A Tribute to Sam Keen: Mentor, Hero, Mensch, Friend

On a walk in Muir Woods; a giant among giants (redwoods)

Sonoma Ranch gate; Sam's fun wordplay

Books Sam wrote

Another one of my heroes died – Sam Keen at age 93 on March 19, 2025.  This writing is part of what Sam asked me to do – to tell some of my stories, the one’s worth remembering and retelling. Sam’s influence on my life is worth such a telling and retelling. This is and isn’t about Sam – it is more about me and what Sam inspired and unlocked for me. Isn’t all writing autobiographical in some way? Our choices of heroes and people we admire tell us very significant things about ourselves, they are a form of projection, what we desire to be like. A real live hero involved in our lives believes in us, is interested in us, bears witness and ‘gets us,’ (as do friends, lovers, mentors, coaches, spiritually attuned people …).

What important life issue, existential theme or element of a deep and well lived life would you like to explore, to dance with? Sam may be your man, your reflection partner. Sam wrote about and helped me explore a rich emotional life, facing death with courage, taking risks, faith and doubt, awe and wonder, sexuality, meaning and philosophical meanderings, serving the greater good, intellectual honesty and rigour, vulnerability and learning humility from being humbled, friendship and intimacy, nature’s healing power, experiential spirituality, facing demonic or dark forces from within and without, hero’s journeys … Perhaps this is why Sam spoke to me so deeply – he wrote beautifully, vulnerably, wisely about so many issues important to me … to all of us. And richly for me, not just ‘reading’ Sam, but getting to spend some significant time with him, walking, talking, listening, exploring – thanks to the deep friendship between our wives, Suellen and Pat. I hold dearly Sam saying one day, ‘in different life circumstances if we were closer geographically, I think we would have become very good friends.’ We connected easily, deeply. He was an important mentor and friend to me.

This tribute is happening (partly) because every time I was with Sam he asked me ‘what stories are you writing and telling?’ Sam dedicated ‘Your Mythic Journey: Finding Meaning in Your Life Through Writing and Storytelling’ to his ‘Cherished friend, Lover of stories, Master of myth’ Joseph Campbell, with whom he toured and did workshops on personal mythology for twenty years. Sam’s encouragement was to write stories to remember my past, interpret my present and imagine my future. This tribute is a brief, personal sharing with a few stories; the breadth of Sam’s work gave me abundant food for a lifetime and far too much to write about in a brief essay. This January a deep intuition told me 2026 was ‘a year of writing’ and I dedicate this work of love to Sam. 

The first time I met Sam we were in the foyer of the Baxter Theatre with our partners, about to attend a play.  Sam introduced himself in a way I would later realize (from hearing it multiple times) was one of his ‘core identity stories.’ “I taught theology as a tenured faculty member at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and I was teaching and sharing things I knew was raising the eyebrows of my some of my more conservative colleagues. I took a sabbatical and at the end of it I knew I couldn’t go back and be in a compromised position. So I called the Dean and told him I was resigning, which I suspect was a relief to him. I didn’t have another job lined up. And then the next week I met the editor of Psychology Today who asked me if I could step in and complete an interview with Norman O. Brown (author of Love’s Body, a call to unite mind and body via body mysticism and sensuality) as the person working on the story had to back out for personal reasons. Psychology Today liked my work and asked me to do more interviews with people I thought were interesting. I never looked back.” Sam’s later interview with Joseph Campbell (The Hero With a Thousand Faces) helped Sam see his emerging individual heroes journey, its relation to the community/societal/Everyperson’s story and the importance and power of myth and telling our stories. 

