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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.
The Case For Intention At Midlife
00:00
Welcome back you guys to the podcast with Restoration Project. Chris Bruno here and I've got my friend. Jesse French. Good to see you, Chris. Hey, Jesse. Jesse, over the course of the last few weeks, I have done something I have never done before. Say more. Well, I wish it was like epic and exciting and, you know, something like jumping out of a plane or
00:29
spelunking or something like super, super exciting like that. But it is exciting, but it's not quite epic like that. Okay, I have spent I think it's about probably somewhere between 25 and 30 hours listening to myself talk.
00:58
And I do talk to myself a lot anyway, but this is on purpose. Over the course of the last couple of weeks, we just recorded the audio book version of Sage. Yeah. And I was the reader. I'm the one who wrote it. For any of you who are worried that it's 24 hours of like actual time of listening to Chris talk, if you were to get the audio book. Yeah.
01:26
It's not okay. It's not 24 hours, but it takes that long It takes that long to do the recording because a you've got to like set up all the equipment and all that stuff And then it is this extremely slow arduous process Yeah, say more about this because I would have naively thought hey, you're recording the audiobook you read through it Once and like it's then you're done like so a couple hours. Yeah
01:54
It's no, it's, it's a long process. And for any of you who may be in the audio field or world or whatever, you probably know what I'm talking about here, but it's crazy. It's crazy with, okay. So first of all, you're not just reading. You're not, I know. Oh, okay. You are slowly articulating every syllable of every word at a
02:22
that is interesting with intonation that carries the reader forth through the script of the book. And then that's a lot just even in it. And then you pause between sentences and then you pick up and you read the next sentence and then you read the next sentence and then your stomach growls because you're hungry.
02:48
And the microphone picks up the stomach growl. How is that even possible? Like, mics are clearly like, that's a thing? Yeah, it's a thing. It's a thing. And then the chair creaks because you moved or your breath, I don't know if, I'm gonna lean into the mic here. Do you know how many... Oh, mouth sounds? Oh gosh. Mouth sounds you actually make. So...
03:13
There's all those things. And so if there's a mouth sound or a stomach growl or a chair creak or a plane, or we were recording and thunder started happening outside, a lawnmower came by like all that stuff we had to pause and start all over again. And so it's reading and reading and reading and reading and reading and articulating. And then, so this is on me. It's completely on me. I did not write Sage thinking about it being read out loud.
03:43
Right. So there's words in there that are, uh, there's some Latin words. There's some just bigger English words that when you read it in your head silently, the flow of the sentence is, it makes sense. It just flows. But when you have to read it out loud, then there is this sense of like so many consonants or so many T's in a sentence that you just can't keep your mouth moving forward.
04:13
and all of that. And then, and final thing I'll say, Jesse is dialogue. Dialogue sucks. It's so hard because, you know, you're, there's a lot of stories that I share in Sage and it's a conversation that I'm having with a friend or a conversation that I'm having with a client or somebody that I'm talking to at a retreat center or whatever. And so there's the embodiment of me and then there's the embodiment of the client and
04:43
I am not a voice actor. So I'm not going to like say, you know, put on some other voice. But I have to do so in like, it's a dumpster fire. When you're trying to do that. Well, imagine too, those like, is there just one other voice? So like, you know, in the dialogue, it's, you know, you speaking, but then when, when this other person speaks like, Crispino just has one other voice. There is just one other voice. But the kicker is this, that,
05:12
You know, so like you start the sentence and it's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, he said in an exasperated tone. And so you get to the end of the sentence and you're realizing, Oh wait, I needed to say that in an exasperated tone. And so then we have to retake the entire thing in order for it to be in an exasperated tone or you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He said yelling and then, you know, so whatever. So there's dialogue sucks.
05:42
So voice actors bless you for the work that you do. Yeah. And, and all that. So clearly a skill, right? Clearly a skill that people have. It is far more than just reading out loud. This is, yes, it is not just reading out loud. So all that to say, like I am super excited to have the Sage audio book out there and all I am asking of you, if you might be one of the people who listens to me reading,
06:11
Sage, please be kind, please be gentle, just be aware that this was a labor of love. And it took 24 hours of me listening to myself talk to get this audiobook out there. But I'm super excited because it's our very first ever audiobook audio version of any of our content that we put out there. Yep. And I think the reality is men, I don't know if this is you men, you're listening to this podcast right now.
06:40
But men listen to books more than they sit and read books. And that there's no judgment there just as a reality. And so I'm just excited to see where this could potentially go and have more guys experience some of the stuff that we've got in Sage moving forward. Yeah, Chris, I'm sure some of the people listening are familiar with Sage have read it already. Maybe there's a handful of people that are like, hey, what, what is this book about? I'm intrigued. Like.
07:07
Give us the rundown for what Sage is about, why you wrote it, and why it's just a critical kind of element of our resources at Restoration Project. Yeah. So I think there's four main shifts that happen in a man's life. Good job pronouncing shifts, by the way. Good job, Mr. Voice Actor. Thank you. I will choose to be more articulate as we move forward in our conversation. So the four main shifts that happen in a man's life.
