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Manhood often feels like navigating through uncharted territory, but you don't have to walk alone. Join us as we guide a conversation about how to live intentionally so that we can join God in reclaiming the masculine restorative presence he designed us to live out. Laugh, cry, and wonder with us as we explore the ins and outs of manhood together.
Jesse French
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Restorative Man podcast by Restoration Project. I'm one of your co-hosts. My name is Jesse French and I'm joined by Chris Brinno. Hello, Chris.
Chris Bruno
Merry Christmas, Jessie.
Jesse French
Merry Christmas
Here we are in the lovely month of December. We did make it. You know, one of the things that I am learning in the last, I don't know, years or so is around more of the intricacies around punctuation. Probably not what you thought I was going to say, which I know you know this, but maybe for our, people listening, like I just recently learned maybe in the last six or eight months, like
Chris Bruno
Here we are.
Jesse French
As you are writing that there are multiple kinds of dashes, like there's different sizes, there's different ways that you use that grammatically within sentences. There's a thing called an dash. Yep.
Chris Bruno
Thank you, Judge E.T. for introducing us to the em-dash.
Jesse French
That's right. And so as the brilliant English literary people that are out there will remind us, there's a whole maybe dying art of like, when do you use these different dashes and punctuation, right? And so I'm like wading my way into that. And it's been an interesting, fun little kind of exploration of like viewing punctuation actually as a tool, Within writing that.
When done well can hopefully help in the art of communicating what you're, what you're after.
Chris Bruno
Yeah, I mean, so many people, we think that our language is the words that we use and how all that works, but there's actually a deeper structure to how language is used that needs punctuation for it to actually make sense. And the punctuation placed in the wrong place or the wrong punctuation changes the entire meaning of the sentence.
Jesse French
Yeah, bingo. Yes. So somewhere out there, there's an English teacher. Maybe let's listen to this and I hope your day in the midst of all the finals and the grading that you have right now at this time of the year. I hope this maybe brings a slight grin to your face.
Chris Bruno
We love you, we thank you for teaching us grammar and punctuation.
Jesse French
Won't out myself enough to the degree to really like show you my true ignorance around this. So I'll just, you know, I'm learning. We'll put it that way.
Chris Bruno
The beauty of the Bruno home is that we have both my wife and my oldest daughter are like punctuation gurus. They will look at your manuscript or they will look at the letter that you've written or the email or the text you've written and be like,
Jesse French
They
Texts? They'll do it on texts?
Chris Bruno
My gosh. Wow. Yes. that's different punctuation has different intonations and texts than it does in a letter or an email. So there's all that. This is not the space to get into that. However, I live in the space of being corrected for my punctuation mishaps all the time.
Jesse French
Gosh. Well, wanted to bring that up because we were just talking before we hit record and that may be a big surprise, but like that notion of punctuation and particularly as we think about sentences kind of around the punctuation given to sentences, felt like, there's, there's something to be gleaned kind of in applying that metaphor, that understanding actually to.
this year and to this time in the calendar as 2025 is winding down.
Chris Bruno
Yep. Yeah. I mean, as we, as we're coming to the season where there's a lot of reflection, there's a lot of anticipation for what next year will bring. A lot of people are starting to talk about, you know, the fiscal year is ending and the new year is beginning new strategies, new goals, refresh. Maybe there are personal goals that you're setting, like all of that kind of stuff. It's easy for us to get lost in what this year has brought. And we want to use the metaphor of punctuation here to kind of have the conversation and invite you all to something.
So I think the first thing I would say, Jesse, is that a lot of times we will end our year with a question mark, an exclamation mark, or a comma. Okay? And what I mean by that is, why in the year? And it's like, what happened this year? Question mark. What am I supposed to learn this year? What is...
You know, what is God telling me this year? What were my failures this year? What were my successes that, and I think there is a space absolutely for that kind of reflection. And to actually end the year with that question mark leaves the year in some ways undone. It leaves the year in a space of question. So that's one thing and do that reflection. Let's end there. Okay.
So then the other thing is that a lot of people end the year with an exclamation mark of, right, either this big energy of, was amazing, or this big energy of, it sucks. I never want to live this year again, or that was the best year of my life, like that kind of thing. And again, there is something beautiful to be held in understanding the goodness or the harm that you experienced in this year. And so.
