I am very new to this being a man thing, and I'm still not there, and I’m on a path. I grew up in a culture that told me going to war made you a man. Going to prison. Getting locked up. Coming back from that makes you a man. Making a million dollars makes you a man, and it doesn't. And you don't know it until you done all these things and realize,
"Damn, I'm still a little f*cking boy." I don't know nothing about being at war like some other guys, but I know a bunch of soldiers that come back and are still f*cking little boys. Can't wait to get back out. I know so many dudes can't wait to get back out. Guys that we know, warriors, but even warriors, that don't make you a man.

– Shia LaBeouf

He came to the end of his rope. Or, in his own words, to the point where there was no more wiggle. No way to save his own reputation. No way out but to exit completely. He came to the moment when it was just him  and a pistol. And then a crack. The darkness was so dark that the light that finally came through, though ever so small, was blinding.

And so it begins.

You might know Shia LaBeouf from his role in Fury. He was, after all, the man who brought the prophet Isaiah’s exclamation (recorded in chapter six of his scroll) to life in a way that pierces our masculine souls:  

Then I heard the Lord asking, 

“Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?”

I said, 

“Here I am. Send me.”

You may remember the scene: five American soldiers in a tank, whose hands held the future of the free world. 

Who knows how Shia’s role in that film became the seed that, in the aftermath of failure and agony, germinated one of the most inspiring stories of masculine initiation I have heard?

Brothers, in this particular hour, it’s the supreme, beautiful, demanding burden to find ourselves walking the ancient road that leads to Life. And so we must consent to Heaven’s initiation by practicing the essential way of surrender and dependence on the God of Heaven and Earth, God acting for us, in us, and through us. 

Every abandonment.
Every failure.
Every betrayal.
Every crisis.

Our God appropriates all of our pain and confusion as perpetual doorways through which we can and must pass, again and again and again. Reliable doorways that the wise ones promise will bring our hearts back to God. God rescues us in our pain through our pain, inviting us to a regular practice of surrender.

A regular practice of dependency on God acting on our behalf. 

A regular practice of letting go. 

A regular practice of forgiveness. 

A regular practice of carrying our cross daily, following Jesus, and dying to all but God our Father. 

Shia’s life and story daringly entice us to embrace this path in our masculine initiation. 

This two-hour interview affected me so powerfully that I wanted to take the next step and invite other like-hearted men into the process. The Become Good Soil Alumni shared two online gatherings in which we dove into parts of the interview and allowed God to use Shia’s story to access unfinished places within ours.

For your own masculine soul or, even better, with a group of like-hearted allies, this is an invitation to immerse yourself deeply in this interview with Shia LaBeouf and Jon Bernthal. I put together a seven-page reflection exercise designed as a companion guide to the interview. 

Here’s the invitation: Set aside an extended block of time to listen to the two-hour interview in its entirety. Invite the Father to shepherd your soul through the reflection exercise, and notice what gold comes to the surface. 

Once you’ve experienced this personally, the next step is to invite others in. Maybe your band of brothers. Maybe as a follow-up way to gather online with men you led in a Becoming a King Retreat. Maybe you take a risk and just put it out there as an invitation to men in your sphere of influence and see what thirsty ones respond.

I’ve taken the interview and curated a 22-minute version. This isn’t an invitation to a shortcut—it's an appetizer for you and the men you want to fight for. The 22-minute version is an excellent pass-along to see who’s thirsty and who's ready to risk going all in. Send the Shia short interview to men in your care and then the ones who want to go deeper, you can point them to the reflection exercise and invite them into some raw and honest miles of masculine initiation few men choose to tread together. I dug deep into this content with many BGS alumni, and it continues to fuel our excavation and initiation.

Maybe C. S. Lewis and Shia LaBeouf have more in common than most would have believed. In the end, it seems that both came to the deep conviction that “the longest way around is the shortest way home.” 

Here are the links you’ll need:

Shia LaBeouf and Jon Bernthal interview – 22-minute short

Shia LaBeouf interview BGS reflection exercise

Shia LaBeouf and Jon Bernthal interview – full length

Full transcript of the interview (Note: I found it immensely helpful to watch the full video interview and read the full transcript; they provide very different means to allow different dimensions of the content to penetrate my soul.)

His story began and ended among the ranks of the working class. Abandoned as a child, he was passed through eleven foster homes before he landed in a family willing to meet his most basic needs. As soon as he could get out on his own, he entered the world of adults, became a junk man, and scavenged for metal to hawk for cash until he could scratch his way into the tile trade. Somewhere in there, he managed to marry a woman, have one kid, and keep putting one foot in front of another. 

