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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.
00:00
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Restorative Man podcast. I'm one of your co-hosts, Jesse French is my name. And today I'm joined back in the saddle once more. He is here people. Chris Bruno. Hello, sir. Hey, hey guys. Good to be with you. Good to be with you, Jesse. Good to be back. Yeah. I know, uh, in the way that we have the episodes scheduled on the podcast, we heard from you a couple of times, but part of the reason we say welcome back is because
00:29
You are physically back in the last couple of weeks from a sabbatical. And yes, man, just even saying that word, like just conjures all sorts of really for me, exciting and happy thoughts. Happy thoughts are coming to the mind right now. Um, but yeah, I would love to just like today kind of dive into some of that. And I would imagine there's.
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probably 68 different rabbit trails that we could go down and wander around. But man, we'd love to just kind of tee you up and just say like, you've been back from sabbatical for a couple of weeks. Like I want the Chris Bruno take, give me the sabbatical infomercial. Like I don't think it's a hard sell. Like no one's going to sit here and say, no, I'm against sabbaticals. Right. Um, and even saying it, I recognize it's, is a total, it's a rich gift to be able to receive that lots of.
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folks in their work settings aren't able to take advantage of. like, man, having received it, and we'll get into the specifics, like sabbatical, why is it needed and why, yeah, why was it important? Well, first of all, let me just say like, what a gift it is that Restoration Project and the board of Restoration Project have decided that yes, we will be an organization that provides a sabbatical for our staff. And so you've been on one.
01:49
Now I've been on one and officially in all the years of my ministry, this is the first one I've ever actually been on. And I've been in ministry for 27 years now. So that's just a, it was long in the making. So thank you Restoration Project and Restoration Project Board and also to the staff. You guys held everything together so well. While I was gone, there was no doubt that that was going to be the case, but just thank still waiting for you to discover the like, you know,
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ashes in the closet and the other jokes. Yeah. so still. There's a, there's a body buried in the basement that you haven't discovered yet. Oh, well, let it, let it not be discovered, guess. Well, uh, yeah. So thank you for that. And thank you, Jesse, for the grace that you offered to hold the leadership while I was gone. Um, and, uh, so is not a small thing. This is, it is a three month sabbatical.
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that's built into our system and three months is a good amount of time. It is a good amount of time for decompression and all that. And I just want to like, why is sabbatical? Uh, because the fourth commandment. Okay. Yes. It is actually written into the 10 commandments. It is the fourth commandment that you shall take.
03:10
A rest, is built into the weekly rhythms of rest. And I love that it's there. And I think where so many of us are do our best to follow the other nine commandments as best as we can. And maybe while I was gone, there is a body buried in the, in the basement and maybe you didn't follow one of the commandments. uh, it just, it is one of those things, Jesse, that God has built our bodies and our rhythms.
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into seasons of rest. And it's a gift from God. I love, even when you do some, some reading in the scriptures around Sabbath, it's not the last day of the week. It's the first day of the week. Yeah. Yeah. And that before God invites any human into the participation of the kingdom, he first gives humans rest and invites us into his rest. So humans are created on the sixth day, the seventh day,
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is the day of Sabbath. And so that actually is the beginning of our participation. And so I love, you know, when you do more research into Sabbath and that this is not what this is about, but that really the Hebrews, when they followed this commandment, it was the pinnacle of the week. It was all of the, know, you have your Sabbath and then the free days after that are the delight and the glow, the afterglow of Sabbath.
04:36
And then the next three days are the preparation for the next one. And so it's the centerpiece of the week and whole, we do not do well in this at all. We do not like Sunday is the day you go to church and then the day you do all the other things you couldn't do the rest of the week. And so it's not actually a day of rest or a day of Sabbath thing. So sabbatical is something I think whether or not we get it in an official capacity like we have with restoration project, if you're in ministry, like, or if you're in.
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in the marketplace and the business world, we've got to really attend to having these rhythms of rest. So that being said, like I just said, this was my first in 27 years of ministry, my first sabbatical. And so it was, it was such a delight to be able to have it. And I will tell you that it was extremely, extremely delightful and restful. And it was also really, really hard. It was really challenging to enter into that kind of space.
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for some reasons that might be different than another person's reasons, but it was a challenging time to really do the work of settling into the Sabbath for what got had for us there. Yeah. Will you give just a little snippet to that? Because I think there, I would imagine there could be a response, you know, from some of us that's like, man, isn't it like three month vacation? Like, what are you talking about? This is play golf every day or sit on the beach and like, isn't, you know, that sort of initial image comes to mind. And, and yet that was not.
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what your time held and actually the reflection and the engagement that you did, like as you were saying, it was hard. give us a little snippet into why that was true or why that needed to be true. Yeah. Well, so first of all, I think there's a big difference between being tired and being weary. And when we are tired, we need a vacation. We need some space. We're not working. We're not.
