Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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. My name is Jesse French and I'm one of your co-hosts today. And today I get to be joined by my good buddy, Cody Buriff. Cody, how are you today? Good to see you, man. Good to see you. Well, sometimes in the way this podcast works, sometimes we, you know, as people would imagine, right, we kind of schedule things out and there's a little bit of a lag, right, between
Cody Buriff
Jesse. Good to be here.
Jesse French
when we actually have our conversation and when it gets released. But today is one of the fun ones where it's much more current. And so we find ourselves in the very first part of October, kind of squarely in the month of autumn, the season of fall. And so today kind of wanted to wander and explore around some of that season and some of implications for us. But we'd love to hear from you, Cody, for those of listeners that don't know, Cody lives in Indiana. And so
Yeah, right now, like this season for you, just even where you're located geographically, like things are happening. Things are busy, especially in kind of the agricultural space of the world. so, yeah, man, take us a a little bit into, into that world and even what you're observing there.
Cody Buriff
Yeah, well, it's funny. mean, Indiana is like in this kind of area of the country like Indiana is known as the crossroads, which means like people often they drive through Indiana to get somewhere else. That's why it's the crossroads.
Jesse French
Are you saying it's not the destination?
Cody Buriff
Like generally not the destination. There's some cool stuff here, but you know, it's often where you're driving through. And when you're driving through, you notice that, ⁓ especially in the, the Northern half of Indiana is just tons of corn, corn and beans. In fact, I think there's a phrase that gets tossed around a marketing phrase of like, there's more than just corn in Indiana. like
Jesse French
That's an actual like state advertising campaign.
Cody Buriff
Yeah.
Yeah. I love it. ⁓ But yeah, like right now, like I, so I live in a pretty like developed County, in central Indiana. And so we still have a few fields around us, but you kind of have to drive really more like 10, 15 minutes and then you're getting into more like legit farm country. Yeah. And like, as we're doing that, as we're driving around, like there are some big machines out in the fields right now, Jesse, you've, you've seen combines before, right?
Jesse French
I love it.
Yeah, yeah, they are like a mystery to me, right? Of how this like, huge machine is going along, I don't know, like 15, maybe 15 miles an hour, like very fast. and totally transforming standing corn to stubble. And like, my mind just is blown of like, how does how does the thing work? How does it do that? How like, what's what magic is this?
Cody Buriff
Seriously, sometimes I need to actually like watch a YouTube video or something about like how combine actually works inside because it's this giant magical machine, you know, that you said starts out with standing corn and then at the end of it, there's like corn kernels and then a whole bunch of like stocks and cobs and whatever thrown out on the ground behind it. And I don't know, man, those things are nuts.
Jesse French
It is wild. Yeah. Sometime we need to have, watch some YouTube or have some, you know, John Deere rep come in and give us the version on this.
Cody Buriff
Well, one thing I'm aware of, like when I think about what's happening right now in this season, even just across the country in many ways, harvest season, you know, there, there are a couple of things there's, there's harvesting going on and that happens with a combine. There is a threshing that happens with a combine that is like, you know, when you hear in the Bible, like separating the wheat from the chaff, it's separating the kernels from like everything else that is part of the plant. And, know,
kind of getting rid of the chaff and maintaining hanging on to those kernels. so, then we'll jump to this at some point, but there's this element of shifting over into the period of production into allowing things to rest and kind of entering a season of rest and letting the ground go fallow for a while. So there's a teaser. That's kind of where we want to go this, you know,
Jesse French
Yeah. Yeah. And even as you and I were talking about it ahead of time, it did feel like, you know, calendar wise being in the season of fall, these images, right. And people by now, if you've listened to it a little bit, you're like, these guys are maybe borderline addicted to metaphors and love their metaphors of how metaphors give us meaning in the application of our life. But
Cody Buriff
He's loved metaphors,
Jesse French
Yeah, we're just following in his, his, yeah, that's right. That's right. But it did feel like, you know, as we're here in October, as we are in the, in the season of fall in this transition, weather calendar, et cetera, to be able to use that as an invitation to consider our own lives and to wonder through how might we as restorative engaged intentional men, yeah, engage our lives with some different rhythms potentially that
that can follow the lead of the seasons. And so that's kind of where we want to go and excited about that. So you mentioned kind of that first category, Cody of harvest that is happening in Indiana. It's happening all across the United States as the growing season is coming to an end. Yeah, unpack that a little bit more, not the inner workings of how the combine works, but just like broadly, what is happening in harvest from ⁓ a growing perspective and how that might.
have some implications for who we are as men.
