And Sons

Many of our conversations with friends have been around the subject of the cost of "really" following God. There is a sort of understanding that we are not completely there yet, and to take the leap to full-fledged followers would usher in a high cost. Yet, as Peter said, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."

Brian Dreher is one of four Senior Terrestrial Biologist's in the state of Colorado. He got his masters studying bears. He's also an avid bowhunter. Enough said, right? Brian and Morgan have been longtime friends thanks to a shared passion of the wilderness, hunting, and conservation. Brian lives in a space between the interest groups of politicians with agendas, hunters and recreation enthusiast who want to maximize opportunities, and the care for the land and the animals so the resources thrive over time. That friendship, and that position, is what initiated our conversation today.

Back in the fall I (Blaine here) started building a mini barn in my backyard. Doing so dismantled a great many misconceptions I held about building and craftsmanship, like how good I was at it, and what it would be like. Example: I assumed craft would be contemplative and monastic, but it turns out that’s only true if you already have a contemplative and monastic disposition. To talk this through, we asked builder and finish carpenter and longtime craftsman Greg Winters to come into the studio and explain the soul of the craftsman. This isn’t just about learning to make certain cuts. It’s learning work through failure, to focus, to live in the present. It’s learning to step back from a project and let the mind come to rest. Most of all, it’s developing the ability to reach out for the Father in the places he’s expressing himself. Carpentry resists isolation. And that’s a good thing. It’s an opportunity to learn the life of a son.

“Two things I ask of you, Lord; do not refuse me before I die: Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.” Yup. The Proverbs say some things about wealth and power we rarely say or pray. In this episode, we dive in to desire: what is worth wanting? Which is another way of saying, what nourishes the human soul? Because it doesn’t seem to be power, that is, wealth, success or influence, even though I (Blaine) spend a lot time thinking about how to get those things. Instead, the wisdom of the ages advocate for righteousness, a concept translated in the New Testament as eudaimonia, or flourishing. That’s all well and good, but we’d like to know, how does someone actually want righteousness? What’s it look like? And, maybe most importantly, how does it interact with the world’s concept of power? The answers are out there, folks, from wanting wisdom to asking for a God-listening heart. We’ve got a ways to go, but dismantling misleading aspirations is a good place to start.

“If your life with God doesn’t have a regular dose of adventure,” Padre says, “It’s not going to sustain the masculine soul.” That’s all well and good, but what if you live in the city? What if you have young kids? What if any one of a hundred what-ifs make adventure difficult? To answer that question, we snagged Bart Hansen, of the Ransomed Heart team. Bart has built rockets, parasails, and airplanes, flown all over the west, and done some of the craziest things we’ve ever heard. But it turns out none of those things define his life of adventure. Nope. Instead, Bart uses three categories to explore adventure as it relates to the life of the heart: Casual, Crucial and Epic Adventure. Casual adventures are everyday outings. Crucial adventures involve the maturation of the soul. Epic adventures hinge upon the risk of love. It turns out we need all three. From swim training in a snow storm to pursuing irritating neighbors to loving the woman in your life, this is an episode everyone needs.

We've touched on learning before, and this isn't a repeat episode. Recently a young man asked us how we learn things, as in, how we gain skills or information that actually effects our daily lives. Which is really the point of all that information out there, isn't it? Here's the excerpt from the poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay from the episode: "Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour, Rains from the sky a meteoric shower Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined. Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill Is daily spun, but there exists no loom To weave it into fabric."

Our identities are shaped by our stories, by the messages we receive from those around us, and by the scripts we seem doomed to live out. But out identity as we know it may not be who we really, truly, are. What we speak over others and over ourselves has immense power, and so much more so when we speak statements of identity. What are the statements you believe about yourself? What if you could exchange your script for a new, better, more hopeful one? What if everyone you knew said, "I trust you"? What would you live like then?

Wookie is a designer, coffee shop owner, New Hampshire-based motorcycle rider. He’s a fascinating young dude with a penchant for risk and plenty of insight into which scooter to buy. We roped him in for a few reasons. When you see a guy who owns a coffee shop, works freelance, and maintains a stable of sweet bikes, its hard to imagine how all that happened. We wanted to know the story. What would the established freelancer tell the young freelancer? How do you manage risk when you have so many irons in the fire? And how do you keep your love of motorcycles alive when you’ve got a wife and house and kids? As Wookie admits, the story is messy, but there are always takeaways, and the lessons are invaluable.

