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As 2005 recedes into the past and 2006 looms full of new hope and dreams, it is perhaps fitting to end my journey through Steve Biddulph’s book Manhood by looking at what he calls, “The Time of the Ashes.”

Eventually, all men learn that not everything works out in this life. The mid-thirties seem to be the time when this most often happens.

Great. I turn 35 this year…

The ‘ashes’ that Biddulph talks about are those times in our lives when something unexpected and traumtic comes out of the blue and reminds us that we are not in control. It can send is spiralling downward into the depths of despair and makes us wonder what the point to our very existence is. Often the experience involves loss - the loss of health, the loss of relationships, the loss of friends and family, the loss of dreams, the loss of hope. The boyhood ambitions vapourise as we are knocked to the ground by life. If we stand back up as a boy, we will be knocked down again and again until we stand up as a man.

For whatever reason, it takes some pain for the final maturing into manhood to take place. This is the time of the ashes.

Interestingly, one of the themes of the Christian faith is being made perfect through suffering. Not perfect in the sense of being without fault, but perfect in the sense of being whole. Jesus’ act in redeeming humanity, reconciling God and people, could only come about through the suffering of the cross. Jesus himself was made perfect through his ‘time of the ashes’ and the flow on from that was history making. I have no idea whether Biddulph is a man of faith or not, but his words give a new take on what it might mean to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and carry our own cross each day. (Luke 14:27)

Have I experienced a time of the ashes?

Well, part of me feels like it has been there the whole time. Being the youngest in my extended family meant many elderly relatives and a steady stream of death and mourning as they died through my childhood and teenage years. The first to die was my Uncle Tom - he had written me a birthday card for my tenth birthday and posted it on the day before so it would arrive on my special day. On the morning of my birthday he died. The card arrived in the mail later that day. I was young, but the pain I felt as I read the card that day remains with me and revisits everytime there is a death close by.

Perhaps that has helped me look at life differently, helping to give some perspective on what is important and what isn’t. Time with my boys is important. Time with my wife is important. Time in the office is not. Relationships are what make life worth living and are what define who I am - these are the things I need to treat as precious for death ends them all too quickly.

In anycase, the time of the ashes, combined with the “intiation” and “wild man” sections make this chapter, in my mind, the most powerful and challenging in the book. They touch on things that can be shaped and changed in our communities to help raise the next generation of men.

If only we, all of us, had the courage and determintation to do it.