Ceremony is embedded in our bones. It is an integral part of our human inheritance. It has been woven through our DNA for thousands of years. And yet, it is lost in the culture that we currently live in. Of course, we have ceremonies: graduation ceremonies, weddings, celebrations of birth, life passages, and death. But the ceremonies that we have in our current way of life are secularized and stripped of their sacred essence. When we step into ceremonial spaces, it evoke

The last week has been tinged with the sorrow, outrage, and hatred that masks itself as self-righteous indignation over the horrific attacks in Paris. It has come up with a few of my clients. It alternates between a slow-burning seething pain and a flaring, almost overwhelming rage. Why the violence? Why do so many people feel justified in taking the lives of innocents in the name of their ideology, as a response to their wounding? Why do we stand by while this happens?

One of the things that I’ve noticed over the course of my work is that men are afraid of stepping out of conventional ideas of strength and into the fire of their own wounds. It is a bit ironic, actually. To do deep psychological and spiritual work takes a lot of courage. Definitely much more courage than pretending that nothing fazes you. But our social structure has for generations taught men that the only appropriate outward display of emotion is anger, if even that. I