Sam, Blaine, and Luke sit down to tell some stories from their experiences in dating from high school, into college, and eventually into marriage. This is not meant to be the official posture of And Sons on dating, but a round table where other's stories and experiences can help by way of understanding our own stories. What are the messages your story with dating is telling you, and what are the agreements you might be making over your future? The reference for the purity movement mentioned in the episode is from a lecture at Fuller, but the source is work by Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers. Her book is "Sex, God, and the Conservative Church". This episode is not about Dr. Sellers book, nor was the conversation guided by it.

It’s Advent, folks. The beginning of the year. The reorientation to our revolution. Sure, advent is a time of preparation, too, but it’s also a time of doubling down on our story, of circling up to raise a glass to the Kingdom of God and remind ourselves of the urgency of our hour. It’s hard to say it better than folks have said it for centuries - “When the Church celebrates the liturgy of Advent each year, she makes present this ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Savior’s first coming, the faithful renew their ardent desire for his second coming…the Church unites herself to his desire.”

What are you hoping for? What are you thinking about on a daily basis that brings expectation and anticipation? We all know the story of the Christian hope, it's on t-shirts and tattoos and hallmark cards. How often are we framing our days based on it though, and how often is the world's version taking over?

In this episode, we flip the script. Aaron McHugh, of Work Life Play, interviews the And Sons team (Sam and Blaine) to talk about creative work. How does And Sons keep moving dreams down the field and projects out the door? In brief, years of trial and error. But there’s more to it than that. From the personal challenges of work to basic creative habits, this is an episode on how to ship. Here’ the copy from Work Life Play: Today’s interview is with Blaine and Sam Eldredge with And Son’s Magazine. We talk about their eight-year dream of creating a print magazine, the power of transformation v.s. entertainment, masculinity as a lens by which we can view everything else, in defense of millennials, the joy of words, vulnerability and going first, the temptation to quit, brotherhood and hearing God’s voice. Love Work Life Play? Find Aaron McHugh over at aaronmchugh.com, and subscribe to the Work Life Play podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

If the data can be trusted, we’ll all find ourselves job searching, more than once, in our 20s (and 30s too). In this episode, we brought in Luke from a long-term undercover assignment job-searching to get a tactical download. Like, what job-searching sites are statistically reliable? How do you beat candidate-filtering algorithms? What’s a decent application/interview ratio? It’s all pretty darn helpful. Not jobless? Doesn’t matter. We dig in to keeping the heart alive in off seasons, the meaning of work, and how work relates to a vocation over time. Oh, by the way, And Sons is a print magazine. Haven’t subscribed? Get on over to andsonsmagazine.com/print and join the tribe.

Two things are given in human experience. Birth and death. Our culture doesn’t spend much time thinking about either one. And neither, to be honest, do we. Not until we have to. Which is a problem. If there were two events framing every human life you’d think we’d spend the necessary time to understand them. In this episode, we roped in midwife/writer Kim Osterholzer to map out the territory. This isn’t health class. There’s no test at the end. In this episode, we ask more about the nature and meaning of birth than the way its done, the things people should know about it, and why it matters. It’s a revelatory talk. As men, it’s vital that we make ourselves students of the feminine soul. Birth is, after all, God’s plan for populating eternity with his image. It’s a space that reveals the power of the feminine soul to create the future, in relationship, and it turns out men have a role. Wild stuff.

Here at And Sons there’s one question we get more than any other: How do I build conversational intimacy with God? Meaning normal, practical, chatty relationship. Hearing God is the basis for the rest of the Christian life. So of course we roped in John Eldredge to riff on steps to hearing His voice. From new categories for listening (playfulness, kindness) to basic relational skills (stress-free conversation, seeking confirmation) to stories from the field, this is one we’ll return to ourselves.

Books and seminars and conferences and counselors and lifetimes are spent on this subject, and rightly so. But the truth is, knowing that we need to care for our souls, to seek stillness, and to be active about our healing is one thing, actually doing something about it is quite another. Sam and Blaine offer a few simple practices that they use to care for their souls, intentionally, because the alternative is a lifetime of neglect.

We roped in And Sons strategist Jon Dale to riff on a growing concern. It’s education. Problem is, when most folks think of education, they think of mining textbooks for answers other people already know, taking multiple choice tests and reading dusty books, all because they have to. In short, we think of the system designed to make industrial workers for a world that doesn’t want industrial workers any more. In this episode, we discuss the alternative: how to love problem solving, how to fail, and how to love of the unknown. If you grew up (like we did) in a public education system that, however well-intentioned, remains rife with problems, it’s not too late to start learning.