His son, my dad, was everything to him. Without the capacity to express that love in words, outward affection, or even much by way of provision, he understood the redemption of his seemingly ever-sinking life would come through somehow leaving the world better through his one and only son.

My dad went on to stand on the shoulders of his just-scraping-by parents. Working nights in a blood bank, cleaning pools at resorts by day, harvesting sand dollars from the Florida coast to sell to tourists, and piecing together other odd jobs, it took him eight years to finish undergrad, paying for school as he went.

Being accepted to medical school, Dad doubled down, still working on the side but intent on giving everything he had to the field of medicine that was capturing his heart and mind. He trained as a general surgeon, built a respected medical practice, and joined a small cohort of pioneering physicians advancing the technique of laparoscopic surgery. From the day he graduated Tulane Medical School until the day his parents died four decades later, my dad quietly and entirely funded their modest life, which consisted of an apartment, a car, and a small work truck for my grandfather’s itinerant tile jobs. 

My grandfather had no hobbies, few friends, no ambition for travel or learning, and little tolerance for people. In the twilight of his life, he clung fiercely to his work, even when he couldn’t pull it together to complete the tile jobs he had started. There was, however, one unbroken line in the story of my grandfather: his unwavering pride in and love for his son.

This complex relationship between a father and son is the story into which I was born. 

Alzheimer’s hit my grandfather early and forced him into a reluctant retirement, shifting the nature of his days. An iconic image from my childhood is my grandfather sitting by himself at our family kitchen table, smoking cigarettes, drinking black coffee, and waiting. Hours on end, day after day. For a long time, I never questioned why he was there or what he was waiting for. We were kids, naturally self-absorbed, intent on watching cartoons or playing in the small woods behind our house.

My only memory of engaging him was when he’d pull out a big, fat wallet dependent on a permanent rubber band to hold it together. (Over time, I realized it wasn’t cash that overstuffed his wallet but innumerable business cards from other working-class folks in our steel-mill town.) On these occasions, he’d pull a single dollar bill halfway out of his wallet and, with a glint in his eye, beckon us to grab it. Falling for his private joke every time, we’d pull and pull, never able to overpower him. Only once we finally deflated (or the next TV show was starting) and gave up would he finally give up the dollar in victory and throw it at us.

Week after week and day after day, he’d wait and wait and wait. 

Until his son got home from work. 

I have no memory of them talking. It’s only now, forty years removed, that I wonder why there were so few interchanges and no physical affection of any kind. My dad would walk through the side door, exhausted after a day of surgery, rounding at hospitals, and patient appointments at multiple offices. He’d proceed past my grandfather without conversation, through the kitchen, straight to his bedroom, and instantaneously fall asleep with a pillow over his head and his feet (shoes still on) hanging off the end of the bed. (For the next half hour or so, he’d remain motionless until my mom sent one of us four kids to wake him up and call him out for dinner.)

For my grandfather, it was that moment when my dad wordlessly passed him that marked the end of his day. My grandfather’s mission was completed: he had seen his son. My grandfather would stand up from the table and head for the door as my mom said, “Bye, Lou. See you tomorrow.”

Sitting, waiting, and watching for my dad became my grandfather’s life’s work. Just putting his eyes on his son was enough. Witnessing the walking miracle of his physician son and feeling the miraculous possibility that it had happened. He was leaving the world a little more beautiful than the one into which he had been born.

My father and grandfather were of two generations uninitiated in expressing emotion, and deeply limited in their ability to participate in the essential rites of passages, both formal and informal, intended upon bestowing masculine love and validation from one generation to the next. But this daily liturgy of waiting and watching communicated everything my grandfather’s words couldn’t at the time. His love for his son was boundless; his pride in his son was immeasurable. He would give everything he had, even his own life, for my dad. 

And to sit and watch and wait and to see his son with his own eyes was a fulfilled life.

It is this memory that emerged from deep in my subconscious last week as I sat for the first time at the bar of Bourbon Brothers, a new, locally owned smokehouse and tavern on the north end of our town. My son is graduating from high school, completing his vision quest, and now embarking on a Spirit-initiated gap year, God’s invitation to adventure, exploration, and service, before he immerses himself as a student at Colorado Christian University.

As part of this initiation year, his Father in Heaven led him to a job bussing tables and practice in the discipline of taking the lowest seat. He passed through the initiation experiences of applying, interviewing, getting hired, buying work clothes, and putting in three weeks at the job without me ever stepping foot in the restaurant. He wanted to stand on his own, finding his way as a young man into the world.

I showed up at the bar unannounced and quietly chose a seat that afforded me a view of most of the restaurant. I had my first-ever pour of Bullet Frontier, marking the rite of passage for this father’s heart. As I sipped and waited, I found myself accessing a fresh memory laden in my soul for four decades.

