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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.
Rites of Passage - Do I Have What It Takes?
00:00
Hey guys, welcome to the podcast by Restoration Project. I'm one of your hosts, Jesse French, and excited to be with you guys here today alongside my trusty co-host, who is? Chris Bruno. Hey guys. How are you, Chris? I'm good today. Thanks, Jesse. How are you? I'm doing well, doing well. Hey, excited for today and this conversation that we've got around a topic that we've talked a lot about at Restoration Project and is one of...
00:29
rites of passage for boys becoming men. Excited for that. Yes, yes, yes. And I think one of our core topics, because as a ministry that focuses on the heart of men, one of the big questions that I think all of us guys are wondering is like, am I enough? Am I man enough for the world that I am a part of and all that? And then the second question, you know, when I'm with a crowd of guys, often I will ask this question like,
00:58
When did you become a man? Such a good question. Like when did that actually happen? Yeah. And I mean, you can imagine the answers to the question are all over the board. All over the board. So what would be something that you might imagine, Jesse? Oh gosh. Wait, hang on. How personal do I need to be? Is this like the theoretical my friend would answer this or no, like you're asking for me? Well, you can.
01:24
wherever you'd like to go, maybe personal, or if it's too personal, you can say, for my friend. Yeah, yeah, I have heard friends answer this in this way. How about that? Yeah, I mean, things like when I moved out of the house, from my parents' house, probably comes to mind when I had my first like paying job, where I had a W-2, something along those lines. That part feels...
01:53
True for me. I would say too. There's there's an element of when you got married of hey, this is this is actually You stepping into further responsibility When you get your driver's license, I've heard guys talk about that. You had sex for the first time Yeah, those are some of the maybe the range of how some guys might answer that. Yeah. No, absolutely. I think those are
02:19
in this certainly in the top 10 top 15 of what guys would say. And, you know, I think other things to some of yours were a little bit older, you know, after you get older and you have the W two, you get married, those kinds of move out of the house. I've heard some guys even talk about like the first time they got in a fistfight.
02:49
in more kind of extreme, I don't want to say the word extreme, in the more personal or significant early moments of a boy's life. You know, I've heard guys talk about like, when I had to stand up to my dad and protect my mom, or protect my sisters, you know, that there's that in-home violence and trauma where boys have to step up in some ways and all that. So the reality is, I think what we're naming here and
03:16
Kind of even as you listeners are listening to the conversation, like, when did you become a man? What would your answer be? Most of the time, we're not going to hear the answer when my dad declared me a man. When I went through a rites of passage process, when there was a company of men that gathered around me and welcomed me into their company of men. And like, by and large, that is just not something.
03:45
that we do, that we have, that we kind of share together and as a Western culture. Now, historically, it's been part of life for thousands of years and all different kinds of cultures. So I'm glad you brought that up because my mind then goes quickly to why is that this ingrained necessary right in cultures over time across the world? Like...
04:13
Why is that just this bedrock element that cultures know, hey, we have to mark and usher boys into manhood? Yeah, I love this. And I wrote about this in the Man Maker Project book. I quoted this African proverb, and it says that if we do not make men out of our boys, they will burn down the village just to feel the heat.
04:37
Cause I think there's something right. Like, yes, I'm like nodding as you're saying this. So much wisdom in that problem. And like, I think all of us boys, like there is something about us that feels like we need to prove something, that we have to pass through something, that we have to cross some kind of threshold. And I feel like it's so important for us to recognize that. And cultures across time have recognized that, that if we do not create that threshold and usher the boy across it,
05:07
then he will create it for himself. And by and large, it will be some kind of destructive pattern. And there are those moments, like I said, just a moment ago of when, you know, I became a man when I had to stand up to my dad. If we don't create intentional positive rites of passage, either the boy will create them or the world will create them. There will be great opportunities for parties and sex and all the things that make...
05:36
boys feel like men if we don't create them for them, if we're not intentional about that. Yeah. Yeah. So how did that go wrong? Or how has that eroded in, I would say, Western culture of the fact that it was and is bedrocked to so many other cultures and yet that's not true I would say for us in the United States and North America, right?
06:04
How did that piece kind of fall off of the radar? I think, I mean, and you say United States, North America, I would expand that out to Europe. I would expand that out to any place because of my answer. My answer is any place where there is a significant impact from the industrial revolution. And the reason is that where, you know, and cultures that have that industrial revolution, which is by and large, you know, a large portion of the world nowadays,
06:33
I think it may not apply as much to more of agrarian cultures or cultures where there still has that sense of like the more smaller village kind of experience. Yeah. I say the Industrial Revolution because however much the Industrial Revolution transformed our economy, what it did for the social structures of the family was it took dad.
