My spouse, Andrea DiLorenzo, showed me a Washington Post obituary of the author Sam Keen while we were on a plane to Alabama last week.
I read it with great interest, and returned to it on the way home yesterday, inspired to write out my thoughts and feelings.
I had read Keen’s book on masculinity when it came out in 1991. I was 42 years old, recently married for a second time, and was very involved in a burgeoning men’s movement in the Washington, DC area. Keen spoke to issues much on my mind, specifically how to live a life with creative and empowered integrity while married to a staunch feminist, and espousing feminist ideology myself.
Keen’s main theme was the necessity for all of us to find our true passion for life, our “fire in the belly”. As a would-be liberated man, this meant finding a way to manifest my creative passion in ways that served my God-given soul as well as the soulmates in my family and community.
Joseph Campbell was another inspiration to me during that time. His encouragement to “follow your bliss” helped to steer me back to my deeper soul issues after spending a decade focused on developing a career in IT.
Keen had been a respected academic, like Campbell. He pursued advanced degrees in religious studies and theology and was a university professor before having a mid-life transformation while visiting San Francisco in the late 1960’s. The counter-culture was in full bloom and Campbell wanted to find his own place within it. He did so by devoting himself to writing about the practical application of spiritual experience and insight to his own life and those of his contemporaries.
The venerated TV interviewer, Bill Moyers, interviewed Keen after Fire in the Belly had found its audience in the early 1990’s. I remember that Andrea and I watched that interview with great interest, and shared appreciation.
The following is my own remembrance of Keen’s teaching from Fire in the Belly and from the Moyers’ interview:
“This is about writing your own story, what is most important about your journey. It’s recognizing and letting go of cultural archetypes about masculinity. It’s consciously becoming your own person, so that your daily life reflects what is most important to you. Your life becomes your personal mystical journey.
“You wake up each day with “fire in your belly” because you know what you are seeking and you have a fresh, new day to seek it, and to find it.
“Whatever the ‘content’ of your daily life, whatever your genuine responsibilities are, each day can be an intuitive, creative adventure, in which you can learn by going where you have to go next.”
Sam Keen brought a “keen” spiritual perspective to the topic of masculinity. He knew that a growing man had to continually call upon his deeper, intuitive awareness to meet the demands and the creative possibilities of daily life. He cannot shirk his healthy warrior priority to remain vigilant to the difficult challenges of a meaningful life.
M. Scott Peck had an important message to those of us in the 1980’s who “followed our bliss” at the cost of not attending to the real social and financial demands involved in becoming a mature, grounded, generative adult. “Life is difficult” was his mantra, and it was a truth I really needed to internalize in the middle of my adulthood.
From 1988 well into the new millennium, I actively participated in the “mythopoetic men’s movement” as led by the poet Robert Bly, archetypal psychologist and storyteller Michael Meade, and the English Professor Robert Moore. These three paragons of creative expression structured their teachings about masculinity by articulating four essential male archetypes: King, Warrior, Magician, Lover.
Their “mythopoetic men’s movement” was ridiculed by some critics as a quaint distraction. But to most of us who were involved in it, it was a source of inspiration and of deeper connection with ourselves and other men. It came at a time when my father had been diagnosed with a fatal oral cancer, and it helped me to forgive the past and fully reconcile with him before he died.
The four male archetypes provided a foundational template for me. I learned that a mature man will be able to incarnate and balance all four archetypes during his lifetime. But this work requires ongoing awareness of our deepest needs and desires, balanced by the needs and desires of our family and our community. Transcendence of the individual ego is essential to this process.
I learned that a man of courage and awareness regularly chooses the path of greatest growth opportunity, even when that path initially appears beyond his own personal powers. Surrendering to a higher purpose and a higher Being allows a person to accept his own limitations, even while not being defined by them. Trusting in a Higher Power also provides the inner support and reassurance needed when doubts and fears inevitably arise.
These are guiding truths that I learned from Sam Keen and other kindred spirits of his generation who saw that younger men needed foundational support, guidance and encouragement.
I still participate in a monthly men’s group and continue to be fed and nurtured by the wisdom, creativity, and camaraderie of other men, young and old. At 75 years of age, I find myself the oldest member of our group, and try to hold the place of a supportive and encouraging Elder similar to what I received from soulful, creative teachers like Sam Keen.
John Bayerl
Palm Sunday, 4/12/2025
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