The Waker of the Dreaming Egg with Pat McCabe

A remix from one of my most popular episodes.

Last weekend, my collaborator Deus Fortier and I completed our second MXM Weekend: Masculinity, Sex, Myth.

It was a powerful and potent exploration of the aforementioned themes, as well as ritual, somatics, play, and much more. (If you’re curious, Deus and I share the experience from our first weekend in the audio episode Awakening The Wild Erotic.)

On the Saturday night we held an ecstatic dance with a mix that I put together: DJ Eon Dusk is my alter ego for these kind of special occasions. I had the impulse to pull an excerpt from one of my Mythic Masculine episodes, Pat McCabe’s Thriving Life & A Prayer for All Men, and combine it with a backing track.

Listen to The Waker of the Dreaming Egg

That conversation was recorded a few years ago, though I remember the day clearly. Snowflakes fell softly as we connected over Zoom, exploring her perspective on grief within Men’s Nation and the tendrils of history and calamity that have led us to this cultural moment.

Near the end, I ask if she would offer a prayer and her offering had us both in tears by the end. To this day, the episode remains one of the most popular, and numerous men (and women) have written me affirming their own tears as well.

I’ve often wondered, why is this so? Why do her words seem to touch the hearts of men?

I believe it’s because men are starving to be blessed.

It may sound counter-intuitive if you believe men are walking around benefiting immensely from the order of things, the top of the patriarchal pyramid. For those men willing to step off the hierarchy, they are confronted over and over with the stamp of “toxic masculinity” with little pathways forward that don’t seem merely compensatory.

There is a deep yearning for men to be blessed, especially by the grandmothers. To be called forward, to be recognized for their rightful place in the village, and the gifts they bring.

Without the village, there are few grandmothers held in such esteem. Nor are the men held in the cultural tapestry that involves an initiation into adulthood, and so are left wandering by a haunting emptiness. Bayo Akomolafe and I touch upon this in the episode These Monsters in Perpetual Exile.

So what’s to be done? Well, “the fix is in deep” as my teacher Stephen Jenkinson often said. Many of us no longer in intact culture’s need to start with the poverty. If the doesn’t sound like much, well, it’s not nothing.

It carries the seeds of the possible. And the dreaming eggs are waiting.