The next day Sam and I met for lunch next to the crackling fireplace at the Rhodes Memorial Tea Garden restaurant. Is it a coincidence Fire in the Belly: On Becoming a Man was the first book of Sam’s I read? During our conversation Sam told me about a men’s group he hosted for +-15 years, which he eventually stopped partly because he said some men could never be vulnerable after years of being part of the group. That evening Sam spoke to a men’s gathering organized by The Mankind Project, taking questions and opening up a beautiful dialogue. There was awe and deep respect for Sam by the large, crowded group of men. After these conversations my desire to organize a men’s group strengthened and I explored a few options, never jumping over the threshold … until this year in February. With the support of our minister Robert Steiner, Roy Kempster and I are co-facilitating a Men’s Group using Sam’s Learning to Fly: Reflections on Fear, Trust, and the Joy of Letting Go and his encouragement to ‘tell our stories’ as some of our discussion themes. We will also read Richard Rohr’s From Wild Man to Wise Man: Reflections on Male Spirituality which feels very appropriate as Richard Rohr, Robert Bly (author of Iron John: A Book About Men) and Sam collaborated on supporting the men’s movement in the USA. (For any of you Robert Bly men’s retreat fans, Sam did say, ‘I wouldn’t be caught dead with a drum.’ ;) )

In retrospect, my men’s work began in the early 2000s when I coached men’s basketball at the University of Cape Town for two years and then in earnest for a decade starting in 2006 when I started coaching boys/mens basketball at Pinelands High School. When our eldest, Charissa, started grade 8 at PHS I found out the head men’s basketball coach had just left. I quickly realized that coaching 15-18 year old young men was an amazing place for me to be – passing on all my ‘boy stuff’ that had been passed on to me – competitiveness, toughness, bonding and love from being in battle as a team and spending so much time together ‘playing,’ building skills and confidence. I loved coaching basketball with these amazing young men. An additional profound gift was being in the school two of our three children attended, meeting their friends and teachers. Learning and playing basketball is a metaphor of living life for me – gaining mastery, practicing, delivering under pressure, dealing with winning and losing, facing your fears, the process and the relationships being more important than the outcomes –issues Sam talks about in Learning to Fly. The resources of the universe seem to show up for me as I need them. I read Jeffrey Marx’s Season of Life, and They Call Me Coach by John Wooden and developed some of their ideas on character development into a document I used with the basketball players called ‘The Special Responsibilities of Men,’ which have similarities to Richard Rohr’s lessons for men’s initiation.

Sam and I did a fair amount of walking and talking in forest areas, one of my favourite ways to connect with people and how I prefer to coach. On one walk in Kirstenbosch Garden Sam encouraged me to consider taking up his work on an ethical, sustainable business measurement system; I had practiced Social and Ethical Accounting and Auditing within an NGO I worked for and this ideas was tempting to pursue. In Sonoma, walking along the country roads near his ranch, Sam talked about Wilhelm Reich’s teaching about body armour (how we unconsciously learn to protect ourselves emotionally by taking up certain shapes in our bodies which eventually restrict energy flow and functioning) and how this led Sam to participate in rolfing sessions (a form of deep tissue massage). During one rolfing session he started crying at the memory of an incident with his brother when he was a young boy – something he had completely forgotten; the memory was buried in a leg muscle and the tissue massage released it, bring emotional healing to Sam. This lesson helped me embrace rolfing and a somatic focus in my coaching. Sam talked often about his children, of who he was so proud, what they were doing, what they had accomplished. He shared his pain and regrets at realizing how much he had hurt his children after his divorce from Heather. On another walk in Newlands Forest I glanced back and realized Sam was going down some stairs slowly, his age was slowing him down, and he didn’t say a word because, I suspected, he was a ‘tough son of a bitch’ (my father’s language) who would not ask me to slow down or somehow acknowledge his slowing down. Slowing down is where I am going … where we are all going … changing, losing some functioning, needing to learn new ways of being and doing, of accepting. We weaved many strands of our relationship on these forest walks, moving back and forth around the contour paths of Newlands Forest, the redwoods of Muir Woods, the beautifully manicured flower beds of Kirstenbosch Gardens amidst the wild places, very engaged in sharing about our lives and history, telling our stories.