07:01
away from the family and took him out to, you know, at first the factory, but then also to the office or to some outside of the home profession where he was earning money and earning provision for his family. Whereas before the Industrial Revolution, of course, there were places where dad would go off to work, but far more dad's involvement and
07:29
production, provision, everyday life from breakfast to, you know, to nighttime, all those things, boys were far more engaged with dad. Yeah. And there was actually a company of men intrinsic in the nature of the, of the work that when we go to work, when the village goes to work, all the men go to work together. And at some point the boy starts to go to work with them. And that's.
07:57
rudimentary. I mean, that's very basic. But I think that's, there's something about that, that once the industrial revolution kind of hit and transformed our economy, the family structure, the social structures, the, even the kind of psychological structures of what happened for boys becoming men, those shifted. Now, all of a sudden the boys are in, they're not exposed to dad as much. They're not with the company of men as much. They're not in that, in that space as, as much before they stay in home.
08:26
a lot longer. And then the whole education system starts to build. And now they go to school. And by and large, the schools are filled with female teachers, rather than male teachers, because of that separation of Industrial Revolution and all that. And so the boys are now exposed far more to women for longer, and they're not invited into the company of men. Then all of a sudden, there's this arbitrary graduation
08:55
from education into workforce. And we've missed such a large percentage of the formation of that boy in those higher level teenage years, from puberty on through 18, 19 years old. We've lost the formative time when boys actually need to be invited into the company of men before they even physically have all the attributes of an adult man.
09:25
you know, they need to be invited into. And if we don't, back to what we were saying earlier, if we don't do that intentionally, then we actually lose them to finding their own fires to build in order to feel the heat kind of mentality. For sure. Yeah. I love that those categories that you just laid out of you're distinguishing between formation and education, right? Like you're saying, hey, look,
09:54
The formation of our sons is something very different than academic knowledge, right? And that requires our intentionality and our presence and our thinking around that. Yeah. And certainly education is valuable. I think when we look at where we are now and what we're doing to educate our world, brilliant, absolutely necessary. And there's a cost. There's a cost to losing that one-on-one engagement with our sons.
10:23
in the everyday, come join us, you can do it. You can lift that, move that, drive that, like all those kinds of things that the boys used to get. Yeah. Yeah. And now we don't. Yeah. So therefore, I feel like because of it's not saying where we are is bad. It's just saying what we, where we are, we need something different. We need a different intentionality to it. And previous, you know, ancient cultures and other cultures around the world that still have rites of passage.
10:53
recognize the need for it. We need to continue recognizing the need for it and letting that like inform what we do then with our boys differently. Yeah. One of the things that comes to mind is one of the authors that I appreciate is a guy named Wendell Berry, who's a old farmer in Kentucky. And he talks about growing up
11:19
and helping his father and his grandfather and his great uncles with the harvest of tobacco leaves. To your point around agrarian societies. And he talks about this really like brutal work that they would do by hand and it's hot and it's difficult, but you're working side by side with your neighbors, with your family, with multiple generations, right? And he writes really wisely around...
11:46
the formation, to use your word, that that had on him, right? There is this apprenticing from the older generations that was really important to him. And so just underlining what your thoughts around the need for that and the loss of that. And right, I don't have agricultural harvest invite my son into. And so the challenge or the question becomes,
12:13
Well, then what right? Like there's this great need. And so what could that look like for us as fathers as we think about that? Yeah, I think the closest that we come nowadays is like bring your kids to work day, you know, or maybe it's, you know, dad, go to school day and something or career day at school, like all that kind of stuff. We need we need a lot more crossover. And even though like what you're talking about, Wendell Berry and when he talks about is that there is this passing on of.
12:43
of knowledge that is happening in that agrarian society where you have, you know, him exposed to his uncles and grand grandfathers and dad and all that stuff. There is that. But there's so much more. There is the the formation of the boy that happens around lunch that happens around like just the not just the teaching of how to drive the tractor or, you know, use a shovel. There is the the passing on of I have manhood.
13:12
And now I'm giving it to you. I'm calling it forth. I'm calling it out. I'm doing something with you as a boy to say like, you are part of us. Yeah. Like you are wanted in this space. You are not a hindrance. You are not a inconvenience. You are one of us. Yeah. And it doesn't happen just either in osmosis of just getting to hang around. That's where the ancient cultures that have rites of passage have a formalized ceremonial process.