Jesse French
Right.
Chris Bruno
That's fantastic. And don't end on an exclamation point. Okay. And I'll give some reasons why I'm saying these things. So, and then the third option is to end the year with a comma. Almost like, you know, this year is, and then the next year will be. And it's just this fluid movement from one phrase to the next phrase. And next year is just a modifier of this year. We carry on with the same thing. And it's just like this.
run on sentence of years and then this year and then that year and then this year and then that year and nothing is ever finally concluded. Yep.
Jesse French
Yep. There is no pause that is given.
Chris Bruno
Well, there's the pause of the comma and then very closely after that, there is the next breath. Like I said, the next phrase modifies the previous phrase. Yeah. It gives further clarification over the direction the full sentence is going and far too many people have run on sentences because they're continuing to run on. So.
Jesse French
Yeah. So.
Chris Bruno
What are we talking about?
Jesse French
Yeah. And so the invitation to end the year with different punctuation was something other than those three items is to end it with a period.
Chris Bruno
end it with a period. Yep. Now there's, of course there's all of the other semicolon and colon and dashes and all that kind of stuff. That's, that's too much to talk about. We're just going to stay with the main characters here, right? The exclamation point, the question mark, the comma and the period. And our invitation, you guys, is that can you end the year with a period where all the things that are true from this year are true and all the things that are good are good.
All the things that were harmful were harmful. All the unfinished, undone things are unfinished and undone. And that all of those stories get to belong in a sentence that now has come to an end. It allows for you to have this spiritual threshold of receiving what God had for you this year and incorporating that into your life and then moving into the next season.
And I fully understand like this is an arbitrary day. December 31st is this like, you know, Roman calendar that has been inherited from years, know, millennia and all that kind of stuff. It's an arbitrary day. And yet it is a day that we have as a society set aside as the ending of something in the beginning of a new thing. And so let's put a period on the end of that sentence and to allow for what was to be what was.
Jesse French
Mm-hmm.
Chris Bruno
and then anticipate what is next. What we end up doing is if, know, it's, end up evaluating so many things. Here's where I failed and here's where I succeeded and here's what was good and here's what wasn't good. And it just like stays in the like word soup, if you will. And it never lands in a full sentence. And we get to like allow for it to just be and honor our experience of it. ⁓
Jesse French
So my mind goes to my journal, which I feel like for lots of, lots of December's, right? Has had the proliferation of questions, right? Of like, just what you're talking about, right? Like what were the highs and what were the lows and what were the disappointments and all the different categories of reflection? Which again, you're saying are like, there's goodness actually in, homing through. And what would some of your words be, Chris? I'm like, yes, please reflect. But then after that reflection, like.
Chris Bruno
Absolutely.
Jesse French
Then do what? Like what is the after that, the combing and the answering and the asking and all that. Yes, please do that. But then after that to enable us to end our year with a period, what is needed?
Chris Bruno
I think the biggest thing that comes to my mind, Jesse, is as a result of those highs and lows and failures and successes, who have I become? And so the sentence is, and this is the man that I became this year, period. And then clarify what that means. Okay. Who have I become? This is the man I've become.
And maybe you can think about it in like what sentences need to be said to other people too. Here was my experience this year. Here is where I fell in love with you more this year. Here is where I understand the gift that you are to me. Here is how I have felt you show up or here is where I acknowledge I missed you. So those kinds of sentences.
Jesse French
Hmm.
Chris Bruno
offer us an opportunity to offer some, you know, some words to other people as well. But primarily it is if you were to write a sentence summary of the man that you became this year, what would that be? put a period on the end of it because that is who you became this year. You don't need a question mark. Is this the man I became this year? And you don't need an exclamation point. This is the man I became this year. You just need like the settled space of
This is what God did for me and in me this year.
Jesse French
And so it's taking, it's taking the elements of the reflection and to say like sort of the settling out of that of like through the lens of becoming in light of all of that. This is who I've become. ⁓
Chris Bruno
Yes. Yes.
Jesse French
I mean, I would say in some ways that's like harder work, the flurry of questions, right? Like to provide the space to give a concrete sentence to that, like, That's like any writer, like we can, probably just going to be flowery all day, but to actually be concise and be really direct and clean.
