The male must be taught "the tears of things" before he is given any power. Friends, The goal of masculine initiation is always God. It is not ultimately healing, though that comes as well. It is not even wholehearted maturity. Above all, the goal of masculine initiation is God himself. Though our Father’s aim is always to connect us more deeply to himself, the chaos, losses, failures, pressures, and complexities of our lives obscure the brightness of his good heart. So in the midst of seemingly...
May 21, 2024•53 min
Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least. – Goethe Friends, Years ago, as a father in the faith led a group of young, thirsty apprentices and me through a series of exercises and questions for our masculine souls, we came across this question: What is your dream assignment in the Kingdom? In other words, if you could be charged with any task, vocation, or work in God’s Kingdom, what would you love it to be? My peers and I sincerely (and rather hastily) share...
May 08, 2024•48 min
Home is both an origin and a destination. Friends, When the time is right, a man must leave his father and mother to find his True Father and Mother in God's heart. Returning home to God is the destiny of his soul and the consummation of his initiation. Linger. Every man must leave his mom and dad to find his God. On a soul level, most men, to some degree, still haven’t left home. In walking with men for over two decades and paying attention to my challenges, resisting leaving our “home” is one ...
Apr 23, 2024•32 min
I came from the Father. Now I come home to the Father. – Jesus of Nazareth Friends, We come from the Trinity. We will return to the Trinity. So what is in the way of our homecoming? Perhaps better said, where do we find ourselves along the journey of home-going? The mission and message of Become Good Soil reach thousands globally, nourishing men from 18 to 83. Men of different ages and at different stages of masculine initiation. At first glance, the diversity of our stories is outstanding. But ...
Apr 09, 2024•57 min
God’s cheatin’ in our favor. – Shia LaBeouf Friends, It’s been said that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Over decades, alongside like-hearted brothers, I've discovered a profound revelation in this idea. Perhaps even more essential is this truth: When the son is ready, the Father appears. My longtime ally, friend, and like-hearted brother Ryan Ruebsahm is a man who has lived into this very truth. Ryan's personal narrative is a compelling invitation. He has embarked on a journ...
Mar 26, 2024•43 min
He trusts her without reserve and never has reason to regret it. – Proverbs 31:11 MSG Friends, To say the proverb another way, masculinity trusts femininity without reserve and never has reason to regret it. Femininity trusts masculinity without reserve and never has reason to regret it. What if this is intended to both include and transcend marriage, plunging us into the possibility and finally the scandalous destiny of Galatians 3? “...you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (3:28 NIV) In The Sacred...
Mar 12, 2024•30 min
As a man matures and increases in power, he is absolutely dependent on the integration of feminine love for him to flourish, mature, and thrive in God’s Kingdom. – Morgan Snyder Friends, What if integrated masculinity dynamically engaging with integrated femininity was essentially designed by the Living God to communicate abundance, peace, dignity, and the endless safety of God’s extravagant and irrevocable love? Husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, friends of both genders slowly and steadi...
Feb 27, 2024•37 min
God loves you more tenderly and more irrevocably than the best of mothers. – Stasi Eldredge Friends, What does the integration of wholehearted masculine love with wholehearted feminine love feel like? For most men, considering the impact and role of feminine love—or its absence—elicits a wide range of emotions. Simply put, we can easily lose heart in our ambivalence, unmet longing, or pain around it. What if underneath the pain, confusion, and even mistrust is one of the great secrets to “Heaven...
Feb 13, 2024•41 min
Any place you don’t find a track is not wasted, but part of refining where to look. – Boyd Varty, The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life Friends, Boyd Varty’s life has enticed me into ever deeper waters of my masculine initiation. His stories of tracking animals in wild spaces offer stunning insight into the experience of tracking our souls as men during this bewildering hour on Earth. Boyd's insight offers particular treasure for our community of apprentices to Jesus, inviting us to become men whose ...
Jan 31, 2024•53 min
I have no idea where I’m going. But I know exactly how to get there. – Boyd Varty, The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life Friends, Boyd Varty’s life illuminated in and through The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life has been a steady stream of nourishment for my masculine soul in recent years. I’ve returned time and time again to the disruption and enticement of his life, wondering with hope and curiosity... What does it mean to be a man in this hour on earth? Where is the path to wholehearted, integrated ma...
