If You Want to Change – Go Deep
by Owen Marcus
I, like the rest of us, would much rather do the minimum than work hard. Why do more than you need to?
Well, there are times when our mental solutions don’t work. In this post on my blog I write about how the mantra of our groups is – “Take the man deeper” produces a level of change unattainable from any mental technique I have ever seen.
A place inside for Fathers
by Herb Orrell
Father’s Day would have been pretty much the same if it hadn’t been for the mud swallows.
It was during my second coffee that I first heard their morning chatter outside on the porch. Peering out the window I saw the two of them, giggling newlyweds: he, doting and chivalrous; she, radiant and graceful.
Do you ask for help?
by Owen Marcus
I am learning. In this post on my blog I write about creating and then allowing your community to help you and how it is a challenge for us men.
I see in many men, including myself that asking for help is difficult. We would rather offer than ask. Is that true for you? When was the last time you asked someone to go out of their way for you?
Axial Grease Man
by Walter Stewart
Mom needed help raising ten children
You took us on jobs where
Men brought water up from the earth
They laughed and cussed at
Each other in the Texas heat
Lumbering tools bent deep
Sweaty axial grease men
Who shaped pipe, rope,
Wrenches and steel
Into surgeon’s wands
Coaxing the nectar upward
Men who long knew
The value of Aqua Dulce
Before it was bottled up
What do you really want from food?
by Dmitri Bilgere
“I want to eat whatever I want, as much as I want, whenever I want,
and never exercise. That’s what I want.”
My wife Fawn had asked me what I wanted my relationship with food
to be like. Hearing me answer, I think she was starting to regret
having asked.
Are you depressed?
I say yes – there is a good chance you are depressed
by Owen Marcus
Twenty-five years ago I was hanging out with my best friend, mentor and shaman, Nelita, when she casually mentions, “You are depressed.” Without thinking I said, “No.” Then I started thinking about my clients who were depressed and how I had many of their symptoms.
A Father’s Love; a poem
by Shaky Shergill
Not always shown but ever present
A father’s love.
Wrestled to the ground by a growing son
A father’s love
Tickling and laughing
A father’s love
Smiling and encouraging
A father’s love
Orders to do homework
A father’s love
Shouting to clear your room
A father’s love
Thinking about your future
A father’s love
Holding you close and kissing your forehead
A father’s love
Letting Go; a poem
by Richard Wiener
What fathers bear when sons leave
Beggars description. Empty rooms
Still echo with the voices of the past.
The vacant chair at table, silences
That take the place of sharings
With sons we loved so well, still love,
But now in pain at their departing.
Suddenly we’re old, or older at the least.
Suddenly it’s only we, without illusions
Of being young with them, playing that game.
Sons’ leaving seems like a betrayal,
Their chips now on another number, not ours.
And that embrace which we receive at parting,
A consolation prize, a bittersweet conclusion
To all we shared for,oh,so many years,
Now past.
Coming to terms with an absence of elders
by Rick Belden
I’ve been thinking recently about the deficiency of appropriate, effective male mentoring in my life and how it’s affected me. I’m 52 and it’s still affecting me, just as it’s affected me at every stage of my life. There’s a huge hole in my life where my father should have been (and still should be), but as big as that hole is, it’s merely the center of a much larger hole, the product of a male culture that is woefully inadequate to meet the true needs of men and boys.
Father’s Day Open Post
Celebrating Father's Day - 2011
What are you ready to bless about your Dad?
What will you bless about yourself?
What are you ready to commit to in your fathering, or in your modeling of the healthy sovereign?
Have a story or a poem to share? Share it here!
FATHERS: A Literary Anthology by Andre Gerard
by Sarah McGinnis
Writer Andre Gerard, who identified and named the new publishing term patremoir an “essay, poem, play or film built around memories of the author’s father,” has just released Fathers: A Literary Anthology. In it, essays by a diverse group of beloved writers, including Alice Munro, Franz Kafka, E.E. Cummings, Sylvia Plath and E.B. White explore the idea of fatherhood and all its ups and downs — the admiration and the conflict, love, loss, and everything in between.
The Little Boy Inside
by Paul Rogers
The little Boy Inside,
Holds his head in shame,
The little Boy,
Believes he is to blame,
The little Boy Inside,
Carries the weight of wounds, that last,
The little Boy,
Has not healed, from time past,
The little Boy Inside,
Lives with terror, lives with fear,
The little Boy,
Has No Mother close, No Father near,
The Little Boy Inside,
No one to hold, No one to ease his pain,
The little Boy,
Love’s lack, he feels insane,
Involving Fathers (How we do it in Canada)
by Ryan Stanga
From my perspective, the recognition of the importance of involved Fathering has grown over the last several years. Given my understanding of fathers’ involvement in the middle and later part of the 20th Century, through movies and TV shows, my experience of my own father and the fathers of friends as I was growing up, I am encouraged by what I perceive to be more involvement between of men with their children.
My Life with Iron Man
By Rick Belden
A few months ago, I received an invitation from Eivind Figenschau Skjellum (who just completed the New Warrior Training Adventure in the UK in June, 2011) at Masculinity-Movies.com to write a guest review for the 2008 movie Iron Man. I was pleased and very honored to accept. You can read my review of the movie on his site. But there’s more to my relationship with Iron Man than a movie review. Much more.
Moving from Caveman Procreator to Caring Dad: The Father Myth
in Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs:
The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son
by Eric Cravey
Numerous studies conducted over different decades illustrate that the passage of time is the best cure for changing or re-shaping long-held public perceptions, which are sometimes referred to as the myth of what a culture believes is true. In literature, myth takes a given perception of human beings and makes them concrete to the reader. In his memoir Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son, Michael Chabon challenges the reader to re-think the myth of the modern father through his willingness to discuss his relationship with his father, admit personal shortcomings and being honest about his past.
The ULTIMATE Men’s Summit – HUGE FREE EVENT!!
Men!
I’m writing to invite you to help spread the word about a huge and exciting men’s event – the Ultimate Men’s Summit. It’s a ten-day virtual event featuring more than 75 powerful leaders, including Robert Bly, Sam Keen, Jed Diamond, Chris Kyle, Owen Marcus, Jayson Gaddis, Michael Taylor, Dan Milman, John Friend, Neale Donald Walsh, Michael Kimmel, and our own co-founder, Bill Kauth.
You can participate by phone or on the internet!
You can listen to as many of the speakers as you want!
And it’s FREE!
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The ManKind Project® is an international nonprofit education and training organization making the world safer by growing 'better' men. We support over 1000 men's groups in 10 countries around the world. Our flagship training is the New Warrior Training Adventure. Over 45,000 men have stepped out of their comfort zones to make a better life for themselves and their families.
Please support the work of the ManKind Project with a Tax Deductible Contribution.
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