In our men’s spirituality work, we call that suffering, in its transformed state, “the sacred wound,” a concept drawn from classical mythology, but also from the Christ story. In mythology, the would-be hero is always wounded. The word innocent (innocens, “not yet wounded”) is not a complimentary term in mythology. The puer is the young boy who refuses to be wounded, or, more exactly, refuses to recognize and suffer the wounds that are already there. He’s just going to remain nice and normal, so everybody will accept him. In our culture, he might smugly remain white and middle class, healthy,
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