Become Good Soil

Prayer is never the first word; it is always the second word. God has the first word.
– Eugene Peterson

Father, thank you that our story begins with you, and we will return to the restoration of all things. 

We choose to trust that you love us with the same love you have for Jesus. 

Therefore we will not give way to fear.  

We agree with who you are. We agree with what you are doing. We agree with how you are doing it. 

We ask for a revelation of your affection today. 

We ask that you would make the impossible possible.

God is perfectly capable of saving the world he created.
– Dallas Willard

And when you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production either….Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace. (Matthew 6:5-15 MSG)

There is no power in hell
Or any who can stand
Before the power and the presence of the Great I Am.
– Jared Anderson

The male must be taught "the tears of things" before he is given any power.

Where is God?

What is God doing? 

Why is this happening? 

Where do I go?

God, ANSWER ME. 

“I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face, questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”

Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.
– Goethe

Home is both an origin and a destination.

I came from the Father. Now I come home to the Father.
– Jesus of Nazareth

God’s cheatin’ in our favor.
– Shia LaBeouf

When the son is ready, the Father appears. 

He trusts her without reserve and never has reason to regret it.
– Proverbs 31:11 MSG

“...you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (3:28 NIV)

As a man matures and increases in power, he is absolutely dependent on
the integration of feminine love
for him to flourish, mature, and thrive in God’s Kingdom.
– Morgan Snyder

God loves you more tenderly and more irrevocably than the best of mothers.
– Stasi Eldredge

Friends,

Boyd Varty’s life has enticed me into ever deeper waters of my masculine initiation. His stories of tracking animals in wild spaces offer stunning insight into the experience of tracking our souls as men during this bewildering hour on Earth.

Boyd's insight offers particular treasure for our community of apprentices to Jesus, inviting us to become men whose wise hearts and skilled hands can engage in our Father’s intention to share his power and authority on earth as it is in heaven. 

One Kingdom irony is that our Father invites us into this risky endeavor of power-sharing through the unlikely doorway of losing track of our lives. As Boyd suggests,

“There is a last track, and then it's gone. Trails can be like life in that way. You are clear on a path one minute, and the next instant, it's gone. You get fired, you lose a loved one, the company fails, you retire, she dumps you, and you get divorced. Where you thought you were going vanishes. Who you thought you were is lost….More than any other part of tracking, losing the track might be the most metaphorically rich.” 

What if losing the track—and what we do with being lost—is an essential practice to engaging in the unbroken line of God’s masculine initiation of our souls? 

If we are to dare greatly and fail forward, we must practice accepting that losing the track is an essential part of tracking. We must courageously accept that to admit we are lost is to discover we are found by a good and strong Father lovingly leading us home. 

Join Boyd Varty and me for Part 2 of this daring conversation. 

For the Kingdom,
Morgan

P.S. If you want to journey deeper with Boyd, visit www.BoydVarty.com.

I have no idea where I’m going. But I know exactly how to get there.
– Boyd Varty, The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life

What does it mean to be a man in this hour on earth?

Where is the path to wholehearted, integrated masculinity today?

Amidst the poison and disintegration of postmodern life, is any of it concretely possible?

“Where are you, Adam?”
– Genesis 3:9

The only thing which we may take with us from our life on earth are those things which we have given away.
– Babette’s Feast

All the stories we tell borrow their power from the Great Story God is writing.
– John Eldredge

Then our sons in their youth
    will be like well-nurtured plants,
and our daughters will be like pillars
    carved to adorn a palace.
– Psalm 144:12 NIV

The glory of children are their Fathers.
– Proverbs 17:6 KJV

Who is he? 

What is he like? 

Is he available? 

Deeper still, is he interested? 

 I have no idea where I’m going. But I know exactly how to get there.
– Boyd Varty, The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life

Salvation is a process, not an event.
– Resilient

Pointing to his disciples, Jesus said, “These are my brothers and sisters, my true family. Whoever does the will of my Father is my family.”
– Matthew 12:49-50 (paraphrase)

Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.
– Hebrews 2:11 NIV

Answers before questions do harm to the soul.
– Henri Nouwen

We’re lost males, all of us, cast adrift from the community of men, cut off from our masculine heritage—abandoned to machines, organizations, fantasies, drugs.
– Gordon Dalbey, Healing the Masculine Soul

It's all up to me.

I’m way behind.

It’s too late. 

I am all alone.  

It’s not up to me.

I’m on time.

I have more than enough.