Jan 18, 2024•52 min
“Where are you, Adam?” – Genesis 3:9 Friends, Something is over. Something is next. How do we choose an intentional pause in the in-between to recenter our soul in the heart of God and in his Kingdom, which is at hand? Last year, we invited our tribe to engage in a soulful transition from one year to the next. As a result of the responses we received, we've made some updates to the guided exercise and are bringing it back to help you navigate the transition from the year behind to the year ahead...
Dec 27, 2023•1 hr
The only thing which we may take with us from our life on earth are those things which we have given away. – Babette’s Feast Friends, The feast of Christmas is drawing near. In preparation, I invite you to share this gift for the soul with the like-hearted among our global community. In Babette’s Feast, Isak Dinesen explores the riches of Christ’s grace in story form. This dialogue from one of his characters caught my attention: “‘Man, my friends,’ said General Loewenhielm, ‘is frail and foolish...
Dec 19, 2023•50 min
All the stories we tell borrow their power from the Great Story God is writing. – John Eldredge Friends, Isak Dinesen suggests God's plans run across the sea and the snowy mountain where man’s eyes see no track. What if it is true? It is true, my friends. Everything is going to be okay. God is drawing all of our stories toward the breathtaking restoration of all things. Along the way, his bright Kingdom often breaks in through what seems at first only mundane and insignificant. As his Spirit bec...
Dec 12, 2023•44 min
Then our sons in their youth will be like well-nurtured plants, and our daughters will be like pillars carved to adorn a palace. – Psalm 144:12 NIV Friends, The Psalms were penned by regular men walking through the real and raw depths of the human experience. With body and soul, animated by the life of God, these brave authors invite us into a God-permeated vision of Reality more visceral and personal than our often emotionally reserved contexts reflect. In Psalm 144, the psalmist vividly depict...
Dec 06, 2023•36 min
The glory of children are their Fathers. – Proverbs 17:6 KJV Friends, Our sacred Scriptures whisper to us the invitation God has woven into reality for men to once again consent to the path and process of becoming fathers. The Proverbs winsomely teach us that the weight of the lives of our children points back to the headwaters of our faithful Father. Who is he? What is he like? Is he available? Deeper still, is he interested? These questions, though often hidden below the surface, haunt us. The...
Nov 21, 2023•39 min
I have no idea where I’m going. But I know exactly how to get there. – Boyd Varty, The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life Friends, In the Kingdom of God, we are never behind and it is never too late to consent to our unique version of the universal pattern of masculine initiation. We are always on time. What if that were true? What if we believed it? What if we lived it? Masculine initiation as apprentices to Jesus of Nazareth is the only story big enough to anchor our hearts and hold the collective w...
Nov 07, 2023•1 hr 3 min
Salvation is a process, not an event. – Resilient Friends, Steady. Strong. Resilient. What would it be like for these words to describe the sons of God in this hour on earth? It's hopeful. It's powerful. And, brothers, it's available. John’s most recent work, Resilient , is a life raft amidst our contemporary turbulent sea. Singularity of heart is no longer an option. It is essential for us to thrive in this moment in the Larger Story. John and I have been chasing singularity of heart for ove...
Oct 25, 2023•1 hr 4 min
Pointing to his disciples, Jesus said, “These are my brothers and sisters, my true family. Whoever does the will of my Father is my family.” – Matthew 12:49-50 (paraphrase) Friends, As Dallas Willard reminds us, Jesus is the most brilliant person to ever live. His brilliance shines not only in the what of his rescue but also in the how. By becoming human, the Triune Creator not only redeemed our bodies, minds, hearts, emotions, and wills, he redeemed all our relationships, taking the brokenness ...
Oct 10, 2023•40 min
Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. – Hebrews 2:11 NIV Friends, It was George MacDonald who wrote that the central misery of the masculine soul is the refusal and incapacity to look up to God as Father. I want to suggest a parallel source of impoverishment and pain: our refusal to look up to Jesus as our Older Brother. If it is true that the Son of God became human so that humans might i...
Sep 26, 2023•46 min
Answers before questions do harm to the soul. – Henri Nouwen Friends, For the heart of a boy, questions come quite naturally... for a time. Then, slowly, like the tide, the questions ebb and become fewer and fewer. The false self takes root, and we increasingly operate under pressure to have life figured out. Curiosity atrophies, and we trade childlike dependency and whole-hearted questions for the self-imposed pressure of well-manicured answers. We become self-sufficient. In Part 2 of this conv...