When it comes to our daily rhythms, we tend to drift into paths with less resistance and difficulty than others. Life is hard enough as it is, so why wouldn't we choose to ease off where we can? The problem is that that posture can bleed into every aspect of our lives, until we avoid anything that seems too difficult or like too much work. Sam and Blaine share about places they are choosing difficult things for the sake of life, their families, and God.

Strategy is an abused word for a vital concept. In this episode, we sat down with our friend and longtime pro-strategist Anthony Ashley to get to the root of the discipline: what is strategy, what’s it made of, and how do we use strategy as a paradigm to structure our world. Listen for tools to assess immediate strengths and weaknesses, build good goals, and refine the unique approach the corresponds to the personality of any person or team. From the history of warfare to the formation of a dream, building companies to developing character, strategy’s the proven toolkit for it all.

We've got a few books stacked around the office that we like to flip through for inspiration, and Hank Shaw's "Buck, Buck, Moose" has had a spot on our desk for a while now. Shaw is a forager, angler, hunter, and chef, who combines all of his experience to pretty staggering effect. His journey out of political writing and into the ethics and better use of wild food would be worth an episode on its own, but throw in his knowledge of the culinary world and you've got something even more enticing. To read more by Shaw check out his blog: https://honest-food.net

Dr James practices medicine out of his clinic in Colorado, True Life Medicine, after leaving behind the "traditional Western model" of healthcare. By addressing symptoms alone, Dr James claims that we are giving people bigger and bigger band-aids that never solve the root of the issue. It's time to throw most of our assumptions and ideas of normal out the window, and start being active in our own lives when it comes to our bodies.

Know what Familiarity breeds? Perceived Familiarity. Perceived Familiarity breeds Unfamiliarity. Which breeds Disinterest, Apathy, and, yup, Contempt. This is one of the most important facts about a life with God—we must fight Perceived Familiarity. Today we’ll do that. We’ll blank the slate and tell the story, highlighting it’s many strange facets (Abraham’s fighting company of 318 men, the throw-down, single-elimination tournament with the gods of Egypt, the apocalypse after Malachi, etc), to refresh our worldview and remember just how strange this story is. Fair warning - gospel talk ensues, but hang in there: this is war for the destiny of the universe.

Laurie Thornton is one part of a husband/wife pastoral team (guess which) with a decade of experience in music ministry, discipleship, missions, retreat-leading, all that. She has a dynamite relationship with God, is what we’re saying, and a proven handle on what it means to live as a disciple in his Kingdom. We asked her to come talk about leadership, starting with a little paradigm work and moving on to kingdom households, finding mentors, and developing a life with God that’s actually worth emulating.

The summer issue of And Sons is out, and yes, it technically is still summer even though most schools are back in session. In this episode Blaine and Sam flesh out some of the articles on super reading, fathering, and the creative life.

When Justin Lukasavige began running he didn't imagine going for 100 kilometers let alone down the block. But then Dave Eitemiller came along and offered his guidance, and an ultrarunning partnership was born. It's not just about handling the miles, or learning how to pace, or how to deal with suffering. Sometimes what we need is a mentor who we can learn from and be invited by into new and previously impossible adventures.

Why do we keep going back to the same places? What is the value of knowing a land, a rock face, a town, when everything is about "what's next"? John (Padre) writes, "Each year we return lays down a new layer of story, and adventure, beauty and encounter. Layer upon layer, like a rich patina on a piece of heirloom furniture, or better, like the technique Rembrandt and the Old Masters used in their painting, carefully laying down dozens of layers of paint to achieve that extraordinary effect of depth and gravitas."

Sean Buckles is a coffee shop maven with a long career in the US Army, both as a member of a Special Ops team and as an instructor. He’s one of those people you like more every new thing you learn, though it isn’t easy to get him to talk about himself. We like Sean for a lot of reasons, but principally because he’s a dad with a life with God. And not just to his own family, though that’s true, but to his staff and to his community and a to a wider circle than we probably know. In this conversation, we try to get more of the story, from teaching folks to jump out of airplanes to leaving the military just shy of retirement to building an outstanding business, this is a story about risk and a life with God.

The pernicious and crippling feeling of "it's too late" can infiltrate almost every part of our lives, so it should be no surprise that we are already feeling it in regards to our summer and all the daydreamed adventures we had for it back in the colder months. Sometimes setting small goals, finding loopholes in our own routines, or using a hack to break through a wall of impossibility is just what we need. Not all of these will apply to everyone, maybe none of them will, but at the end of the day we don't want "it's too late" to stop us from experiencing life and joy and the rest of summer.