I am being led by a good, true, and beautiful Father who is brilliantly orchestrating my rescue, redemption, and masculine initiation. 

In fiction, we should have no agenda except to be truthful.
– Winn Collier, Love Big, Be Well: Letters to a Small-Town Church

I can remember those early years when it seemed to me I was cut completely adrift, and times when, looking back at earlier times, it seemed I had been wandering in the dark woods of error. But now it looks to me as though I was following a path that was laid out for me, unbroken, and maybe even as straight as possible, from one end to the other, and I have this feeling, which never leaves me anymore, that I have been led.

How do I become the kind of man whose ever-increasing inner experience is that of being led?

We become what we behold.
– Eugene Peterson, A Burning in My Bones

He beheld the Presence of God.

Discipleship to Jesus is the greatest opportunity individual human beings have in life and the only hope corporate mankind has at solving its insurmountable problems.
– Dallas Willard

Churches are not the kingdom of God…but they are primary and inevitable expressions, outposts, and instrumentalities of the presence of the kingdom among us. They are "societies" of Jesus.
– Dallas Willard

You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said goodbye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive…..The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.
(1 Corinthians 12:12-13, 25-26 MSG)

"Tell me your story" is the most revolutionary phrase you can ever say to a man.

– John Eldredge

Friends,

The revolution ignited by Wild at Heart and Become Good Soil is well under way. Though hidden from many, it is irrevocably life-changing for the men who have risked their lives to enter in. 

Bryan Byrd of Wild Courage and Jay Heck of Being Sons are two of our Kingdom allies at the fore of Wild at Heart Fires, taking new ground in this revolution by inviting men into the ancient practice of story-telling and question-asking around an open flame.

We believe hearing authentic stories from the front lines of this movement will spur you to join us. 

After 70 years of apprenticeship to Jesus, Tim Keller said, “What worked for our generation to proclaim and live out the Gospel will not work for yours. I don’t know what will. My time is coming to a close. You will have to figure that out for your generation.”

Brothers, I believe Wild at Heart Fires offer a fresh dimension of Heaven’s provision for Kingdom-living in our generation. These come-as-you-are spaces welcome all men to risk, love, listen, ask, share, and get their hearts back. They offer a context for the authentic masculine community essential for our hearts to thrive. 

As we launch this episode, we know of almost 30 Fires under way. God willing, there will be 300 this time next year, with more to follow. Imagine a day when every man in the world is within driving distance of a monthly Fire shared with like-hearted men.

Join us. Come along and dream about starting a Fire in your community. Put the word out. Invite a few others who are interested in recovering the ancient path. Then light the flame. Low bar, good risk. Masculinity restored.

For the Kingdom,

Morgan

You can find out more at https://www.wildatheart.org/fires

Life is our resume. It is our story to tell, and the choices we make write the chapters. Can we live in a way where we look forward to looking back?
– Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

Christ is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
– Colossians 1:17

So many times I have longed to gather your wayward children together around me… (Luke 13:34 TPT)

Like a city that is broken down and without walls [leaving it unprotected] is a man who has no self-control over his spirit [and sets himself up for trouble]. (Proverbs 25:28 AMP)

They will forget their shame and all their unfaithfulness….When I have brought them back from the nations and have gathered them from the scattered countries of their enemies…then they will know that I am the Lord their God, for I will gather them to their own land, not leaving any behind. (Ezekiel 39 NIV)

I will not leave you as orphans.
– Jesus of Nazareth

In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
    as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it.
Many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
  to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways so that we may walk in his paths.”
– Isaiah 2:2-4

Friends,

The compulsive reach for relief from a false comforter. 

The teeth-gritting heroism of doing the "right thing.”

The addiction to appearance and reputation. 

Our regular rage against authority or our unquestioning posture of a bended knee before it.

Life is not about you.
– Adam's Return

“I have come to heal the broken hearted….I have come to set the captives free and release prisoners from darkness.”
– Isaiah 61

I am overtired but under-rested.

I am overworked, yet I feel unproductive.

I am overweight but undernourished.

I am overstimulated yet under-engaged. 

I am working to make a meaningful contribution, yet I often feel under-celebrated.

Spiritual transformation in Christ is the process of all of the essential parts of the human self being effectively organized around God,
as they are restored and sustained by him.
Its result is love of God with all of the heart, soul, mind, and strength, and of the neighbor as oneself.
– Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart

Friends, 

We are made in the image of God; we carry within us the desire for our true life of intimacy and adventure. To say we want less than that is to lie.