07:37
Two of which we have no control over, two of which we do. So at the beginning and at the end is the shift into life and at the end is the shift into death. We are born and we die, okay? Those are pretty significant shifts. Indeed. Okay? Yeah, agreed. The two in the middle are passages where we cross thresholds. And I think the first one in so much of our work in Restoration Project is around this,
08:07
And one of my first books, Man Maker Project, is about this. It is about that rite of passage transition from boy into man, and that a boy is born, but men are made. And the reality is there is an important step that happens when a boy turns into a man, both physically, but far more on the soul level, that he has that transition into manhood. Okay. And so, so much of the work that we do is around helping dads think about...
08:36
that intentional passage for their sons and for their daughters. Okay? So there's that. But then there is a second passage that most of us have some sense of, but have never really named as an intentional passage. And that is the passage from man into sage. So a boy becomes man, and then a man becomes a sage. And the sage, the elder, the wise one, the older
09:05
kind of person who's investing in the younger generations, right? That is a sage. And what ends up happening is if we don't enter that passage, if we don't attend with intention to that crossing of the threshold, then we don't become sages accidentally. No one ever accidentally became a sage. Every sage became one with intention. The only thing that happens accidentally is you just become old. You just become an old guy. Yeah. Age does not.
09:34
you are now a sage when you've reached certain age. It doesn't, it doesn't. And so I feel like God's calling on us as men is to become sages. And even biblically, like there is a sense that the crown of splendor that the scriptures talk about is not when he becomes a warrior or when he becomes a king, it's when he becomes a sage. That the pinnacle of manhood is when a man becomes a sage. And so,
10:02
I think it's really important for us to be thinking about this transition into our next passage into the next season of our lives that, you know, and a lot of people kind of think, well, that's later. That's when I'm 65 or whatever. But the reality is I think that doing the work to become a sage starts in the middle of our first half as we prepare for our second half. Okay. It's in the middle of our first half.
10:32
there's something about, you know, in your thirties, what are you doing as you are intending to become that man who will be a qualified Sage? When you're forties, what are you doing in your fifties? What are you doing? And there's not a moment or a mark when you like are a Sage, you know, it weren't a Sage and now you are, but it's more of this evolutionary process of like, who are you becoming as you become that older guy? And I think it takes intention. So that's what Sage is all about.
11:01
Yeah, so, so needed. Man, I'm wondering as you spent 24 hours rereading your work and, you know, discovering the way that you built your sentences and, you know, the nitpicky things that you were maybe critical about that from like an audio standpoint, what of that book like resonated on a new or deeper level for you? Like as you return to those words, like, yeah, what shimmered as you read it again this time? Yeah.
11:29
So I'm in my 50s right now. So I am on the beginning part of my journey into becoming that sage. And I feel like some of what I did as I wrote that book was my own internal work around that posture, that passage, that movement into the sage. So I think one of the things that as I was reading, there's some portions in the book where towards the end of the book, where...
11:55
And even the audio engineer was asking me in some of the in-between spaces, like what, what actually happened there? Because there's some portions of the book where I am having a conversation with myself. I'm having a conversation with the younger parts inside of me, the younger man, the younger boy. And there's some, it's not like active dialogue necessarily, but there's like a representation of what was happening inside of me. Yeah.
12:23
And I wrote a lot of that into the book and I left a lot of it out because, you know, that's kind of private. That's yours. Yeah. It's for me to hold and, you know, for me with myself, between me and God, to really hold that. And so even as I'm rereading the book, I'm revisiting some of the things that are left untold.
12:49
And there's some just re kind of soaking in the goodness of God. And then also the resurfacing of like, oh, these are still areas that I am aware of for myself that I want to tend to. And in the hurry and hustle and bustle of life and all of that stuff, those things have kind of been left on the table in past journals, in past reflections.
13:17
But rereading Sage now has been like, okay, wait a minute, I'm gonna return to some of those, those parts of me that surfaced then and I was able to be with. And it had some really sweet and tender moments with myself and with God and in my story that I wanna come back to. So I feel like that happened, that shimmered for me as you were using your word there. So. Thanks for sharing that. And I, it makes so much sense that they're, I'm so grateful for your.
13:45
your vulnerability and sharing like and kind of opening your own process to us. And also saying not all of it, right. And there are parts that rightfully so are, like you said, are between you and God. And so so glad just for you personally, that there could be a kind of a re re engagement and a remembering of some of those spaces and a desire for continued visiting of that. Yeah. Well, yes, it's writing things is a very vulnerable experience.
14:14
because you put down into words things that you only think or wonder about sometimes and it forces you to articulate. And so I would advocate actually for you men who are listening, you know, don't go write a book necessarily, though if there is a book inside of you, please go write it. But the discipline of writing, even just a sentence a day, the discipline of writing is so good for our souls to articulate what we're experiencing inside.
14:44
Yeah. So I just think especially as men who may not be as verbally fluent as as our female counterparts, right? Like there's something about forcing us to sit down and articulate what's going on on the inside. So I guess for sure. Highly agree. Yes, definitely. We were excited for the audio book.
15:08
to be released in the show notes, we'll have the link where you can go track that down and yeah, excited for that to be able to be in the world and available to all sorts of new people hopefully. Yes, thank you. And when you're listening to it, if you listen to it, just imagine me sitting there with a microphone in my face and God bless you guys. Awesome, thanks Chris. Yeah.