I waited and waited and watched, for my son.

And then I saw him, in all his glory. Stronger than I’ve ever been, taller than I’ve ever been. What the world might’ve seen was a young, inexperienced busboy. What I saw was a man with the radiance of Solomon. As the story goes,

Look! It’s Solomon’s carriage,
carried and guarded by sixty soldiers,
sixty of Israel’s finest,
All of them armed to the teeth,
trained for battle,
ready for anything, anytime.
(Song of Solomon 3:7-10 MSG)

Watching, waiting, and seeing my son, tears emerged from the depths of my soul and come again even now as I write. Joshua moved about his work, having no idea I was there. 

Steadily clearing table after table, replacing cutlery, running food, and practicing the steady serving of guests. Cutting his teeth in the world of work.

My affection, my pride, my awe of my son knew no bounds. My heart was swimming in well-being, a gladness of a depth that rivaled even watching Cherie walk down the aisle toward me at First Presbyterian Church or watching her naturally labor and birth the most exotic creature of beauty I ever beheld in the birth of my Abigail Rose. 

My Daughter. My Son. Ask me for anything. All I have is yours.

With the aroma of Bullet Frontier, the world faded back. The veil was so very thin. There were no limits to the love bursting in the father’s heart within me as I waited and watched my son.

And then it hit me.

This is my Father’s heart for me.

And an even deeper revelation came like a torrent of rushing water.

This is our Father’s heart for every one of his sons and daughters.

He is waiting and watching and reveling at each of our lives. He, right now, has tears on his face, the same tears I spilled at Bourbon Brothers. The same tears I have now. 

His love knows no bounds.

His affection is relentless.

His care is steadfast.

His purposes for our lives are provision and a goodness beyond our wildest dreams.

There is nothing you can do to make him love you more.

There is nothing you can do to make him love you less.

He loves you
because he loves you
because he loves you
because he loves you
because THAT is what he is like.

It is his nature to love.

And you will always be his beloved.
And his love is unchanging.
And he loves you 100 percent.

He won't love you any better when you become better.
He loves you 100 percent right now.
And even if you have no plans to become better, he will still love you 100 percent.
Because he loves you, and that's the way that he is.
And even if you don't want to change,
He will love you 100 percent.
Even if you have no plans to walk with him,
He will love you 100 percent, because that's his nature.

He loves all the way, all the time.*

This is his one central mission.
It is his nature to love his children.
It is his character.
It is his purpose.
It is his passion.

The one who knows us best
Is the one who loves us most.

Somewhere in the evening, my son slipped behind the bar to bring a tub of dirty drink glasses to be washed. It was right after he finished working through the load of glasses that he happened to turn and see me for the first time.

Waiting.

Watching.

His bright, ocean-blue eyes lit up; his radiant smile spread ear to ear. 

I can only wonder if his look of surprised joy was merely a reflection of what he was seeing on his father’s face.

I was haunted all night, and I still can’t shake the thought even now as I try to reach for words to explain the incomprehensible.

If my Father’s affection and gaze and delight for you and for me is even greater than what I felt at that bar waiting and watching and seeing my son, what would hold me back from taking even great risks for the sake of love?

What would stop me from taking a full swing, living into the truest version of me in the story I’ve been given? What other source of masculine nourishment would I possibly need that would exceed this kind of heroic, unceasing love, to become by day and by decade everything God purposes for me to become?

Friends, he is waiting and watching you right now. 

His tears tell a story of one who is never giving up. His affection for you and me knows no bounds.

The choice is mine, as it is yours.

Would we slow down long enough?

Would we find the speed of soul?

Would we turn to catch our Father’s gaze and allow his affection to reach so deeply into our souls as his sons that we too would become unstoppable in the face of adversity?

Because to receive that unflinching and inexhaustible gaze of our Father is life’s most precious secret. 

Because of this great love, we have no reason not to.

We’ve got nothing to lose.

And everything to gain.

Slow down. 

Tune in.

Your Father’s watching you.

Tears are in his eyes.

It’s your inheritance.

It’s irrevocable.

And it changes everything.

*This core message was spoken spontaneously by Graham Cooke while Jonathan David Helser was recording the song “Inheritance” on his first album.