13:42
that they have led the boys through. So even if they are out harvesting or hunting or whatever, that's not the only thing that is happening. There is a formalized process to say, there is a before and after, there is a you are a boy, and now we consider you a man. And that transitionary process, that threshold that I talked about just a little bit ago, that is absolutely necessary. And what we have in Western culture or cultures impacted by the industrial revolution are these arbitrary,
14:11
thresholds like graduation or getting your driver's license or moving out or going to college or whatever that is that you're getting the first job. Those are not actually manhood thresholds. Those are adulthood thresholds. And it's the same for like, when did you become a woman that you could ask the same question and she might be able to answer that question with exactly the same answers that we just talked about when I moved out.
14:40
when I got my driver's license, when I, you know, went to college, when I got my first job, those are the same answers for her. It's not the same thing. It's not the same thing. When did you become a man is different than when did you become more of an adult? And I think we need to make sure that our boys have that differentiation in mind, because joining the company of men is different than joining the company of adults. It's good. Yeah. Yeah.
15:07
So in the beginning of our conversation, you talked about this question of, do I have what it takes? And as you brought that up, I was internally agreeing with you and I think as we've been in conversations with other men, that question is like a framing, haunting, fill in the blank, like it is a significant question that all men have, I would say have an awareness of the asking of that or the wondering around that. And so to go back to that point,
15:37
You're saying that rites of passage, it's not a formula, but it is a, it is a direct process that is seeking to, to speak into that question that all boys will ask of, do I have what it takes? Is that right? Yes. And, and I feel like, I think that's just intrinsically in written into the code of, of manhood. Every, every male is asking that question. And I think,
16:02
Honestly, Jesse, I feel like we're going to continue to ask that question all of our lives. But the closest that we can come is if another if and when another man, preferably and and best if it is the father who answers that question for the boy. And it's a different again, I want to hold two different things. It is not
16:30
Do I have what it takes to do this task versus the real question is, do I have what it takes to be this man? Yeah. Because there's a million tasks that I know right now. I do not have what it takes. I have no idea. Yeah, we do. Right? Yeah. Just before we started the podcast, I told you like, I just paid a thousand dollars to another man to fix my daughter's car. Right.
17:00
I do not have what it takes to do what that man did. And here's the thing, I probably, after hours and hours of labor and watching YouTube and reading owner's manuals and all that, I probably could have figured it out. So it's not that, but I don't have what it takes to do that task. That's often the question that we end up asking about the task, do I have what it takes to do this thing? And I think the more deeper real question is, do I have what it takes to be
17:30
the man who engages in the world, the man who enters into that space, the man who brings his presence to the world, the man who shows up when needed, the man who has the courage and the character to be a part of the necessary elements of what it means to be a man in the world. So that question, do you have what it takes needs to be answered on the formation heart level from another adult man bestowed upon his son that says, yes, you do.
18:01
I see who you are and I call you forth, you have what it takes to be that man. Yeah, you're saying that it is an issue of identity and confirming identity, right? Not the acquisition of technical skills. Yes, yes, that confirmation of identity, 100%. Which I would say, when I think about that, and my son is seven, rites of passage can feel...
18:26
overwhelming. But when I think through that lens that you just described of a confirmation of speaking into his identity, that's a weighty thing. And that also is, I think it's hopeful, relieving news. Not that I just don't teach him some of the practical things that's needed, but if it's viewed of, no, my role as his father is to actually speak and confirm that identity, not teach him how to do 58 different
18:56
mechanical skills. There's like, I can do that, right? That actually is, it will, it will take intention. It will take thought and planning and energy, but that that's doable, right? Like that is, and that is actually an overflow when I think about him of my heart for him. And so I hope, at least for me, as I'm hearing you talk about that, that feels weighty as in important, but not burdensome.
19:25
who haven't had that kind of rites of passage is that we haven't had that confirmation of our identity, and which just continues to boil up in us for wanting more and needing more. But, you know, yeah, if you can confirm your son's identity, then you, you know, and have a real focus on doing that, then you can fail in all the other ways of teaching him how to change a tire and how to pay a mortgage and all this.
19:55
Like those are learned skills that he can learn from other places, but nowhere else is going to confirm his identity. And that's what we are looking at with these false thresholds. You know, graduation from high school is not a confirmation on identity, it's a confirmation of accomplishment. Yes. Which is so good and it's so interesting that scripture reveals this too, right? Like Jesus receives his father's...
20:22
blessing his father's confirmation of his own identity before he's done anything, right? Before any of his public ministry, before there's any accomplishment, like you said, it's this is my son with whom I'm well pleased. That that was most needed and it was the speaking to that, not great job you've performed these miracles. Exactly, exactly. So moving on, we're gonna keep talking about rites of passage because we think it's really important in core to who we are as men and how we are forged. So stay tuned for...
20:51
Couple more conversations on the way. So we'll talk to you guys later. Awesome, thanks Chris.