Journey:Together
This process challenges you to show up and pay attention daily to the need to overcome the weight of your routine in order to realize a full, intense and well-grounded spiritual journey. Doing so is not easy, but it does involve clear elements. Learn more about each one below.
Show Up and Observe
Each day challenge yourself to make contact with your true Source.
“I and the Father are one.” John 10:30
Show Up and Get Together
Regularly look for support and accountability with other serious brothers.
“Do not absent yourself from the gatherings of the brethren”
Hebrews 10:25
Show Up and Share
Challenge yourself to find spiritual disciplines that keep your mind and heart open and connected, your body centered, and your emotions grounded.
“Peter, Peter, you must be sifted like wheat. . . and once you have recovered, you in your turn must strengthen the brothers.” Luke 22:31-32
Show Up and Let Go
Living in the present moment requires us to release the past. Solitude and silence are traditional ways of allowing this to happen.
“Let go of your old way of life, put aside your old self, which gets corrupted by following illusions.” Ephesians 4:22
Show Up and Act
Find some way to give it away. To have it for yourself is to lose it. The 12-Steppers call it the 12th and necessary step.
“I did not come to be served, but to serve.” Matthew 20:28
We do not walk this journey alone!
Your mentor is not your Spiritual Director or counselor but rather a man who can encourage and challenge you based on what you share is happening in relationship to the different elements of the JOI. Check-ins can occur in person or by phone as your mentor might be located in another geographic area.
The 5 key elements of the JOI can be considered ‘forms of practice.’ These are guidelines to help encourage and create intentional areas of inner growth and work.
Ways to implement the Forms of Presence
Centering Prayer/Meditation, Fasting
Mindful Breathing/Practicing Presence, Walking Meditation, Wandering Retreats, Yoga/Body Work,
Engage in some form of service that supports family, community, and/or your men’s work. A Mentor, Elder, Soul Brother, small group and/or spiritual director can help discern a starting point if needed.
Since 1980, depth psychologist Bill Plotkin has been guiding women and men into the wilderness—the redrock canyons and snow-crested mountains of the American West—but also into the wilds of the soul. He calls this work soulcraft.
Based on decades of work, travel, and experience, Rohr, a Franciscan brother and best-selling author, unearths the complexities of male spiritual maturation and helps us to understand the importance of male initiation rights in both culture and the church.
A chance encounter with a reproduction of Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son catapulted Henri Nouwen on a long spiritual adventure. Here he shares the deeply personal and resonant meditation that led him to discover the place within where God has chosen to dwell.
“This one door is the door of the Palace of Nowhere. It is the door of God. It is our very self, our true self called by God to perfect union with himself. And it is through this door we secretly enter in responding to the saving call to ‘Come with me to the Palace of Nowhere where all the many things are one.'”
From Wild Man to Wise Man is a revised and updated edition of Richard Rohr’s earlier best-seller, The Wild Man’s Journey: Reflections on Male Spirituality. For this new work, Rohr added three chapters that discuss John the Baptist, Saint Paul and grief. An appendix provides a structure for a men’s group, based on Rohr’s work with M.A.L.Es (Men As Learners and Elders), a program of the Center for Action and Contemplation, which Richard Rohr founded and now directs in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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