This is the final stage, the crescendo of a man’s life. This is the time of wisdom and fathering others, counseling others: Scripture calls it the “elder at the gates.” This can be a difficult time because it can feel as though your kingdom is shrinking, but in fact this is the time of your greatest influence. Your life experience is flowing over into the world, shaping the lives of young kings coming up in your steps.

Now we come to a fork in the road in the masculine journey, a stage that is both essential and, sadly, often overlooked and bypassed by many men. It is the lover stage. By this I do not primarily mean that time in a young man’s life when he falls in love with a girl. Though that is part of it, I don’t believe it is the core of the stage or even its ultimate expression. Instead, this is the season in a man’s life when his masculine heart is awakened to beauty and ultimately “The Beauty” when he discovers a sacred romance with God.

Men, and boys, learn by doing; we learn through experiences. It’s one thing to be told you have what it takes. It’s another thing altogether to discover that you have what it takes, through some trial brought up in an adventure or through some test that hard work demands. For masculine initiation is not a spectator sport. It is something that must be entered into. It is one part instruction and nine parts experience.

The world in which we live has lost something vital, something core to understanding life and a man’s place in it.  Our way of looking at the world has changed. We no longer live, either as a society or even as the church, with a father-view of the world, a view centered on the presence of a loving and strong father deeply engaged in our lives, to whom we can turn to at any time for the guidance, comfort and provision we need. But this is actually an occasion for hope! Because the life you’ve known as a man is not all there is.