It doesn't matter if I'm onstage or not. I find the communal experience of a rock concert achieves a kind of transcendence. It's the closest thing to what I think people expect church to be like. Or maybe just what I've always thought church should be. You lose yourself, and at the same time come to the realization or understanding that you're part of something bigger than yourself. 
– Jeff Tweedy

Stay connected, your true self to her true self.
Come to the center of her experience.
Validate her emotions. 
Listen for the sake of listening.
Become a student of her heart.
Learn her love language.
Delight in what she delights in.
And no matter the cost, no matter the reputation squandered, 
your delight and affection are her birthright.
Choose to live courageously in a way that demonstrates that
nothing she says or doesn’t say, 
does or doesn’t do 
justifies withdrawing your delight and affection.
Period.

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that. Because what the world needs is men and women who have come alive.

God. Here am I. Send me.

God. Here am I. Send me.

What do we need as we turn our gaze toward a new year? 

What is helpful? What isn’t?

Where do we find Life? 

And how do we make it last? 

There's a story I love about scientists in Capetown, South Africa, studying an extraordinary species called "Resurrection Plants." Though these plants appear dead amidst the harshness of their arid climate, they are actually in a state of hyperdormancy, waiting for the water they so desperately need. When the rains come, these plants spring back to life, suddenly brimming again with robust well-being. 

Without living water welling up from within us, our souls settle into hyperdormancy, sometimes so long-lasting that it may even feel like death. 

Come along into this video teaching as I invite you to partner with God in the reestablishment of his rivers of living water within you. 

Every one of [the old men] had a good knife in his pocket, sharp, the blades whetted narrow and concave, the horn of the handle worn smooth. These men had known hard use, nearly all of them....You could tell it by their hands, which were shaped by wear....The backs of their hands showed a network of little scars where they had been cut, nicked, thorn stuck, pinched, punctured, scraped, and burned. Their faces told that they had suffered things they did not talk about.
– Jayber Crow, Port William’s barber, 1942

He lit up like a Christmas tree.

His eyes were ablaze with light. Something in his masculine soul was validated. Something, though unnamed, was called up and called out. He was only 10 years old, but some part of the boy became a man.

Not just in the boy, but also in me.

It happened after I finished teaching at a local church. The staff had assigned a security detail to provide protection for me and my family were an active shooter to target us during the services.

As the Navy SEALs’ motto goes, “Plan for success and train for failure.”

Our hope is to never experience that sort of incident. But if it occurs, the life-safety team at the church is ready to take action.

Right alongside Jim, the head life-safety coordinator assigned to me that morning, was Benjamin, an eager 10-year-old, equipped with his own earpiece and radio to report anything out of the ordinary. 

Before the morning services, I learned that Jim and Benjamin were connected through Fathers in the Field, a redemptive ministry whose mission is to provide positive masculine mentoring relationships to boys who have no other father-figures. It’s a mission that calls up good men to provide strong, loving, and wise masculine presence and to help bring restoration where the enemy has waged a war against the heart of the boy.

I was moved to tears when, at the close of our mission, I bent down to thank Benjamin for lending his strength to me and my family. Emotion swirled in me as I considered both the world that Benjamin would go home to without the presence of a positive masculine role model and also the strength, love, and time that Jim was giving from a heart that says, “Fatherlessness will not have the final word on my watch.”

The power of their relationship was palpable. Benjamin embodied a shared confidence as he stood at Jim’s side to provide protection in the mission. 

Today, Benjamin became a modern-day superhero. 

But this wasn’t a movie. It was the real thing. 

I knew that I wanted to celebrate and affirm what I saw in him. As Wendell Berry suggests, there are no unsacred places and things, only sacred and desecrated. Benjamin’s self-giving strength turned a seemingly ordinary moment into sacrament.

Kneeling on the asphalt of the parking lot, I pulled out my personal pocket knife and looked him in the eye. 

“Benjamin, God has made you strong-hearted. You are rare. You are dangerous, for good. I wish I had the strength you have when I was your age. I admire you. You have become one of my heroes. You have protected me and my family. I want to give my pocket knife to you. Every time you feel it in your pocket or pull it out to use it, remember, God, our Father, made you strong. Together with him, you can become who you were made to be. And with him and each other and the tools in our hands, we can become the kind of men who can heal the world.”

Between his smile and my tears, surely the sun stood still. 

In Iron John, Robert Bly observes this truth about masculine initiation: It is so very real that its substance actually passes from the heart of the father to the son and from the son to the father. 

In that moment of initiation, two boys were healed and strengthened a little more. 

Our true Father tended us. The boy in Benjamin and the boy in me. 

All through a pocket knife and a small moment of intentional initiation.

Masculinity is bestowed.  

Every boy must be given opportunity after opportunity to be seen, celebrated, and invited further along the path. 

As I wrote in Becoming a King,

A man was intended to walk ever deeper into a blend of fierce mastery and determined love, both qualities growing in the context of deepening union with his heavenly Father. In fact, fully restored masculinity is part of God’s answer to the trouble on earth. 