– The Journey of Desire

Friends, 

It started with an ocean lifeguard dory boat race. Two-man teams set to row from the coast of Catalina Island across the twenty-two-mile open-water channel back to the mainland near San Pedro. To add to the adventure, it was the opening of lobster season. In response, Jared and his buddy cooked up an off-the-couch adventure to dive for lobsters all day around Catalina, camp on the beach, wake up in the predawn, and launch their self-powered dory at 4:00 a.m. to complete the epic race back home.

This is a glimpse into the heart of Jared Sayers, a trusted friend of mine who has consented to the path and process of becoming a king. Husband, father, waterman, entrepreneur, recovering business executive, adventurer, artist, and craftsman, Jared is a man who seeks to drink deeply of life in the fullest possible measure.

Above all, he has taken risks and carries scars of failure, heartbreak, and triumph that tell a story of masculine initiation. 

Through the doorways of pain and desire, Jared is passing through his initiation into an adventure with God he would never have imagined. 

And he’s inviting us to do the same. 

The invitation is to allow the Father to use Jared’s story as an interpretive grid to shine a light deep into your heart as a man and to attune you to who God wants to be for you and what he is up to in calling you out to deeper waters and bigger surf.

Join us for this unique but universal story of masculine initiation. Locate your own heart and take the next risk, if you dare.

For the Kingdom,

Morgan

To dig even deeper and glean from all Jared is stewarding, check out more at his blog, A Blue Mind, and his Salt & Sea Camp for kids.

Enter through the narrow gate.
For wide is the gate and broad is the path that leads to destruction,
and many enter through it.
But small is the gate and narrow the path that leads to life,
and only a few find it.
– Jesus of Nazareth

We don't believe something by merely saying we believe it,
or even when we believe that we believe it.
We believe something when we act as if it were true.
– Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart 

Rule with the heart of a servant. Serve with the heart of a king.

“Where are you, Adam?”
– Genesis 3:9

Each human soul has to enact for itself the gigantic humility of the Incarnation. Every man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind.
– G.K. Chesterton

The difference is not in what people suffer, but in the way they suffer. In the same fire, gold glows and straw smokes.
– St. Augustine

In the larger-than-life, spiritually transformed people I have met, I always find one common denominator: in some sense, they have all died before they died. They have followed in the footsteps of Jesus, a path from death to life.
– Adam’s Return

However quickly or slowly the call of God comes, it is always accompanied with an undercurrent of the supernatural….If a man or woman is called of God, it doesn’t matter how difficult the circumstances may be. God orchestrates every force at work for his purpose in the end. If you will agree with God’s purpose, he will bring not only your conscious level but also all the deeper levels of your life, which you yourself cannot reach, into perfect harmony.
– Oswald Chambers

Get into the habit of saying, “Speak, Lord,”
and life will become a romance. (1 Samuel 3:9)
– Oswald Chambers 

He opened the door of the birdcage to let the eagle fly to freedom. But the eagle had been in captivity for so long it no longer believed it could fly, and it chose not to fly. It was then he realized the bird was not in the cage. The cage was in the bird.
– Jonathan Helser

God loves you unconditionally, exactly as you are and not as you "should be.”
– Brennan Manning, All Is Grace

Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.
– Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

Our stories do not define us; the Author of them does. 

So take seriously the story that God has given you to live. It's time to read your own life, because your story is the one that could set us all ablaze.
– To Be Told, Dan Allender

None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us. (8:38-39 MSG)

Without God, we cannot; without us, God will not.
– Saint Augustine

Since we are the sons of God, we must become the sons of God. 

You’re right where God wants you to be when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you, there is more of God.
– Jesus of Nazareth, to his closest friends

Sometimes we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are….What happened wasn’t about you, it was about me.
– Superintendent Eric Marsh, Only the Brave

Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, "Let me wash your face for you," when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.
(Matthew 7:3-5 MSG)

You are a soul made by God, made for God, and made to need God, made to run on God. Which means that you are not made to be self-sufficient.
– Dallas Willard

All you need is 20 seconds of insane courage, and I promise you something great will come of it.
– Benjamin Mee, We Bought a Zoo

Attachment begins in the first few months of life, but it is the continuous presence of a mother in the first 18 months that is the first step in building a deep and lasting sense of emotional security in a child. This security forms the basis of a child’s sense of self for the rest of life. Bonding is putting the pieces together and attachment is gluing them into place.
– Erica Komisar, Being There

A 30-year old-man is like a densely populated city. Nothing new can be built, in its heart, without something else being torn down.
– