Re: Wild at Heart

 Professor J,

Goodness! It only took you a year and a half to get to the book, why would I have thought you were too busy? Your dietary choices (salsa dog?) may be a topic of discussion in the future, but on to the topic at hand.

I'm a lover and collector of quotes. I also like that Eldredge uses so many of them to illustrate his points and that he uses movies in the same way.  We are drawn to particular stories over and over again for reasons. I'll add a favorite quote of mine from an earlier work of his:

"We are made in the image of God; we carry within us the desire for our true life of intimacy and adventure. To say we want less than that is to lie." ~John Eldredge (The Journey of Desire) 

Given that definition a lot of people have succumbed to living a lie.

The thing that impressed me about the book most from the beginning was his willingness to expose himself and his specific struggles.  There's a certain bravery and willing honesty there that seems born out of a sincere desire to help men navigate their way in a culture which is increasingly hostile to their manhood.

I'd certainly agree with him that our ideas of masculinity and femininity both have been so watered down in many of our churches that the people in them have become, for the most part, a boring dispassionate lot. 

I have to give Eldredge a great deal of credit for making the lives of the men in my life easier (since I first read this book nearly a decade ago) and saving them from the modern female tendency to, if not control, at least manage and manipulate (settle down, girls, it's not like it's a secret). My son has especially benefited from this, unbeknownst to him.  During the last few years while he's been "coming of age" I was able to accept his pulling away as a natural occurrence, a necessary stepping stone on the path from dependent child to independent adult/man. It allowed me to forgo some of the painful feelings mothers often experience when sons do the natural thing, and start to distance themselves from mom.  Our relationship has been strengthened and not weakened (which women fear) by my determination to give him plenty of freedom and his sensing my ever increasing respect of the man he is becoming.

I'm glad to see someone finally write a book wherein men are given permission to be masculine without having to apologize for it all the time. I appreciated his pointing out that our current overly feminized culture has been selling us the idea for years that masculine strength has something inherently bad or wrong in it. I was reminded of some of the discussions among female news anchors immediately following 9/11 during which manliness, courage, and bravery of firefighters and other first responders were praised. I remember thinking at the time that it was strange because they'd all (with the rest of society) been singing a different song (the "oh if we could only get our boys to act more like our girls tune) for years prior.  Eldredge is absolutely correct that we don't want to tame all the fierceness out of our boys...we may need them to defend us (or rescue us) some day.