Western man has not been good at being patriarchal for quite some time. We would need to go back half a millennium or more before we would begin to approach an epoch where our patriarchy existed, let alone was strong and adept. The many historical upheavals of the last five hundred years; the French revolutions, the Enlightenments, the rise of Protestantism, the throwing down of kings, the beginning domination of the mercantile class, the closing of the commons; all of these had root in our turning away from patriarchy.
The easiest way to measure this is to examine the symptom of how women began to take a deciding hand in our affairs. How they began to influence their menfolk to do their bidding. They are not the root cause of the problem; as I stated, merely a symptom. But a very strong indication nonetheless.
The root cause was the gradual erosion of our spiritual selves. As men embraced the tactile and became more of this world, so too did the descent from a harmonious understanding of our role within a spiritual context. Today, spirituality, real spirituality, is alien to us. We do not even understand the beginnings of such a journey, and so we approach it, like everything that we do, with our heads.
But it is in our hearts where we must begin.
This is not some new age, airy fairy, get in touch with your inner self nonsense. This is a heart borne awareness that there exists an all encompassing spiritual realm; that we are cut off from it due to the inaction of those who came before us and of our own failure to act; that this spiritual realm is our true birthright and far more important and powerful than anything we can achieve in a physical sense.
Your awareness of the spiritual world, your conviction that to enter it is your destiny, that right there is your personal relationship with God. And a personal relationship cannot be adjudicated or bartered for, as if one were haggling over the price of fish at a market stall. It must be cultivated by a deep sense of love and a commitment to embracing all that God has to offer. To becoming His instrument in this world and in the next.
But you cannot think your way to such an outcome. As with everything, you must act. Prayer is our action. And you must practice if you want to improve. You would hardly expect to take up an unfamiliar musical instrument and immediately be proficient. So why would prayer be any different? You must practice prayer every day. The structure of prayer will give you the foundation upon which your heart can build.
This is why the daily Rosary is so valuable. You practice and practice until you reach a point where you can recite the entire Rosary from memory. Then you begin to build on that knowledge. You talk with God, you express gratitude to Him for all of the gifts that He has bestowed upon you, you ask Him for greater perseverance in gladly accepting the trials which He will send your way so that your spirit may be forged in the fires of the world so that you will be worthy to stand beside Him at the final reckoning.
Or you can take out a loan for that new car.
Prayer must become you. You need to reach a point where it simply is not possible for you to neglect your prayer for a single day because such an eventuality would simply be unacceptable. To you. You begin to understand the great responsibility that this life has given you, and so you do not want to sin because to do so would disappoint God, and such an outcome would set you back and undo so much of what you had achieved in His name.
The great discipline of prayer is the essence of patriarchy because you are aligning yourself to God. To Him. A strong man that other men aspire to be, that other men hold up as a worthy example and as a leader, such a man is a spiritual man first and foremost. Nothing can come before that. All of us have that potential. The question is whether or not you will commit to it, to have the patience and perseverance necessary to open your heart and become whole. To have that loyalty to God and to His works. You embrace God’s laws not because you are forced to do so, not because you made a deal, but rather because you want it to be so. That is what it means to come from the heart.
The patriarchal man is disciplined in prayer.
Originally published at Pushing Rubber Downhill. You can purchase Adam’s books here.