A wholehearted man walking in intimacy with the heart of God was meant to be one of the most powerful weapons to bring forth life as it was meant to be. A knife can become a physical expression of this spiritual reality. It’s not as much about the knife as it is about what comes through the knife when it is wielded as strength in love. 

When you pull it out, it’s as if you were saying, “I may not have the answer to the question at hand, but I am here. I choose to show up, to risk, to engage for a greater good.” 

A man and a knife can save the world.

There are countless ways to bestow a knife upon a boy or a man. I’ve bestowed dozens over the last decade to boys and men in my world, each time unique, and every time healing some small part of both of our souls.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the launch of Becoming a King. It’s been an honor to daily set my face like a flint in the mission of reaching the many to find the few. I sensed God was inviting me to mark this moment in my masculine initiation with a knife. In the many years of giving knives to others, I realized I haven’t bought a meaningful knife for myself since I was in sixth grade. 

For almost two years I’ve been on the lookout for a specific knife for wilderness adventure, a daily tool for the backcountry that is ultralight without compromising in strength, performance, and utility. I landed on the Become Good Soil Benchmade Bugout but have been reluctant to purchase it for myself. 

As I prayed, I sensed the Father say, It’s from me for you. You’re just like Benjamin, and I have been steadily healing the unfathered places in your soul for decades. This knife is on time. You have stewarded the message I have entrusted to your care. Let’s celebrate this milestone together.

Friends, a man and a knife can save the world. God knows how much we need healing to take place in our age. Ask God to invite you to join him in the initiation of the heart of the boy or the man in your world.

Look for an opportunity to call out masculine strength, to celebrate a milestone, and to participate in the path and process of masculine initiation in the lives of those entrusted to your care.

For Father’s Day, it sure beats a pair of socks.

As a way of fueling the mission, we have some new arrivals for our curated Become Good Soil Knife Collection. The specifics of the knife are far less important than the choice to simply invest in the masculine initiation of those entrusted to your care.

Go ahead, change the world. And together, over time, let’s help change the headlines. Let’s invest in stories that will one day become celebrations of strong-hearted men who bring protection in place of harm and courage in place of doubt.

It matters.

And you can make a difference.

Ask God how, and he’ll show you the way.

Learn more about the Become Good Soil Knife Collection.

I step in shit all the time and recognize it when I do. I’ve just learned how to scrape it off my boots and carry on.
– Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

It hurt like hell. 

The moment the block of Ponderosa pine slipped through the grip of my glove, I knew the fingers between that log and the bed of my truck were in trouble. Pain shot up my arm.

I paused to breathe through the pain. The cool evening breeze of autumn caught the sweat trickling down my face; winter was around the corner. As I drew in a deep breath, the setting sun caught my attention. One irony of the relentless drought and heartbreaking wildfires seizing Colorado this year has been magnificent haze-amplified evening glows, streaking the sky in magenta, apricot, and cobalt. 

Suddenly, I recalled a long-ago moment with a buddy of mine and laughed out loud for the utter joy of it all.

“You know what your problem is? You’ve got computer hands.”

The diagnosis had come to my buddy when he was elbow deep under the hood of his truck, trying to learn—with the help of a crusty old mechanic—how to replace a fuel pump. With the mouth of a sailor and a waiting room that looked like a storage closet for broken chairs and greasy magazines, this mechanic was like a character right out of a film on masculine initiation. My buddy was doing his best, unsuccessfully, to loosen a bolt when Neil (no last name—it’s just Neil) announced, “The problem isn’t the wrench. The problem’s the hands. You’ve got computer hands.”

When he told me the story, my buddy and I had laughed, both looking at our hands. Well-groomed indeed and ready to bravely face any foe that might present itself...online. 

But for doing real things—physical things, messy things—our “inside hands” were no match for Neil’s four decades of turning a wrench.

That was a long time ago, and though I still spend an obscene number of hours on a computer, my hands and my body are now marked with scars and stories of initiation into real things.

An hour earlier, I had been sitting behind a desk plugged into the matrix, faltering in that unique fatigue known perhaps only to modern humans, a fatigue not from physical labor but from choices. An exhaustion from decisions, mental activity, and the endless flow of byte-sized virtual communications. Each piece no doubt laced with deep meaning, but collectively simply too much. An overload of choices and inputs and a woefully disproportionate ratio of mental expenditure to the physicality that fuels the masculine soul like food. Too much of too many artificial things, all clouding my spirit and removing me too many degrees from the real. 