I don’t know anyone besides Sam who has a trapeze bar hanging from their A framed living room ceiling, and which got used most days. What a beautiful form of meditation and practice (and fun to watch)! Sam’s trapeze influence eventually led to me learning to ride the unicycle. Sam’s work with the trapeze often involved challenging and supporting various at risk youth or people in general to face their fears and build self-confidence. And there was the regular weekly group of ‘flyers’ who were part of the Sonoma Trapeze Troupe. Sam asked me, ‘Why don’t you learn to fly the trapeze so you could invite the people you coach to try it, to introduce an edge of facing their fears? Or if not the trapeze, then find something edgy or challenging for them.’ I learned to fly the trapeze at Pat and Sam’s Sonoma ranch, deeply satisfied to get the timing right and be caught (by the catcher) and then fall gracefully into the net below. In the trapeze teaching and learning process, as in other domains of learning, everything is broken down into the simple steps and pieces and mastering each of them, then combining them with some elements of flow. Learning to ride the unicycle, or shoot a lay up in basketball, or play the violin – name your learning interest – all start with learning the basics in simple steps. Riding the unicycle requires that delicate balance (pun intended) of concentration and relaxing, and continues to push some of my edges. Coaching in Newlands Forest and crossing flowing streams is a challenging edge for many people I coach.

Sam’s vulnerability in his writing was liberating to me. He talked so openly about sex, desire, passion, technicolor feelings (the wide range of highs and lows), being true to oneself. I hadn’t come across such a man yet. My Catholic upbringing led me in to fields of repression and silence, not learning healthy, constructive ways to talk about sex and the many unfolding contradictions, intense feelings and experiences. As an example, in ‘Hymns to an Unknown God: Awakening the Spirit in Everyday Life’ Sam has a chapter titled ‘Carnal Knowledge: Sex and Spirit’ which is a rich and detailed unfolding of some of his experiences and wider philosophical reflections on the deep relatedness of sexuality and spirituality, of longing and belonging, of connections to community and self-transcendence. Developing an integrated sexuality, spirituality and emotionally rich life shows up in much of his writing, and particularly in To Love and Be Loved, The Passionate Life: Stages of Loving and Inward Bound: Exploring the Geography of Your Emotions.

I’ll move towards closure of this brief tribute with potential resources from Sam to help us deal with the rising and frightening levels of polarization, hatred, ‘othering’ and violence being flamed in the world right now by emotionally and spiritually immature pseudo-leaders, mostly men. Using propaganda and the deadly power of ‘othering’ through dehumanizing images, language and media were important themes in Sam’s writing and work, culminating in Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile Imagination. Sam’s writing on love led him to want to better understand hatred; he discovered all cultures teach hate as an important distinction between us (our tribe) and others, tribes and nations needing a scapegoat to deal with unowned darkness and shadows. In the mid-late 1980s Sam’s work on Faces of the Enemyallowed him to present these themes at high level events in the US and Moscow, influencing in some small way the US-USSR relationship and shifts in the cold war.

Beyond scapegoating and the reality of unconscious shadows, our biology, and particularly the amygdala’s constant scanning for threats in our environment beyond what we are even consciously aware of, triggers a range of internal ‘fight or flight’ neurotransmitter responses. One of the great challenges of our times is to constantly and vigilantly educate and resource ourselves to counter and deal with the abusive, profit-oriented, weaponised triggering from news and social media algorithms, to discern where to switch off the tap of news and stimuli that fan flames of anger and fear, to remain calm and equanimous, to override our biology with wise choices. Sam offered ways to resource ourselves via encouragements to:

a. Help foster group discussions to raise awareness of and counter propaganda and ‘othering,’ perhaps by using the Faces of the Enemy workbook of discussion questions (updated after the 9-11 attacks in the USA and another round of ‘othering’ by the US government)

b. Keep relationships alive especially across difference of opinion and belief

c. Be part of a support group

d. Create communities that care for each other

e. Do our inner work, face our fears and shadows (consider listening to Jungian Connie Zweig, author of Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path, interviewed on  https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/the-healer-with-a-thousand-faces/id1842982595?i=1000737247155 )