We'll be honest and say that this episode made a least 1/2 of the And Sons team a little queasy, insofar as it looked like we'd have to buy typewriters and write outside in Oxfords, no socks. This episode is about wonder, and beauty. The case study is poetry. How do you deepen you capacity for beauty? What regular practices increase a person's sensitivity? How long should it take. We've brought Luke back on to talk about all of it. Only we asked him to leave his black beret at home.

You remember Jesse Barkalow - the longtime painter, line cook, and world's most prolific reader. Well, he's been at seminary. Usually, that makes us concerned for a person's well being. But Jesse has a rare disposition, and the opportunity seems to be improving his life with God. We wanted to know why. So in this episode, we're asking a key question: what's the basic question of theology/the human heart? As a matter of course, we also dive into the method that promotes union with God, as well as the paradoxes of seeing/blindness reconciled in the person of Jesus.

This is one of those episodes that will leave you wanting more. And maybe there is a part 2 in store for the future. Wendell Moss is a counselor based in Seattle, WA, who specializes in trauma and narrative. The cultural narratives of masculinity and race and trauma are (perhaps not surprisingly) similar and require similar acts of courage and curiosity to enter into. The books Moss recommends at the end are: Just Mercy (Bryan Stevenson), White Awake (Daniel Hill), Roadmap to Reconciliation (Brenda Salter McNeil).

If we could sit our younger selves down from five or 10 years ago, we would have a few suggestions to share about how to better navigate the realm of friendships and relationships. People are never a blank slate. Jesus is always up to something, and we can partner with him or try to figure it out by ourselves. Are we really after redemption, or do we just want gratification through our friends? There is always something deeper at play.

If And Sons had an FAQ, one question would top the list: What do I do with what feels like Wasted Time? In this episode, we try to reframe the issue, describing wasted time in terms of the desert, the Hebrew name of which just means “God Speaks.” And, because this is And Sons, there’s plenty of distinction-making between our ability to waste time and God’s ability to redeem time, the development of a calling vs the aggregation of achievement, and a comfortable job vs and apprenticeship. It’s all real time over here, so if you haven’t heard what Blaine actually did in Grad School, or how Sam structures his life in young kid years, buckle your seatbelt.

It’s not a secret Blaine likes words. Maybe it’s the history with rhetoric. Maybe it’s the writing genes. But still, there it is: words are a repository of human experience. Words reveal the world. They are almost completely unique in their ability to transmit diverse experiences. In this episode, we let Blaine pick a few of his favorites, explain how language works, then explore key concepts relating to time, economy, and community. There’s enough in one word to change your worldview, but today, we’ve got six. Maybe seven. Or eight.

Makoto Fujimura is an internationally-renowned artist, writer, and visionary. His work addresses the tension between trauma and creativity, culture creation, and the extravagant wastefulness of God (among a whole host of other themes). We’ve waited a long time for this conversation, chomping at the bit to ask Mako how, exactly, an artist “sees,” what that vision does for the world, and how somebody goes about developing it. Plus, Mako has some pretty unique insights on the way creativity relates to trauma inside the story of God. It’s a mind-blowing episode, is what we’re saying, and although the audio we captured turned out a little shaky, Mako’s eloquence more than makes up for it.

What can look like, and feel like, soul care may sometimes not be that at all. Too many stories end in broken pieces when fueled by the phrase "No one is looking out for me, I am on my own in finding life". We need to care for our joy and our hearts, but the self-arranging life is a trap that doesn't offer what it seems.

The And Sons introductory playbook on using technology well. From tech calendars to channel-specific goals, it’s all about practical steps to mastering the technology you employ.

It’s summer. The question is, how do you actually get out more this season? We grabbed Justin and JD from the And Sons team, two men who have ridden motorcycles across the state, mountain biked all over the west, and mastered micro adventures, to answer that question. From asking God to frame your summer to scheduling to structure and rhythm, this is an episode to turn the warm summer days into real worthwhile adventure.

Joe Steinke is, in a word, an apostle. As a member of the leadership team of the Boiler Room church network, he oversees a growing network of house churches; as a leader of the Antioch School, he’s a real New Testament church wiz. Talking with Joe is like talking with a dad, in pretty much the best way. He’s committed to the growth, maturity, and flourishing of church families under his purview, and he’s been at it for decades. We really like the dude, is what we’re saying, and in this conversation, we jump into the Utopian Slope, a model for understanding the life cycle of a community. If you’ve ever banded together with like-minded folks to share a vision, tried to reach that vision, failed, and then had to recover, this is the episode for you. Doubts and disappointment effect every community. The thing that matters, as you’ll see here, is what you do with them.