Sep 12, 2023•1 hr 7 min
We’re lost males, all of us, cast adrift from the community of men, cut off from our masculine heritage—abandoned to machines, organizations, fantasies, drugs. – Gordon Dalbey, Healing the Masculine Soul From this central abandonment, we men often find ourselves, consciously and unconsciously, painfully fulfilling the plot line of an isolated and individualized story. It's all up to me. I’m way behind. It’s too late. I am all alone. For many of us, these ideas mock, discourage, and sap our stren...
Aug 29, 2023•56 min
In fiction, we should have no agenda except to be truthful. – Winn Collier, Love Big, Be Well: Letters to a Small-Town Church Friends, it was Wendell Berry who, after seven decades of apprenticeship, penned these words: I can remember those early years when it seemed to me I was cut completely adrift, and times when, looking back at earlier times, it seemed I had been wandering in the dark woods of error. But now it looks to me as though I was following a path that was laid out for me, unbroken,...
Aug 16, 2023•52 min
We become what we behold. – Eugene Peterson, A Burning in My Bones Known primarily for rendering the Message paraphrase of the Scriptures, Eugene Peterson was intimately faithful to the extensive range of his vocation. Not only was he the most influential pastor of our time, he was a son, husband, father, student, writer, and sage. Though all these titles surely mark waypoints along the geography of Eugene Peterson's soul, no description rings more true than this one: He beheld the Presence of G...
Aug 01, 2023•58 min
Discipleship to Jesus is the greatest opportunity individual human beings have in life and the only hope corporate mankind has at solving its insurmountable problems. – Dallas Willard What is discipleship? What is salvation? And what relevance do these sometimes abstract concepts have for sharpening our ordinary, everyday lives? What if salvation is both an individual and communal process that is daringly lived out across the days and decades of our relational lives? Friends, it is my joy to wel...
Jul 18, 2023•56 min
Churches are not the kingdom of God…but they are primary and inevitable expressions, outposts, and instrumentalities of the presence of the kingdom among us. They are "societies" of Jesus. – Dallas Willard Friends, Thousands of years ago, St. Paul invited us to participate in the mysterious nature of the Church. Writing to the Corinthians, he penned, You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but ...
Jun 29, 2023•1 hr 7 min
"Tell me your story" is the most revolutionary phrase you can ever say to a man. – John Eldredge Friends, The revolution ignited by Wild at Heart and Become Good Soil is well under way. Though hidden from many, it is irrevocably life-changing for the men who have risked their lives to enter in. Bryan Byrd of Wild Courage and Jay Heck of Being Sons are two of our Kingdom allies at the fore of Wild at Heart Fires, taking new ground in this revolution by inviting men into the ancient practice of st...
Jun 19, 2023•51 min
Life is our resume. It is our story to tell, and the choices we make write the chapters. Can we live in a way where we look forward to looking back? – Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights Friends, In some ways, much of my public mission in the world began with inviting men to recover the deepest questions of their masculine souls. And in that recovery, to risk giving God a decade. Choosing to enter into the radical choice of taking the lowest seat at the table. Excavating over building. Forsaking sh...
May 23, 2023•1 hr 15 min
Christ is before all things, and in him all things hold together. – Colossians 1:17 Friends, What vision of the human person and the way of restoration do our Scriptures offer? Consider these verses: So many times I have longed to gather your wayward children together around me… (Luke 13:34 TPT) Like a city that is broken down and without walls [leaving it unprotected] is a man who has no self-control over his spirit [and sets himself up for trouble]. (Proverbs 25:28 AMP) They will forget their ...
May 09, 2023•1 hr 15 min
I will not leave you as orphans. – Jesus of Nazareth Friends, We’re deep in this series exploring a path and process to integrate a man's soul under the care and direction of the Triune God. In Part 5, I’m inviting you to put this process into practice. Through the help of a trusted guide, Grant Leitheiser, this episode offers a personal experience of care for the fragmented parts of your soul. When you’re ready and have an hour of protected time for your soul, dive in here. For the entire serie...
Apr 25, 2023•26 min
In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways so that we may walk in his paths.” – Isaiah 2:2-4 Friends, So often we skillfully distance ourselves from pain, shame, loneliness, and fear. Heroically (and understandably), we set o...
Apr 11, 2023•1 hr 6 min