But now that was behind me. I was outdoors instead of indoors, in my weather-worn Carhartt coveralls infused with the scent of man and reeking of the joy of the last dozen or so adventures. My chainsaw chaps, caked in an aged compound of sawdust and bar-chain oil, reminded me of the brilliant coloring on the shed antlers of bull elk that hang from a rack in my garage: the blend of rich browns painted by the sap of pine trees mixing with blood from the bull elk scraping their antlers against hefty trunks in order to shed summer’s velvet. 

I removed my glove to confirm that my finger could make it through at least one more cord of wood blocked and loaded into the truck bed. Thankfully, I knew all I’d lose was another fingernail. 

My thoughts went to Aldo Leopold and his epic work A Sand County Almanac. As a young man, I’d gotten lost in the wonder of what it would be like to experience what he did, a thousand times over—sitting with a pot of coffee on the front porch of his farm for over an hour, simply watching the earth wake under the glow of a new sunrise. Day after day, Leopold would posture himself to take in the magnificence of morning as God produced and directed another episode of the birth of a new day. I thought of Leopold’s invitation to take heed of two spiritual dangers: the twin illusions that heat comes from the furnace and food comes from the grocery store.

As my pulse thudded in my finger, I recalled the process of awakening, years before, to the reality that heat and food come from the grace of Nature combined with the hard work of humans to painstakingly participate in, cultivate, and harvest the raw materials Nature provides. Now, over a decade later, I took a soul’s inventory: though I still have a long way to go, the illusions created by my stubborn preference for convenience are slowly disintegrating through connection with real things. I’m now a gleaner of firewood from anywhere and everywhere I can. Tonight, the source is the property of a friend who needed to remove a couple of big Ponderosa pines that had succumbed to mistletoe. At my feet are a pair of well-used chainsaws. The logs are loaded in the pickup I waited twenty years to own, a truck now marked bumper to bumper with mud and scars from adventures in field and forest. The aroma of pine is nearly intoxicating. I am surrounded by what will be the seventh cord of firewood I’ve put up beside my suburban house over the last year to heat our home for the winter. (I am finding unexpected joy in lowering the property values in my neighborhood as my woodpile grows.) By the grace of Nature and the love and leading of our Father, I am recovering my soul as a man.

In the pain and the sweat and the brilliance of the glimmering sky, I knew this:

Lost parts of my soul are being recovered, and

Broken parts of my soul are being restored.

Right here, next to the driveway where our minivan is parked and the curb where we set out our trash cans on Tuesdays. Right here in the midst of a “normal life.”

Everything is changing.

From the inside out.

Now, much of our heat comes from pine and aspen harvested with care and story.

Much of our food comes from the field and choosing to hunt on public land in a state where wild game is available. Seven years ago, I asked God to allow us to never run out of wild game, to at all times have at least one package in the freezer. My Father has been faithful, and we’ve never run out of meat or new opportunities to harvest something, from rabbits to roadkill and everything in between. In August we were down to three packages, but by the close of archery season we’ve managed the better part of enough animals to fill the freezer and pass some JoyBombs along to others. (What could be happier than putting a rack of moose ribs in your buddy’s freezer? Oh, how I wish I could’ve seen his wife’s face when she went out to grab some more LaCroix.)

The journey to exchanging computer hands for the hands of a generalist began with curiosity.

It began with responding to a Father who was inviting me into the impossible along my frontier of masculine initiation.

It started with one small but intentional step: consenting to an unknown path upon which men with computer hands like mine don’t feel too steady. Remember, true courage is feeling fear and doing it anyway. 

It was partnership and participation.

It was failure and setbacks.

It was a long obedience in the same direction.

And it was miles marked with joy around what seemed like forbidden and intimidating corners.

My finger will heal. 

But the scar will likely remain.

The scars will help me remember. 

This moment.

And so many others.

Scars born of adversity, loss, failure, and many tears.

It takes a lot of shit to make good soil.

Go ahead, buy a chainsaw.

Say no to alcohol for a month.

See a counselor.

Or, like Aldo Leopold, take a wonderfully inefficient hour to watch the miracle of the awakening day—with no technology at the ready.

Take the time to learn how to sharpen a pocket knife or a chainsaw blade (thanks, Justin, for the lesson last year).

Fix something that’s broken.

Let go of the thing that is no longer serving you.

Unlearn the habits and mindsets that have cluttered your garage, your calendar, or your soul.

Get into your body in new ways so you can recover your masculine soul with a strength you might think is impossible.

Take a risk you won’t regret.

It’s worth the cost.

Everything he has for you is yours.

If you want it.

Look for this article and more in the upcoming issue of And Sons Magazine.

I’ve had the privilege of featuring the mission and message of Become Good Soil and Becoming a King on over 50 different podcast platforms this past year. My intention was to offer authentically, allowing each conversation to be led by the Spirit and have a unique character based on the host and the platform. 