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running, we're not doing the things and we just need to, mean, vacation is literally built out of the word vacate. We need to vacate and allow everything to be emptied in order for me to just catch my breath, get some more sleep, lay on the beach, do something that's, you know, just relaxing, restful, whatever it might be. That's, that's when you're tired. And, and I think people are tired. I think people are, people don't get enough sleep. People do too many things. We're overextended. Our calendars are full.
07:04
It is a, you know, you get a gold star if you're quote unquote busy, you're, know, and all that, like all of that makes people tired. Weary is different. And I feel like this is what Jesus is saying when he says, come to me, those who are weary, he doesn't say tired. He says weary. And I actually believe that weariness comes from a storehouse of grief that we have over the course of time.
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just absorbed and not attended to in such a way that it begins to become a heavy laden, a heavy burden, heavy hearted. And so weary is the result of our heavy hearted lives that we do not attend to those things along the way because we're making ourselves so tired by running so hard. We don't have time. And so a sabbatical, I think, opens the door for us not only to get the physical rest because we're tired,
08:03
but also attend to the parts of us, those moments, those situations, those experiences that have made us also weary, that have filled us with unresolved, untended to, undigested grief. And I love, like Richard Bohr, I've talked about him a lot, and he says that we are heaps of undigested experience. And I think it's that undigested experience that makes us weary.
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which is why an actual sabbatical, not just a vacation, but a sabbatical, if you're going to do the work of sabbatical, you have to attend to your weariness, which means that you have to attend to your grief and all the things that have cost you and created grief in your life over time. Now, I just said 27 years, I had a lot of grief that I had not been tending to. And yes, in snippets and portions and all that and my own work,
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and with counselors and all that over time, but not to the extent that I was able to do on a sabbatical. And when you're in academics, right, and this was something that people asked me like, Oh, are you going to go write a book? And in academics, right, you get a sabbatical if you're a professor to go do your research or write your thesis or write your book or whatever. And an actual sabbatical is there's nothing productive about it except for the processing, I think, of grief.
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and helping you come out to the other side of So that is why it was hard. Because it was full of grief, Jesse. I full of grief. I love how we started the question, like, thinking about, you know, sitting on the beach and taking naps all day. And that connotation was connected to sabbatical my words. And then you said, no, actually, this is the time to engage the storehouses of grief.
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Either people are like turning this off, which is hilarious. That's fine. Or what I actually would imagine is there's this resonance of like, Oh, that is true. I am weary. Like even to just pause for 30 seconds and let that notion sit. It's like, Oh, it's deeper than physical, right? There is a weariness that I don't know all the contours of, but I know exists. Yes. And don't get me wrong, right? We had plenty of space where we were sitting.
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and just staring at the beach and just reading a fiction book and doing all those kinds of fun, fun things that are more vacation-like than sabbathing. So, but at the same time, if somebody was to say, characterize your Sabbath, I would say it would be characterized by really processing the significant losses that we have incurred over the course of our lives. Relational losses, emotional losses, financial losses, the loss of actual people, like my mom passing away, some of the, and all of what those losses have cost us.
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and naming the cost so that then Jesus can, I can invite Jesus into paying that price, not me any longer, but giving that cost over to him so that he is the one to own that and no longer me, which then frees me to be more available and present and less weary. That's that exchange that he's talking about. Come to me because my yoke is light, right? And there is something about he takes the burden on his shoulders and off of mine. So that's what
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It did have moments of beach time for sure. a lot of times I was sitting on the beach with tears streaming down my face. Which I would imagine is to navigate that process to like do the hard, hard work of reflecting around what am I grieving? What, what has it cost me? Like I would imagine on the other side of that, right? Like is actual genuine rest to actually
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have language around what those things were to participate in an exchange with Jesus around, is what I was holding. This is what I'm willing to relinquish, excruciating work. And yet also probably like the most soul filling rest that puts like reading a novel on the beach for three days, you know, completely to shame, right? Oh yeah. I mean it is, yeah, you've said it well. I can't add anything else to it. It invites us into actual rest.
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Which is back to the theological understanding of Sabbath, right? A Sabbath rest. I love how Dan Alander talks about Sabbath and that it is actually pretending that the kingdom has come in its fullness. And so I get to sit in the fullness of the imagination that I am not as important as I think I am. I am not as needed as I think I am. And actually I have to give over to God all of the operation of the world because I am sitting down and resting.
