart is a powerful part of the experience of the retreat”.
“There’s quite a lot of flash and flair to a lot of elements at the retreat. I don’t want to spoil too much,” he says, laughing.
He knows of what he speaks. Mr McCarthy took part in one of the retreats himself in 2021, a time when many people’s lives were sufficiently disrupted by the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns to enable deeper questions to rise to the fore. He began to volunteer after this, and was involved in giving the retreat itself just last year.
“I had a beautiful experience, actually. When I joined and did the retreat in 2021 and then I joined the team to volunteer, so I was helping run it in 2023, so I received the ritual manual, which was maybe a 60-page document explaining all the rituals, the reasoning behind them, the stories underlying them and I actually sat on the ground and I just wept because I’d done the rituals and some of them were deeply impactful, some I didn’t quite get, but when I was reading back over the level of detail and the beauty that was actually in these rituals – all of these elements that I didn’t quite get at the time, but when I saw the reasoning behind them then two years later and I remembered back to what my experience was, I just couldn’t believe the power.
“I literally fell on the floor and cried. It’s very, very carefully crafted and detail crafted in order to case away these egoic structures that make you think you’re a big shot when in reality you’re not,” he says.
However, whereas the retreats are normally aimed at men across the country, this year, they’re offering for the first time the opportunity for young men to get involved. The Young Men’s Rites of Passage is for, as their website says, all men who feel like this world built around “materialism, consumerism and mindless distraction” has left them wanting.
“The age group for the young men will be 18 to 28, and it’ll be similar [to the men’s retreat] in the sense that there’s an overall structure to them and they’re designed day by day to invite men to discover new parts of themselves and new parts of reality. The focus for the 18 to 28 is it’s a lot more physically challenging. There’s less given to the men, less comforts and less niceties. This is also a big focus on guidance, with a higher level of emotional support there, while also a greater level of physical expectation.”
“For example, without saying too much there’s one particular ceremony that’s done out in nature and it’s a very, very intense challenge out in nature for these young men. It’s a really, really proud achievement, you find it harkening back to, you know, what you might find in these ancient tribes, men would have done two or three days where they were fighting a lion or putting their hands into gloves with fire ants so that they experience the pain. That would have been a major part of these initiation ceremonies in the past, a real, threatening physical challenge,” he says.
“Now, obviously, we can’t do that in the west for all sorts of reasons and then, two, we don’t really want to do that, we don’t want to put men in severe danger or cause them severe harm, but we want to emulate that sort of intense experience of doing something really, really challenging and profound and wonderful in the wilderness.
“The nature challenge, for example, for young men is a really, really cool, intense one, and I think anybody would come back from that feeling really proud.”
The retreat website describes such practices as “lost to men in the west”.
“For millennia, men across almost every human culture would undergo initiation into adulthood. It’s a tradition that has been lost to men in the west. Without initiation, many men find themselves wrestling with questions of identity, morality, and power—difficulties which, if not resolved in healthy ways, can cause profound damage to individual men, their loved ones, and others around them,” it reads.
Mr McCarthy says that he’s seen the benefits in his own life and in the lives of those other men who’ve taken part in the programme, describing it as “incredible”.
“It’s incredible when you see the transformation in the men from before and after. I was able to speak to my own transformation when I did the retreat in 2021. When I was volunteering in 2023, it was so much clearer to see how people changed.
“I remember there was one man in particular who, you could tell he just felt, his entire body language was almost like an apology. ‘I’m sorry I’m here, I’m not quite worthy to be here,’… He wouldn’t speak whenever he was called upon, or ask questions. He was just quintessentially shy and unconfident and seeing him as the retreat progressed on, just sort of come up and give a giant, big hug and say, ‘Thank you,’ and be proud of who he was. It was incredible.
“It was such a clear example in the body language alone. I’ve known people to change their life structure afterwards. They look and get back to their lives and realise they’ve been in a career that they’re chasing all these ideas about themselves and they no longer hold those ideas to be true, nor do they particularly care, so they start moving into a more sustainable type of life, maybe more focused on free time and more focused on life in nature and so on…so they move into something a little more natural,” he says.
Mr McCarthy says that two main types of men have availed of their retreats in the past, but insists that they’re open to all men regardless: “people who are looking for something deeper, in that kind of way of knowing there’s more to life, to reality, and then these men who are seeking guidance from other men to go deeper into their emotions and their hearts.”
He sums it up as saying that he doesn’t know how better to put it other than that “people enter the retreat as boys and they leave as men”.
For those men aged 18-28 who are interested in knowing more or in taking part in the upcoming retreat, Mr McCarthy says that it takes place from Wednesday, July 24 to Sunday July 28 at Slí an Chroí in Kiltegan, Co. Wicklow. The cost is €595, but bursaries are available for those who may struggle with the amount. More information can be found at www.youngmensritesireland.ie and at www.malesireland.ie