Cody Buriff
Yeah. As I think about it, you know, know, seasonality, you know, spring, you plant seeds summer, like you're nurturing and those, the plant grows and then fall is when you're harvesting the fruit. Right. Yeah. And so as, know, as we are entering in and actually inviting our listeners into a season of harvest, if you will, it's not the season of productivity necessarily. It's not the season of planting, although, you know, we can do those things, obviously any time of the year. It's not, you know, it doesn't have to be like.
Following the actual like agricultural calendar or whatever, but let's maybe invite ourselves into a practice of harvesting itself. so harvesting, like you're kind of seeing like what has the previous season of production and planting and whatever, what has that produced? What is showing up when we kind of step back and survey the land of our souls and our, and our stories, like, are we? You know, what.
Let's pull back the layers and reveal the truth, you know, whether it's abundance or barrenness, whether there are good things that have grown or not so good things that have grown up in the midst of the, know, it's kind of a time to evaluate and check.
Jesse French
Yeah, think that that makes so much sense. And, you know, as I think about that image, you know, it really is like the gathering up right of what the field has held. Right. And so like that image of, man, we are gathering and bringing into one place the spaces of our life, the places that we have applied work and planted, like just that image of kind of pulling together into one space to me feels like, that's
That puts a little meat on the bone of what harvesting is, right? It is kind of that pulling in together to gather and sort of summon that.
Cody Buriff
Yeah. Just so you we throw on the phrase, it goes something like, uh, you know, we don't learn from experience, but we learn from reflecting on experience. Yeah. Can you give us some thoughts on like, what does it look like to reflect on and therefore harvest kind of what's going on?
Jesse French
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, that's good. I love that you connected it to experience, right? Because I think that is one of the major things we need to be able to do as men to be able as humans, to be able to look back and reflect and say, what, have our experiences held and to actually use another. Ag word, like to glean what we can from what those experiences have held. And so, you know, I think the common way, and we've probably talked about it on this podcast, when we have experiences.
The common way that we can reflect around that is through a lens of like, what did we do? What were the main sort of activities that that experience may have helped, which is fine. And that's maybe the first step of trying to harvest some of that, to reflect on that experience. But I think the learning that you're alluding to, I think there's such an opportunity to try to, to try to go deeper, to try to ask maybe some different questions. And some of those maybe harvesting questions are things like.
what was formed in me by this experience, which is a hard one, right? Like, yeah, when I think about them, like, man, that's a good question. And that is, are now to answer that forced into, or invited into the place of like formation and identity and who we are and how we are shifted. And so I think, I think that's a great one to try to ask ourselves to wrestle with of like, what was formed in me through this experience? What, you know, to
to go with some of that egg lens, Like, you know, maybe it's what fruit was formed in me, what also what was not formed in me. that begins to, think it allows us to go deeper past just the, maybe the facts, upper level sort of layer of experience and into more of the identity place.
Cody Buriff
Yeah, that makes total sense. I wonder like if four guys, if we can invite them to just ask that question of like, you know, reflecting over the last six months to a year, you know, what has shifted inside? Like what is different now than was different? That was the case, you know, a year ago, engaging that what, what did we learn? What do we grow in, you know, or like maybe some things have gotten worse, like, know,
I'm aware that like, yeah, sometimes we start going down like side roads and they take us places. We actually didn't want to go, you know, one of the questions that came to mind as I was thinking through this a little bit was like, asking the question of what story was I living from when I planted the seeds that led me to, know, this particular fruit or this harvest.
Jesse French
Yeah, that's a great question to go back to to say what was that motivation? What was that desire? you know, that story that was informing that? And that's a great, great one to really, really go back to the start of some of that.
Cody Buriff
Yeah, I mean, if we can get ourselves back to there, like that's when you're starting to enter that space of reflection, that's not only like naming what has happened, but naming the why or what set it up. And that's where we can start to see like actual real awareness is what I would call it. Yeah, you know.
Jesse French
Yep. So Cody, when we think about a couple of those questions of like, Hey, maybe what was some of the initial story that was prompting the engagement of that? You know, the question of how we were formed by even maybe even one step before that, like maybe just throw off a couple of different categories of you're like, we're talking about experiences that happen in our life, but even just kind of broadly, like, I'm sure some guys are thinking like, well, I can think through that maybe relationally or the experiences that I had with work.
Like other fields, so to speak, or areas, even just to give a little bit more of as guys are gathering some of those experiences to harvest other specific places that your mind goes that we could engage.
