Wild At Heart

Madame M:

Here you were thinking, “this guy is so busy he doesn’t have any time for that book I recommended.” Nay, fair blogqueen! I have read it with relish (and not just the stuff that was on the salsa dog I shouldn’t have eaten!). As you said, a lively discussion would follow (after the book, not the hotdog), and so it begins!

Here are my thoughts on John Eldredge’s book “Wild at Heart,” in not enough order:

Like Eldredge, I moved from LA too (an Air Force assignment). Too much asphalt, smog, strip malls, and crime for me.

His writings on the warrior brought to mind the book, “Once a Warrior, Always Wired,” that was recommended to us after we got back from deployment. It is definitely too true that one is never quite the same… And there are few male bonds like a band of “brothers” who’ve gone through something. We don’t need more of that kind of trauma, but we do need more of the adventuristic, to form those bonds. Men want them all their life. Ever observed how men, especially older men, talk about their medical travails like battle wounds?

Eldredge risks being simplistic in a fair number of places. He does bring a lot of imagery to his writing, and I do like much of it, although by no means all of it. He has lively and interesting interpretation in many places.

I do like a lot of the quotes he mentions:
“All men die; few ever really live.” From Braveheart. That’s a good one.

“Forgiveness is setting a prisoner free. And then discovering the prisoner was you.” Anon

“Don’t wait until you feel like forgiving; you will never get there.” Neil Anderson

“Whatever is denied cannot be healed” Brennan Manning

“The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.” Albert Schweitzer

“He begins to die, that quits his desires.” George Herbert

“Say a prayer for the Pretender
Who started out so young and strong
Only to surrender”
Jackson Browne, The Pretender

“The place where God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Frederick Buechner

And some of Eldredge’s own (some are paraphrased):

“Life is not a problem to be solved, it is an adventure to be lived.”

“Life lived in fear is no life at all. Every last one of you will die some day.”

“The world is screwed up. Let people feel the weight of who you are and let them deal with it.” (I think he got this one from someone else though; my notes are jumbled)

I can see how many American males, especially church-going ones, are not very appealing to females, even church-attending ones themselves. Eldredge’s questions for females about them--“Make you bored? Scare you with doctrinal Nazism? Scream because he’s so nice?”--seem spot on to me.

I agree with him nearly completely on how wonky the male condition has become. We do get, in their lost inadequacy and blank frustration, a lot of violent men or passive men, two extremes. And I do agree that much of that violence is a cover for fear.

I also agree that men become posers too much. We pretend to know more, be more, have it together more, far more than we really do. Remember when I said that at some level, we are all still 10 years old inside and wanting/needing our parents [including perhaps our celestial one(s)]? While that applies I believe to both males and females, it is particularly taxing on males, because we aren’t SUPPOSED TO want/need our parents very much once we become “adults.” After all, we’re supposed to be total men at that stage.