• Article Tools
• Print
• RSS

As Much Trouble We're Ever Going to Be In

by Christian Huebner 

How does a man know when he is a man? 

Recently I paid a visit to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, whose forte is an account of the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944.  There were any number of elaborate displays featuring generals, heads of state, and grand strategy maps. 

Of all the exhibits in the museum, though, what caught my attention most was a single small placard containing the recollection of Private Leonard Gritting, a paratrooper who jumped behind enemy lines in France the night before the main attack:

I looked at my watch and it was 12:30.  When I got into the doorway, I looked out into what looked like a solid wall of tracer bullets.  I said to myself, “Len, you’re in as much trouble now as you’re ever going to be in. If you get out of this, nobody can ever do anything to you that you ever have to worry about!”

That last line surprised me, and yet made all the sense in the world: somehow Gritting knew that surviving his ordeal would mean more than merely the chance to live more years.  If he looked death straight in the eyes, and if he survived, then he would have a different kind of life altogether.  In a metaphysical, if not physical, sense he would be bulletproof. 

I was reminded of a story my priest told, a legend about an American Indian rite of passage.  When the time came for a boy to assume his place as a man, his father would take him deep into the wilderness, to a certain clearing with an old stump in the middle.  The father would blindfold his son, seat him upon the stump, and tell him to stay there all night, not removing the blindfold until he could see the light of dawn breaking through.  On one occasion, the blindfolded boy obeyed the instructions and listened to the terrifying sounds of the forest all night.  When morning came he removed the blindfold.  The first thing he saw was his father, seated nearby, who had been keeping watch all night. 

My priest told this story as way of describing of God’s watchful care.  What struck me most about it, though, was the wisdom of a culture putting its boys through such a trial.  Every boy who obeyed the instructions and passed the test would know from that point forward that he had been led – physically, and more importantly, psychologically – through the valley of death, and had come out on the other side.  Somehow the tribe knew that this was the key experience a boy must have to become a man. 

And so I repeat my question: In our age, how does a man know when he is a man?  I’m not the first to suggest that legal entitlements – to drive, to smoke, to drink, to vote, to gamble – are insufficient on their own.  Our culture rarely seems to provide the kind of prior transformation that makes men the masters of these freedoms rather than being mastered by them. 

I think the answer is that, in our time and place, there’s no easy answer.  Thankfully, though, what society lacks in its institutions, Providence can still provide in the normal course of life. 

I know this because I’ve met men who are bulletproof in the way Private Gritting described, without having ever been to war or the deep woods.  I’ve met a cleric who fled his country as a boy, escaping genocide, pirates, and shipwreck, to eventually fulfill his dream of becoming a priest.  I’ve met a scholar who set aside his work to care for his dying wife.  I’ve met a sub-sandwich deliveryman who stepped in as the rock for his mother and brothers after his father fled the family. 

It’s an experience I think most men long for, even if we’re not aware: to walk through the valley of the shadow, to be completely exposed to something terrifying, some kind of death, to get into as much trouble as we’re ever going to be in, with only the hope – but without the certainty – of coming out on the other side.

---

(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)