At the very start of my sophomore year in high school I woke up from a really clear dream. I don’t usually remember my dreams and it is even more rare that they have a clear message from them so this felt like a big deal. The dream was telling me to join the football team. I hadn’t played football my freshman year and I had already missed out on the summer training session so they were reluctant to even let me on. I was allowed to practice, but not even given full equipment. Everyone was quite skeptical of me, heck, I was skeptical of me. As I’ve said I don’t exactly identify as a typical male. But I just knew that I needed to be there.
I turned out to be a very good player — I was even a star that year. And I loved playing. My secret was to put myself into a kind of berserker rage before games. This “rage” allowed me to play way beyond my normal physical limits. I could run faster and leap way farther. It felt like a kind of insanity but it was delicious. I could just smash through that line and sack the quarterback. Any one who describes anger as a “negative” emotion has not known this joy. If you haven’t felt the joy of anger you are missing out.
I was effective enough that I was made nose guard on the defense. That meant that instead of just protecting one lane I had the honor of controlling the lanes on either side of the center. The center is the one who hikes the ball, and that distracts them for a second, so if you are fast enough and ruthless enough you can take him out of action. That freed up the defense to have more defenders elsewhere. It was an honor to be made nose guard and I was very proud of my role.
Until one night the team got together and the coach played the tape for the previous game. And in the middle of it we saw a player being helped off the field with something very wrong with his neck. It was the other team’s center. In order to be a good nose guard I needed to be ruthless. I needed to smash that center as hard as I could to take him out of action. That was the only way to control two lanes. And in my berserker rage I hadn’t even noticed that harm I’d done. He was just a barrier to get through. Watching how hurt he was I was horrified. That was me?!? But it got worse, my team started to clap and chant my name calling me killer.
I’m crying as I write this. Even after all these years it still hurts so much. I loved those guys. I loved being on the team. Which made it so much worse. I was already reeling internally at what I had done but to be celebrated for it? That was so, so much worse. It felt like a betrayal. I’ve had a lifelong struggle to trust men after that. And you know what? That struggle to love men’s darkness and all is exactly, and I mean this in an almost pure, mathematical sense, exactly the same work as learning to love myself darkness and all. Because the naked truth is that sometimes when we step into our great power we create great harm. We just do. And my personal reaction was to step back from power. No way — I don’t want to be the source of harm.
And yet.
This world desperately needs warriors to stand up to fight injustice and oppression. We need our warriors. Yes, they have to be pointed in the right direction — we will get to that later — but first we need people to step up. Even me. Even you. We especially need people who are horrified at the prospect of causing harm. We have good reasons for holding back. The danger is very, very real. But please consider. We are ceding the ground to people who are either clueless or just don’t care about the damage they are causing. That can’t work. We need to find our courage and step into the arena. Step into the arena knowing full well how vulnerable an act that is. How possible it is for us to not only fail ourselves but maybe others. Yes it is scary, but our children are worth it.