187: Initiating Our Parts
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 along some distant day into the answer.
—Rainer Maria Rilke
Friends,
On our unique paths of initiation as women and men, we often encounter the severe mercy—the painful hope—of having our illusion of control shattered by the rebellious parts of our own souls.
The infant, longing for nourishment. The toddler, yearning for eye contact and the smile of an attentive parent. The boyish hope and daring of a third-grade cowboy. The angry teenager, thirsting for a strength both within and beyond himself. The older man, carrying an unsung song in his heart.
When we finally summon the courage to face the collective of young men within us, what do we do?
To whom do we turn?
I suggest that the invitation and intention of Jesus Christ is to welcome, see, love, know, sustain, restore, and champion all the uninitiated men within us—bringing them into an effectively organized community, fully held together and integrated by Him.
With permission, this episode offers a behind-the-scenes look at an authentic, real-time mentoring call with a courageous apprentice. He is noticing the parts within and creating a safe space for each one to embark on the journey ever closer to Home.
Join me as his story unfolds, opening access to our own stories in ways beyond what we can yet imagine.
For the Kingdom,
Morgan & Cherie