Chris Bruno
Absolutely.
Yeah, direct and clean. And then let that be the sentence. And you guys, when you do this over the course of a decade, then you start to have like, and this is the man I became in, you know, 2025 and 2026 and 2027. And you get a little bit more of like the roadmap of the man that you're becoming as you've distilled it into, you know, a very clean and clear sentence or two.
Jesse French
I love that Chris, that you use that word becoming because earlier this year I was reading, spoke by McCrena Whitaker and she has just these delightful kind of curations of different phrases from just wonderfully wise people. And she referenced this line from the German poet, Rilke. And I'm not sure which poem it's from, but in one of his poems, he uses the phrase, God's hands cupped around our becoming.
What a beautiful image.
Chris Bruno
That is a great image, I love that.
Jesse French
in place in your invitation, right? To say like, can we end the Earth a period? Can we do the work of saying like, this is who I became in the year and articulate that with the image of like, and God's hands are cupped around that. That it has not, right? It has not just been our sheer will and our work ethic and our clever ideas. Of course not. But it's, it's been God's hands that has actually been cupped around that becoming.
Chris Bruno
So I love that phrase. And immediately, Jesse, I think about a potter and, you know, the restoration project team has been to a pottery studio is one of our, you know, staff experiences and whatever. And I think about the potter, the master potter that is there working. And what she does with the clay is she cups her hands around this blob of clay and then slowly as the wheel turns.
And in some ways in our metaphor, as the years go, right, there is a cupping of her hands and there is a slow shaping of the vaser, you know, whatever it is, the pitcher, the bowl, the cup, cupping of her hands and the pressure that is soft and gentle starts to shape something. And it's in the shaping of the potter's hands, the cupping of the hands that that thing actually becomes not just a blob of clay, but now something
that is unique from every other thing she's ever made. And it starts to form, take shape, and then slowly, like once that shape is taken, then she moves on to the forming of something else. That the period on the end of the sentences is the shape of the main aspect of it is done, and now I'm gonna move on to shape the handle, or I'm gonna shape the lid, or I'm gonna shape the spout, or whatever we're talking about, right? There's some kind of intentional.
shaping of the hands that something has been finished and something else is now beginning all in the cupping of the hands of God.
Jesse French
Yeah, that's such a good example of that process.
Chris Bruno
I love that.
Jesse French
Yeah.
And so we want to extend that invite to the folks listening, right? To be able to end your year with a period. To be able to take the pause, to take the space needed, to be able to name what becoming has happened and to give that the space that it needs. Which actually like, I've never done that before and it feels hopeful to me of like, that feels different and inviting in a different way than commonly as we said, we often use.
Yeah, towards the end of the year.
Chris Bruno
So would invite you listeners to go to Walmart, go to Target, go to Amazon, wherever it is, and just buy a pack of note cards. Doesn't have to be anything special, right? I'm not talking about Christmas cards. I'm just talking about note cards that you could give to somebody so that you can actually write a few sentences of your experience of gratitude for them this year. And also reserve one or two or three for yourself.
so that you can then write your sentence into that space of who is the man that you've become this year? How has the cupping hands of God shaped who you are and brought you to this place? And then end that note with a period.
Jesse French
Hmm.
Chris Bruno
And then keep it, throw it in your journal, throw it somewhere else, maybe mail it to yourself or give it to somebody to mail in, you know, nine months, something like that. So that you're like, right. This is what I wrote. This is what God was doing in my life and who he brought me to be. yeah. Yeah. And in light of that, Jesse, we are, we're going to take a break here at the end of the year on the podcast so that we can.
as our own man, as our own husbands, as our own fathers, as our own space of becoming at the end of the year, we're gonna take a break. And so we'll see you guys again at the beginning of the year in January. How about the next couple of weeks? Just be with your family, right? In the space that you have been listening to us, we thank you and go listen to someone else for a while. In your immediate family. Give your ear to someone that actually you've been longing to give your ear to. So. Well said. Okay. Merry Christmas everybody.
Jesse French
Indeed. Indeed. End the year with the period. And we excited to pick back up with y'all started January. Okay. Thanks.
Chris Bruno
See you then, Jesse.
Jesse French
Peace.