f. Do body work, somatic practices and learn to trust the wisdom of our body, emotions and intuition

g. Find emotionally and spiritually mature guides to help us

h. Embrace awe and wonder regularly as powerful resources

Sam thought and wrote about death throughout his life, which he said paradoxically helped one live life more fully, knowing our days are limited. One of his beautiful early interviews was with Ernst Becker, author of Denial of Death, about how the fear and denial of death are the key drivers of human behaviour and culture; the courageous conversation taking place as Becker was on his deathbed. As I get older (68) and continue to be as active as I can, I have been both grounded by Sam’s writing about death and inspired by Sam still flying the trapeze at 87 (!), when he taught me to fly. Here is an example of what I mean by Sam’s groundedness from Sightings: Extraordinary Encounters with Ordinary Birds, page 53, in the chapter on The Mo(u)rning Dove, “We are grass of the field. We flourish for a season and then fade. Death wipes us out. Yet, we are part of a totality that death cannot eradicate. I was, am, and will forever be a particle within a resurrecting cosmos. My DNA was included in the Big Bang. The blossoming of time, space and multiplicity intended me, and I will be a part of the unfolding, flowering and closing of time. I exist within the alpha and the omega.” And the next paragraph inspires me and aligns with my understanding of spirituality and soul, “I admit that I don’t know and cannot even imagine what all of this means. But I am convinced that this quantum view of the self is both a demonstrable scientific fact and very nearly what religious people mean when they speak of ‘soul.’ To have a soul is to be both a particle and a wave, an individual and part of the whole of being. In one sense, I inhabit only the here and now, the fleeting moment that just passed. Yet, I straddle all the modes of time, living in awareness, memory, and hope. Like the psalmist confronting the complexity of his existence in Psalm 139, I am forced to conclude that the mystery of my self ‘is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.’” Pat and Sam supported Suellen and me in many beautiful ways through Suellen’s cancer journey and death; breathing life and lightness, support and affirmation, listening and care, into many interactions and times together, demonstrating to me what vulnerable, true friendship and love looks and feels like.

Long before Dachner Keltner wrote Awe: The Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life (2023) Sam was writing about the power of awe and wonder, and about embodied spirituality, first in Apology for Wonder (1969), then in To a Dancing God: Notes of a Spiritual Traveler (1970)  and later in Hymns to an Unknown God: Awakening the Spirit in Everyday Life (1994). In the spirit of not letting death have the last word (in this essay), here are some words from Sam from Hymns to an Unknown God (pp 73-74) to resource us for the day. “The spirit, like the wind, blows where it will, within and without the walls. It may come upon you as you sit in a stained-glass sanctuary surrounded by all the symbols of your faith, or as you stand on a high ridge in the Cascade Mountains when lightning strikes a tall ponderosa a heartbeat away from where you are hiking, or as you stand in a picket line protesting the unjust ways of the powerful.” The friendship and embodied love and spirituality I learned from Sam are a source of living water for me every day. And every time I ride my unicycle I remember and carry Sam’s awe-filled, wonder-full zest for life with me.

For those curious for more details about Sam’s life see https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/books/sam-keen-dead.html or https://sonomasun.com/2025/03/25/a-tribute-to-my-friend-sam-keen-1931-2025/.

Sam’s life works will be housed in an archive at Harvard Theological Seminary.

* A beautiful and helpful summary of Sam’s early influences, written by him in 1970 at the request of the Psychology Today team, is included on pages 3-24 of Voices and Visions: Talks by Sam Keen with Norman O. Brown, Herbert Marcuse, Joseph Campbell, John Lilly, Carlos Castaneda, Oscar Ichazo, Stanley Keleman, Ernest Becker and Roberto Assagioli. The themes he raises there are deeply embedded in his life’s work and continue to speak powerfully to me today, as I write.