Would You Be A Man?

From the movie Australia

At some point in a boy's life he must leave his mother and enter the company of men. As John Eldredge says, masculinity is imparted to a boy in the company of men.

"The ancient societies believe that a boy becomes a man only through ritual and effort-only through the 'active intervention of older men,'" Bly reminds us. The father or another man must actively intervene, and the mother must let go. Bly tells the story of one tribal ritual, which involves as they all do the men taking the boy away for initiation. But in this case, when he returns, the boy's mother pretends not to know him. She asks to be introduced to "the young man." That is a beautiful picture of how a mother can cooporate in her son's passage to the father's world. (From Wild at Heart by John Eldredge page 67-68)

We live in an age of uninitiated men. We are not sure that we are men because we have not been tested. Most of us are walking around looking for the answer to our question... Am I a man? Do I have what it takes?