If we are willing to see and to engage, we will find that God is always inviting us into the frontier with him. He is constantly exposing ways that we need to grow or change, but often we don't want to hear about it. When we do engage what is current, we are invited into deeper intimacy and new terrain with him and within ourselves.

We’re stoked this week to bring you a conversation with Bart Gavigan. Bart is screenwriter, mentor, Holy Spirit-following firebrand. One week, Bart might be hanging with the higher-ups of the BBC, working with the Hollywood A-list, or passing up on a conversation with David Oyelowo at the pub. The next, he might be helping nonprofits with tiny film projects. Best of all, he’s had a chatty relationship with God his entire life, a relationship that’s taken him, as he puts it, into worlds of beauty and worlds of horror. In this wide-ranging conversation, we talk about Bart’s youth in slums in Ireland and London, his experience visiting 60 countries in 5 years to make films—during which he witnessed a deaf and dumb school healed en masse, met child soldiers in Sierra Leone, and entered the worst orphanages in the world—and his life passing up on fame to pursue intimacy with God. Sometimes, it takes a storytellers eyes to help you see your own story afresh. This is a conversation to give you a new vision of the world.

In this episode, Sam and Blaine revisit fathering a year and a half into the game. It turns out, fathering is like most relationships, only more so. It requires a few skills everyone should have, like a method for developing patience, a thorough understanding of repentance, and the ability to pick out strands of joy in the middle of otherwise encompassing work. Sam and Blaine talk through these and other practices, as well as some basic tenants of the relational soul, like the fact relationship comes from sabbath, and the inclination of the heart to seek comfort when what it needs is intimacy.

From fiction to film to television, cultures across time have been creating a narrative for the public. National identities, hopes and dreams for the future, ways of placing ourselves in history, all are woven into the simple and complex stories that we tell. What stories are we telling ourselves these days, and what does that reveal about our culture now?

You've probably made some assumptions by the title alone, but this episode is around conversations that we seem to keep having. "If only I made a little more... then I would be happy" seems to be a sentiment that, if not always spoken aloud, creeps in and tries to give the verdict on our lives. Happiness, contentment, joy, hope... these are all attributes that take cultivation, rather than waiting around for them to appear because the time is right.

Sometimes the easiest sages to miss are the ones already in your life—we work hard to avoid that mistake, and today we sat down with Sam Ainslie of the RH staff to talk about work. A career, specifically, and how to keep your heart alive in varied seasons of a working life. This conversation also dives into work stress (how much is too much), direction (do you really need to know where you’re going) and purpose (can you develop a vocation inside a career?).

What do two decades of friendship look like? How is it even possible these days, with travel, life changes, and the difficulties of keeping in touch with friends? Alex Burton and Morgan Snyder join Blaine and Sam in the studio to talk about male friendship, what works, what hurts, and some practical reorientations on how we should be thinking about ourselves and building a close group around us.

In Part 2, Padre joins Sam and Blaine to finish their conversation on social and personal agreements that are killing millennials, and what is possible by breaking them.

"I fear the worst has happened. You are losing heart, may have already lost it altogether." This weeks conversation with Padre centers around one of the articles written in the Winter '18 issue of And Sons, which we hope conveys the posture of love that it was offered from, rather than some assumed condemnation. As Padre writes: "I believe this loss of heart, now sweeping an entire generation, is deeply linked to some core beliefs that have crept in. I call them “agreements” because they are ideas which have secured a deep agreement in your heart without you really stopping to consider the implications. We all breathe a cultural air; the assumptions we absorb are the very things that seem to us to need no explanation. Which is good news, actually, because it means you can fight your way out; you can get your hope and your heart back."

We needed something lighter this week, so we thought we'd practice the act of conversation. How to ask good questions and where we go with the answers can separate a bland interaction from a profound one.

Michael Cusick is a counselor, lecturer, and the founder of Restoring the Soul, a ministry addressing sexual addiction through deep, whole-hearted restoration. His work (including two books) centers on a pair of pressing questions: what, exactly, is our sexuality for, and what does sexual wholeness look like? Safe to say we got more than we bargained for - from a definition of sexuality rooted in the Imago Dei and the creative capacity of human beings to a short list of what not to do with sexual addiction, this conversation completely reframes sexuality and offers some direction for the guy looking to be an alive, whole-hearted man whose sexuality directs him into deep union with God.