Cody Buriff
Yeah. I mean, if you're reevaluating the last year, I mean, you can think through everything from obviously you mentioned work, but I'd rather focus on some other things in this moment. like, you know, obviously you can think through relationships, like marriage, can think through fatherhood and friendships and frankly, relationship with the Lord, you know, all of those relational categories are spaces where we can step back and say like, okay, where am I right now versus where I was a year ago? Like,
And you know, where are my kids, you know, each one of them and how has that relationship actually been this last year? What did I plant? What did I nurture? What has grown? What hasn't grown? What's popped up that I wasn't even aware of was growing. It's like a weed or whatever, like, you know, and same thing in all of those relationships. When we are engaging and discovering like, ⁓ this is what happened or these are some of the ways in which I engaged in that that caused this kind of fruit.
know, or he didn't step in in ways that you wish you would have. Like that's how you learn. That's how you move forward to be able to plant and nurture better in the following season. know,
Jesse French
Yes, I love that you said that because part of where I was going was I could imagine there's a response in some of us that hear this invitation to gather, to harvest, and there could be a response of like, man, number one, I ain't got the time. And number two, like, you know, the past is the past. Like, I'm just the keeper of my destiny and like this hyper future orientation. And so I think what you just said there is so wise of like,
If we are going to be intentional restorative men, there has to be a sober harvest of what our lives have held and so that we can actually step into the new spaces that are coming in our lives.
Cody Buriff
Yeah, it's good. Jesse, what else is part of that process and season of like the harvest season that can be good to think through?
Jesse French
I mean, the piece that again, tracking with the metaphor, but I think one element that stands out to me is like harvest season, it requires so much work. Like it is the culmination of people in the agricultural world, right? Like it is ridiculous hours. We have friends who farm up in Alberta and like when it is harvest, their whole world just like goes into a different mode.
And so I say that not to, to say, you know, for us that aren't, you know, the harvesting, what the year has held, not to like flip everything on its axis, but to again, have a sober sense of like, this requires the gathering, the reflection through actually requires a significant amount of input and energy from us that it is an energy dependent process. so, and I say that hopefully not as like this big burden on us, but more of just, I think that's just kind of the.
It's a fundamental of how it exists that if we are going to, and we're to talk about threshing here in a second, but if we are going to gather, you know, all of what in the different spaces and the experiences that we've held, there's a lot to gather, right? Like even just you naming through some of those different spaces, there's a lot to sift through. There's a lot to bring under the banner of our awareness. yeah.
Cody Buriff
I wonder if that's part of why we don't do it.
Jesse French
Absolutely. Yeah, totally. Yeah, for you, Cody, does that just and I'm putting it on the spot, assuming that's true for me, I'd imagine it's true for you of like, does it just feel sure that would be great to be able to spend that time? But I don't have the margin. Like where where does that energy come from?
Cody Buriff
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, there's some of that, like for me. Yeah, it does. It is obviously does take a lot of time and energy and you have to like be super intentional about setting aside time, frankly, to be able to even think about processing some of those. Yes. Yeah. And I would say for me, man, I'm, know, you know me, I'm future oriented. Like I live in the future. And so it's, would say it's even extra energy to like reorient even just for like
a couple hours or whatever and try to look back at the past and dissect that and try to understand like, you know, the wise man will do that because you know, even if he's thinking about the future, he wants, know, not knowing what has really been going on in the past. You can't do what you, know, you can't make the shifts necessary for the future, but it is, it is a little overwhelming to actually sit down and do that or it can be. Yeah.
Jesse French
Yep.
Cody Buriff
Yeah, I'll ask you this. Do you have, you know, maybe a couple of like questions or thoughts that guys could, you know, write down or walk away with that might help them engage with what has been and try to discover and uncover, you know, and reflect on maybe their last year or maybe the last season of life or whatever to help kind of figure out what has grown and maybe how has that happened?
Jesse French
Which I think, I love that you went there, because I think that question, right, is sort of the next step of the process, right? Of like, okay, so we have a sense of these are the experiences, these are the things that have happened in the last year. Now we're, they're all in one place. And now we're into the phase of like, well, can we categorize it, right? Can we like assess sort of what was the fruit of that, right? And I, maybe one place is like, what was the original desire?
to be able to give some language. So relationally or a new endeavor, what was the original desire? And that provides us at least with one metric to then say, okay, if we were hoping for this, what actually was experienced, right? And I would say that the more specific we can be, and desire is like such a tricky, complex layered thing, but I think the more language we can put around, hey, I would have thought that this new practice would have
Cody Buriff
Mm-hmm.