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It's this, it's a Sabbath, think is a part of a repentance of our own stepping back from how important we think we are and how much we think we need to offer to the world. And when you do that for an extended period of time, it is, it is an extended repentance, I think. yeah. Well, and probably it's also the extended disruption, right? For three months, like,
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all of the ways or the things, right? That gives some sort of order or identity, right? Or like, okayness, right? From the things that you do, right? Like from a work perspective, those are gone. And so you're faced with the absence of that, which on one hand, like, yes, we probably crave that, but also the, and now what is left, right? Or now, now I am faced with the grief of what those things have cost me. Like, that's also some of the hard work, right? Of
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Oh, I'm willing to engage that and just sit in that reality. When you take away all the what's, all you're left is with all the who's. And when that what of my performance or my winsomeness or my financial accounts or my car or whatever, the things that bring us identity, when we step aside from all of that, now I'm left with the internal echo chamber and I wonder who answers when I call.
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And so there's that who inside that you're left with when you take away with all the what's. That's really well said. And that's terrifying. Yeah. Yeah. And had so many people like, what? It's just you and your wife, Beth. And so for those who don't know, like we took the three months and we literally left the country for the three months and we knew, I knew, we knew that we needed to get out of everything, out of our home, out of our
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you know, weekly rhythm of having dinner with my dad, like all of those kinds of things we needed to get away from work in all the ways just to fully extract ourselves. And that was beautiful. And people were like, are you kidding me? You're only going to know Beth for three months. You're not going to talk to anybody else. And I was like, well, we'll talk to people, but nobody we know. That's part of the beauty of it. and it was, it was part of the beauty of it because it allowed for that, the airspace
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that is often taken up by so much other noise to really be cleared so that there could be, rather than listening to the voice of people, it opened up the space for the voice of God. And that was so great for us. I'd love to ask, like, just for you to spend a couple minutes, you talk about what something has cost us, like, as we think about the grief in our life.
15:26
Talk about someone maybe who hears that phrase for the first time, right? And you can be like, well, I can picture like a financial cost, right? Or, you know, a physical cost of, you know, my body or something like that. But what do mean by that, Chris? Like someone who's doing that for the first time as they have some sort of curiosity or resonance around like the weariness in their own life, the beginning of wanting to explore some of that and this notion of cost. What are some, like a starting place for some of that? Yeah, that's a great question, Jesse. I think.
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So some of the work that I did during the sabbatical personal work was around the high cost, not just in naming what happened in my family of origin, but what that set up for a lifetime of cost. So my family of origin, my sister is physically mentally disabled to a significant degree. My mother was a stay home caregiver for her and very invested in her. My father was a
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kind of a big lawyer in Denver and ran this big firm and all that. And then there was me. And so there was the four of us and the three of them and mom and dad and my sister were very involved and invested in what was happening for her, my sister. And then I came along, I'm younger and I fit into that mold. I fit into that culture. I fit into like, Oh, the world revolves around her. I guess I revolve around her. And not only do I revolve around her, I revolve around how my mom feels about her. And when there is something,
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you know, stressful or distant or confusing or whatever inside my mom with regard to my sister, then I am there to take care of that. And when my dad gets angry or frustrated about something with my sister, then I am there to take care of that. So there were a lot of things just, I was just born into this family of origin that required me to be the emotional containment system for it and to take away the negative emotions and replace them with positive ones. And also the movement into
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I can do hard things. I can face hard things. I can adult really well. I can lead. I'm gonna like emerge as the leader. I'm always gonna push the boundaries. I can face big things, whatever it is. And so that family of origin dynamic set up made me into a young man who then took on significant roles at a very early age in ministry, doing overseas ministry.
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Beth and I got married and we were gonna go like bring the gospel to the hardest places on earth. And that felt like a badge of honor. And I look back on it now and however I can bless that younger man, it still was playing out like I can do this, this is fine. I can just step into these things. I don't need anything because I've learned to not need things. And there's some parallel stories that are my wife that she has, those are her stories to tell but.
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There's just the way that we were operating in the world was accordingly. And then it continued when we faced traumas overseas, when we had challenges overseas and we had children overseas, when we did all these things. And then when we left and came back to the States 10 years later and jumped into figuring things out, how to reestablish ourselves in the States, like we just did hard things. And over the course of time, all of that cost us. It cost us in our marriage.
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because I can't be as attuned and attentive to my wife's heart when I'm out there fighting the big battle for the gospel. I can't be as close to my children when I'm more concerned about my team. I can't be like, you know, really focused on what's happening in my own heart because I don't have time for that. I'm doing other big external things. And so it costs like that set up for my family of origin cost me further on.
