Become Good Soil

“Your real, new self will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.” — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity How have fear and shame shaped the person you’ve become? What patterns have you developed to avoid exposing the parts of yourself that feel afraid, uncertain, ashamed, or weak? How do you reach for aggression or withdrawal as a way to protect yourself fr...

“(For God) is our father all the time, for he is true; but until we respond with the truth of children, he cannot let all the father out to us; there is no place for the dove of his tenderness to alight. He is our father, but we are not his children. Because we are his children, we must become his sons and daughters. Nothing will satisfy him, or do for us, but that we be one with our father! What...

“How proud we often are of the victories in the war with nature, proud of the multitude of instruments we have succeeded in inventing, of the abundance of commodities we have been able to produce. Yet our victories have come to resemble defeats. In spite of our triumphs, we have fallen victims to the work of our hands; it is as if the forces we had conquered have conquered us.” — Abraham Joshua He...

“What is hard about marriage is what is hard also about facing the Christian God: It is the strain of living continually in the light of a conscience other than our own, being under the intimate scrutiny of another pair of eyes.” — Mike Mason, The Mystery of Marriage What is the fruit of a decade given over to apprenticeship, to the slow work of excavation, and to the painful but promising transfo...

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live alo...

“Questions are the tools of transformation. They disturb our certainty and awaken our longing.” — James K. A. Smith The power of questions is central to the path of an apprentice—especially the questions we don’t realize we are asking and the unconscious answers that shape our every moment. What questions have you recovered along the way of your initiation? And how are you allowing these questions...

For the eyes of the Lord search throughout the earth  to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.  -2 Chronicles 16:9 Friends,  As our fellow apprentice Matthew McConaughey once observed—albeit in delightful colorful terms: "We all step in shit from time to time. We hit roadblocks, we get sick, we don’t get what we want. We cross thousands of ‘could have done better’s and ‘wish th...

Friends, Jean Giono, author of The Man Who Planted Trees, penned these breathtaking and invitational lines - words that draw us back to the path of Christ’s Kingdom Simplicity and Generous Love: “Creation seemed to come about in a sort of chain reaction. But the man who planted trees did not worry about it; he was determinedly pursuing his task in all its simplicity... For a human character to rev...

Friends, Jean Giono, author of The Man Who Planted Trees, penned these breathtaking and invitational lines - words that draw us back to the path of Christ’s Kingdom Simplicity and Generous Love: “Creation seemed to come about in a sort of chain reaction. But the man who planted trees did not worry about it; he was determinedly pursuing his task in all its simplicity... For a human character to rev...

"You shall consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you shall return to your property, and each of you shall return to your family." — Leviticus 25:10 Consider these provocative words by Walter Brueggeman from Sabbath as Resistance.  “Sabbath is not only resistance; it is an alternative. Sabbath offers both...

What I’m trying to do here is get you to relax, not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Don’t be afraid of missing out. You’re my dearest...

Here is a simple, rule-of-thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them.  Matthew 7:12 MSG Friends, Few questions come my way as consistently and sincerely as questions about the desire and dilemma of initiating children—particularly sons—into wholehearted maturity. And few aspects of my own initiation have received more of m...

In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you. – Matthew 5:48 MSG The invitation of the Gospel is stark and unrelenting: Come and die in order to live. It is strange and compelling that Jesus, who healed so many, never once chose to heal his own discip...

"If you can’t be kind to yourself, you can’t change." – Sam Jolman Friends, I’d like to invite you to savor with me a breathtaking excerpt from Sam Jolman’s book as we plumb the depths of the intersection of God’s kindness and our sexual stories:  We take the risk to call shame what it is: a damn liar. We turn the tables on shame and question it. That starts with getting curious about what provoke...

The Gospel is an invitation to be curious, rather than ashamed, about our sin. –  Sam Jolman Friends, Decades ago, a wise man made an observation about the masculine journey that has stayed with me: “Finances are not about finances, and sex is not about sex.” It’s been over 10 years since I received this disruptive counsel, and my own and the experience of men I walk with have verified its truth a...

God’s preferred method of communication is through a still, small voice. – Dallas Willard Dear Friends, Who have I become, and who am I becoming? For over two decades, I’ve relentlessly asked these questions and found myself lovingly interrogated by Jesus and His Kingdom at every turn of my journey. Now, as I transition from one season to the next, I sense another pair of soul-searching questions...

"You should not be surprised when I say, 'You must be born again.'" – Jesus of Nazareth Dear Friends, Advent is upon us—a season not merely of waiting but of planting, where the seed of hope is buried deep in the soil of time. It is the prologue to Christmas when the Author Himself stepped onto the stage of His own story. But like all great stories, this one is layered. Beneath the glitter and sen...

I had always felt life first as a story—and if there is a story there is a storyteller. – G. K. Chesterton Friends, The human soul craves meaning, just as the body needs food and water. On our journey of masculine initiation, our souls long for the stories of others to illuminate our own. Stories are the language of the heart. They nourish us, bring meaning to our lives, and, most importantly, dis...

Love, as Paul and the New Testament present it, is not action— not even action with a special intention—but a source of action. – Dallas Willard Friends, Thousands of years ago, Saint Paul penned his breathtaking discourse on Love.  It’s been misunderstood, watered down, and robbed of its beauty by overuse. Yet the life of God still pulses through, if we but let these old words visit us in a new w...

Clothe yourself with compassion… – Saint Paul Friends, If we come from the Trinity and thus naturally return to the Trinity, I want to lovingly ask again...What is in the way of our homecoming?  Perhaps better said, where do we find ourselves along the journey of home-going? As a community of mature men who desire what is good, true, and beautiful, we often find ourselves pouring ourselves out on...

...we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,  and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts... – Saint Paul Friends, Life is hard. Damn hard.  And, brothers, with the convergence of the headlines, the violent speed of life, and the hyperindividualism of this hour, t...

Discipleship is the process of restoring secure attachment to God. – Morgan and Cherie Snyder Friends, In his thoroughly beautiful novel Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry writes,  Now I have had most of the life I am going to have, and I can see what it has been. I can remember those early years when it seemed to me I was completely adrift, and times when…it seemed I had been wandering in the dark woods...

If you don’t like the person you’re becoming, you still have time to change that. – Sam Eldredge Friends, It was Dallas Willard who wrote, “Spiritual transformation in Christ is the process of all of the essential parts of the human self being effectively organized around God, as they are restored and sustained by him. Its result is love of God with all of the heart, soul, mind, and strength, and...

The fundamental human experience is that of compassion. – The Hero's Journey Friends, A wise man once said that a warrior's true mark lies in his capacity to treat his own heart with compassion.  Sam Eldredge is a brother and friend who is leading others to become true warriors and kings out of his unique recovery of the Gospel. He’s been quietly and faithfully working toward becoming an increasin...

It starts with God. – Proverbs 1:7    Friends, A wise man once told me, “More is better. Except when it’s not.”  We can see this in our spiritual formation. The myth of more has co-opted even the ancient practices meant to root us in the Kingdom of God. More teaching. More study. More content. More events. More healing. More….of everything. Yet more is neither the point nor the prize. As our older...