Here are a few highlighted episodes, along with a growing list of many of those podcasts. We’re adding to this regularly, so make sure to check back on the Become Good Soil podcast page.

See more

Life Enchanted with Nick Carlisle
Isle of Misfits with Nancy Carmichael
Work Life Play with Aaron McHugh
Brothers of Merit with Taylor Dooley & Brandon Collier
Dad Hackers with Patrick Antonucci
Dad Edge with Larry Hagner
Anthem of the Adventurer with Dan Zehner
Being Sons with Jay Heck
Brothers of Merit with Taylor Dooley & Bradon Collier
Clarity Podcast with Aaron Santmyire
Dad in the Trenches with Aaron Long
dadAWESOME with Jeff Zaugg
Dynamic Growth Alliance with Ryan Gauthier
Empowered Homes with Bobby Cooley
Exploring More (Zoweh) with Michael
Thompson P. I, P. II, P. III
EYF Podcast with Dave MacDonald
Faith Radio “The Meeting House” with Bob Crittenden
Fatherhood Field Notes with Ned Schaunt
Good, True & Beautiful with Ashton Gustafson
Guys Like Us with Tyler Brondyk
Heart Healthy Hustle with Jonathan Frederick
Impossible Beauty with Melissa Kucharski
Influencer Networking Secrets with Paul Edwards
iHeart Radio (KFMB) with Mike Slater
Kindling Fire with Troy Magnum
Legendary Lifestyles with Chad Cooper
Life Enchanted with Nick Carlisle P.I, P.II
Masculine Journey with Sam Main & Robby Dilmore P. I, P.II
Military Veteran Dad with Ben Killoy
New Kind of Man with Chad Zueck
Sports Spectrum with Jason Romano
SOS Radio with Scott Herrold
Strong Towers with Tom Edwards
The Amos Project with John Claborn P. I, P. II
The Next Man Up with Mark StaniferUncensored Advice for Men with Josh Wilson
Win Today with Christopher Cook

“It is profound how different our experiences can be inside our own skin. When it comes to sensations in the body, we are not on a level playing field. To love and be loved, to know and be known, it’s so important that we practice story-informed relating with ourselves and each other. Jesus is the most brilliant story-informed and trauma-sensitive teacher and friend who has ever lived.”
– Cherie Snyder

Many of us—or those we love—have contended with the agonizing sensations of acute anxiety. In our attempts to regulate these sensations, we often reach for substances, co-dependent relationships, or control over external circumstances to mitigate the pain and upheaval we feel on the inside. Sometimes the efforts we make to soothe our bodies end up causing harm to ourselves or to those we love. 

Friends, if acute anxiety has been a part of your story or the story of someone you love, there is reliable hope for encounter, comfort, and transformation. My bride, Cherie, has her own story of anxiety, and out of her path toward wholeness, she has consented to the slow and steady process of becoming a trauma-informed educator. She works regularly with fellow travelers to help listen for the sacred information that the body might be conveying and experience loving and compassionate transformation.

Join Cherie as she shares a hopeful framework and practical steps to help us listen to our bodies, learn our stories, encounter God, and move compassionately from anxiety through transformation and toward greater peace.

https://vimeo.com/485580669

“We can see God in everything and miss him in anything.”

 –Ken Helser, A Place for the Heart

Every week...

Every year...

For more than ten years... 

That’s got to be hundreds of times...

Every week...

Every year...

For more than ten years…

That’s hundreds of times...

“One of the most important tasks of a moral society must be to make boys into good men."
–Abigail Shrier, Wall Street Journal

Abigail Shrier is among the rare and brave public figures giving voice to what research indicates is a presenting crisis in our age.

Abigail is best known for her extensive work as a journalist, publishing articles for the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Prager University, and more. To her core, she is a winsome champion of restoring dignity to masculinity and femininity. 

After uncovering startling statistics of the unprecedented number of teenage girls undergoing radical surgeries and hormone treatments in order to leave behind their biological gender, Abigail spent years interviewing over 200 young women and dozens of families to try to understand their experience. She then felt called to collect both the depth and breadth of her research into a powerful book, Irreversible Damage. This great contribution to the conversation on gender is an effort to fight for the well-being of a vulnerable, underserved, and at-risk population: teenage girls.

After reading her work and watching her videos on gender, I sought for eight months to bring Abigail Shrier to the Become Good Soil community Not only is Abigail a passionate mother of teenagers and a wife deeply committed to her husband, Zach, but she is one of the most ardent feminine public voices in our day advocating for healthy masculinity and the redemptive potential that Heaven is seeking to recover in the hearts of men.