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as well. And it was naming that cost of the intimacy that wasn't with Beth in our 20s and 30s and 40s because we had bought into these patterns of being, these ways of being and the emotional connections that we didn't have with people or we had and then lost because we chose something different. It was all of these things. There was the
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That's what I mean by cost because we were stuck in a pattern of being relating even a faith that kept us in a way that had been set up by that family of origin. And I don't, it's not all the family of origin stuff, but there is that kind of domino effect throughout life when you begin to pull on that thread and you see how far back and how much it actually unweaves. So that's kind of what I mean by the cost. And then, and that's what makes you weary, right? That's what makes you weary is,
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Oh, this is, don't have the intimacy that brings me life because I have exchanged it for something else, for something less. I don't have those, that emotional capacity. I don't have those relationships. don't have whatever it is because I have, I've lost it. It's cost me. the only way to attend to our losses is to grieve them. lot of people try to repay them, reclaim them.
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And the fact is that doesn't work. It doesn't work because what is gone is gone and you can't bring something back from the past to be what it was or should have been. You might be able to have something different. Uh, but it, once it is gone in a relational or emotional sense, spiritual sense, it is gone and you need to grieve that. So that's what I mean by cost. That's so helpful. Yeah. I think that the image of when we consider what is our kind of default mode of operating,
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to then wonder like, what does that require? Which I think that question of cost is asking, which is so good. Yeah. Yeah. Chris, I'd love to ask. you know, we're seasonally in the year, like summer is here has started is starting depending on when people listen to this. And so that can naturally be a time, right? Of trips and busyness and vacation, right? Oh, don't we just ask like in light of the sabbatical that you experienced, right?
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knowing, you know, for almost all the people probably, right, three months sabbatical is not on their horizon. And yet, as they maybe look ahead toward the next couple months of summer, as they maybe feel some of the weariness in their own life, with that in mind, with the invitation from God into Sabbath, kind of on a practical level, not a formula, but as summers here, like, what maybe words of encouragement might you offer?
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for those of us that have some desire and some hope around that and also are like, how does that play out? don't know. Yeah. You know, I, I love that question, Jesse, because vacations are coming. And I think one of the things on a practical level is asking yourself, do you need a vacation or a Sabbath? Cause those are different things. And you know, so do you need to vacate and just sit and allow your body to rest because your body is tired? Very possible. Right.
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very possible and very needed. Or do you need to Sabbath, which means you are entering into this imagination of like, I am giving all things over to God and I am allowing for the spirit to do its work inside of me. And when you do that, then it is like, are you open to what he has to say? Are you open to the places that need to be attended to in that rest? Yes, let there be delight. Yes, let there be.
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you know, fun things that you're going to do and all that kind of stuff. And can you take it slow enough to let your heart and your soul catch up with your body to where you then are? So I think if you've got, for example, if you've planned a camping trip, go on the camping trip, make your s'mores, do the things, hike, you know, all that kind of stuff. Have loads of fun, play cards, climb trees, whatever you're going to go do. And maybe make sure
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that during the time that you're out there that you take a Sabbath walk. And just very simply, like this is a time of quiet reflection on how is my heart, where am I weary, what needs to be grieved. And then just, I mean, it can be five minutes, it can be 50 minutes, it can be five hours, I don't know. But to allow for the weight of that grief to be with you.
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to the degree that it is weighty. And that one Sabbath walk may be enough, it may not be, you may need to come back the next morning and the next morning. And you can build that into your daily rhythms, your weekly rhythms, or just your vacation, right? As long as you're aware that that's there. So good. I love that because, I mean, one of the phrases that we use at Restoration Project is we want to be architects of experience and we nerd out and love that word.
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architect because it implies this intentionality, right? And actually like I think the Hebrew people, when they practice Sabbath, right? Some of the wise rabbis would say, right? Like the Sabbath is this architecture in time. Like it implies this planning, this anticipation, this looking forward to, right? It is not like, we're going to wing it. Right. And so I think even in that simple example of like, Hey, can I build some time to go and have a Sabbath walk? It demonstrates.
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This time is valuable. needs to be protected, created, anticipated. It will not just naturally emerge. so, so I think that I'm just sitting here thinking like, yes, that's so good to remember because there's the desire for that. also like the inertia of at least our family camping trips will not lead to Sabbath walks and Sabbath spaces, like great things, right? For sure. Really fun, but like probably won't happen unless that's fought for it. Right.
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Yeah. And I think what a thing to even lead your family into is like, this is a Sabbath walk and no one's allowed to talk. And everyone who keeps the 30 minutes or 45 minutes or 60 minutes of silence during this walk, right? That's not, and maybe they're going to say something like they stub their toe and they say, ouch, like we're not being crazy about this, but like, you know, they get a s'more tonight. Right. That there's some reward apart so that there's some motivation. But
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I just think it's so good for people to be silent and to allow for the silence to just be part of their lives anyway. Yeah. Chris, thank you. Thanks for sharing just a little window into those three months and for your words. Grateful for that. And yeah, the ways that that meets us today. Thank you. Absolutely.
26:16
Thanks so much for asking. have, like you said, 68 other rabbit trails that we could go down with regard to Sabbath and what happened for us, but I'm glad to talk about it. Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it.