Jesse French
deep into this relationship, you know, I'm not going to put a percentage, but the more language we can put around that, then it allows us to say, okay, you know, where does it stack around? You know, what is the actual outcome of did that happen? And did it not? I use the word desire instead of goal because I think goal has sort of this kind of like sort of very objective kind of impersonal pass fail totally. Right. Whereas desire.
Cody Buriff
Pass fail.
Jesse French
Desire is much more personal to us, right? If we're asking and wondering around how we were formed by things, right? Desire is the personal expression of who we are, of our hope, of our doubt, like all of that. And so I think that piece, I'd say, what was some of the original desire rather than like, what was the goal?
Cody Buriff
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I think there's also the reality of like when we look inside ourselves, you you just said the words like what was formed in me. We've talked a bit about like what has formed in, you know, those relationships or the things that I was trying to do at work or whatever. But also the like what was formed in me and starting to engage like, OK, harvest season like let's it's you step back and you're evaluating what has been.
What led us to this point? Was there too much rain? Was there not enough rain? Was there too much sun or not? You know, whatever, right? Yep. And starting to even just be curious and ask God to show us like, okay, what has happened? Yeah. What was, what was hoped for, you know, what was desired, what happened and how did that happen? And I don't think it's a time for shaming ourselves when things. It's just naming what happened so that we can shift gears a little bit.
Jesse French
No. Yes.
Cody Buriff
and shift the trajectory.
Jesse French
Yes. So Cody, you know, you're talking about the naming that's required and needed as we do harvest what the last year has held. I think that's so helpful. And maybe how does that dovetail into, you know, just the, again, kind of the mindset that we need to approach harvest with, what are the implications for that for us as we, you know, try to step into that at this point within the year?
Cody Buriff
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we have to name things in order to like actually, you know, understand them. We have to, you know, by naming, like it doesn't mean like name it Gary or whatever. means like, just say what say what's true, you know, honor reality. Let's be honest about it. Right. and so it's not like we're not, it's really tempting to go to like shame when things haven't gone well. and here's the thing, like things haven't gone well for everyone.
Jesse French
Things
have not gone well. Let us just baseline that,
Cody Buriff
There may be some great fruit and there is something that went poorly. Like one of those relationships or work or whatever, something did not work out the way you wanted it to. It may or may not be because of, you know, what you've planted and like, just, even if you've planted it, like, it's not a time for shame. It's a time for just evaluation.
Jesse French
That's good. That's good.
Cody Buriff
And so we want to name like, okay, this is the state of affairs, you know, in all of these categories. Maybe it's your relationships or work or, or something else, you know, that is important to you, but it's just stating affairs. Like this is where we're at. This is what has happened over the last year. This is what I was hoping for. This is what I would hope for moving forward, maybe even a little bit, but, and it's, it's really evaluating. How did we get here? Yes. What has happened?
What, where was I during the nurturing season? Where was I during the planting season? What was going on in my heart and my story? What, what was I believing and maybe trying to ask the Lord like what what's actually true in all of that.
Jesse French
Yep. That's so good. Here's the, maybe the last thing I want to say as we wrap up and maybe we'll explore it some more. But as we're having this conversation, my mind goes to, I actually love the invitation of doing this right now in the calendar in October compared to December. So generally like the rhythm of our family is, you know, the end of the calendar year and December, December to January is the like reassess the previous year.
Which obviously makes sense from a, right. All right. That makes sense. But at least for me, I mean, that end of December into January is like, often there is the just December sort of fatigue of all that it is held and all that has like inputted by that point. We're already in Colorado. We're already into like winter. Do you know what I mean? And so that season has changed. So I guess just for me, I'm underlining.
I wonder about this harvest and this reflection actually happening right now within the calendar for October. To me, feels like there's some resonance and some alignment even to do that two months earlier than what we have. So, you. Yes, I'm benefiting from this conversation.
Cody Buriff
Yeah, so I'll say this and then we'll just chop the podcast here in a second. you know, there's a couple other things that we talked about at the beginning of this one that we're going to get into. And we're going to actually just take that into the next episode that will come out. So if you're listening, you've had your teasers chew on that. And we're going to talk a little bit more about threshing and what that looks like. And then also fallow letting the soil rest here in a bit.
Jesse French
All right. Cool. Thanks for the time, Cody.
Cody Buriff
Thank you.