Abigail is willing to plunge below the toxic culture war and look with kindness into a mental and soulful crisis of many teenaged women in our day. In the midst of these heart-breaking challenges, the Spirit is at work in untold ways, including the restoration of the hearts of men in order to bring forth more peace, joy, dignity, and hope to many—and particularly to the hearts of young women suffering in the absence of love, belonging, support, and care. 

Friends, in this conversation, an Orthodox Jewish Wall Street journalist who advocates for men and a friend of Jesus longing to advocate for women came together for heart-centered dialogue that sent us both into uncharted waters. Clearly the Spirit was in our midst. And it’s my joy to invite you in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrNRypyrRyc

Want more?

Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier

"Masculine Dads Raise Confident Daughters" (Wall Street Journal)

For more encouragement in parenting young daughters and sons, enjoy this free seven-day reflection: Secrets to Raising Wholehearted Kids.

“Man doesn’t make kings. God does.”
–Robert the Bruce, Scotland, 1274-1329

What is the most important thing?

What if you had another chance?

What if there was a secret treasure waiting to be found?

What if there was an ancient path that led to life as it was meant to be?

Would you take it?

What if it wasn’t easy? 

What if it wasn’t cheap?

What if it wasn’t quick?

What if there was a way to be good again? 

To become what God meant when he meant you?

What if you could have your whole heart restored?

What if you could be strong again? 

Courageous again?

And learn to live with a ferocity that outlives your life?

What if that’s what they remember?

The Becoming a King Launch Event is my wholehearted invitation to risk responding to a gentle and strong knock at the door of your soul. To risk turning the handle and beginning afresh, right here and right now. To recover the path that leads to life as it was meant to be.

It was my honor to speak to women and men, young and old alike. Join me as—with a little help from Napoleon Dynamite—we joyfully and hopefully begin to recover the most important thing.  

RESPONDING TO AND PARTICIPATING WITH GOD’S PLANS
FOR OUR CHILDREN

1. Make a list of ten dreams or goals you have for your kids. After making that list, reflect on these dreams. Are these God’s unique dreams for them? How much have you inquired about his heart and his intentions on this matter? How will you react if any of these specific dreams you have don’t come to pass?
2. What are you holding onto so tightly that you are unable to open your heart to courageously and vulnerably trust that God eagerly anticipates shepherding your children into his best for them (and therefore for you)?  

"This is neither theory nor theological wrangling. It's an excavation of the heart. A rescue mission to steal back the truth of us." 

–Charles Martin, New York Times bestselling author

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, 

committed citizens can change the world. 

Indeed, its the only thing that ever has.

-Margaret Mead

At risk of being squandered by shiny things that are urgent but not important.

At risk of being lost in a sea of demands that clamor for our attention but lack substance.

At risk of being stolen by a thief who actively works to take from us the very thing that alone can wholly renew our vitality.

God, I give you my attention.

God, I give you my affection.

Father, I give you my attention.

Father, I give you my affection.

Jesus, I give you my attention.

Jesus, I give you my affection.

Holy Spirit, I give you my attention.

Holy Spirit, I give you my affection.

Be still and know that I am God. 

Be still and know that I am God. 

Be still and know.

Be still and know.

Be still.

Be still.

"When a father and son do spend long hours together, which some fathers and sons still do, we could say that a substance almost like food passes from the older body to the younger."

-Iron John, Robert Bly

Friends,

Who would you like to have become when we round the corner into 2030 a decade from now?

As we enter a new year and a new decade, I wanted to begin with a personal 14-minute video as a way of sharing my heart and strength with you as a fellow Kingdom apprentice.

Friends, the Gospel works. Here is one of the Father's central promises for all of us who are responding to his invitation by day and by decade (paraphrased from Jeremiah 17:7-8):

I bless you as you stick with me even in the places where it feels like I have not stuck with you. I enforce what is good for you as you increasingly choose to trust in my love, my provision, my story for your life. I enforce what is good for you as you risk wholeheartedly placing your confidence in me, in the details of the fabric of your story.

Son, you will become a tree planted by rich and revitalizing water.
Your roots will be sent out deep into your soul, enriched by this River of Life.
You will decrease in fear when the fire comes.
Your leaves will remain supernaturally green and vibrant.
Worry of scarcity, of loss, of death, and of lack through drought will not consume you.
In season and out of season, you will bear much fruit.

Who would you like to become this year? Let's do it together.

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live." (55:1-3a)

Risk being honest about what wasn’t working in myself and in my life.

Give the buried questions of my heart permission to rise to the surface.

Trust that these questions are the very keys to unlocking the deepest truths about who I am, who God is, and what being human is all about.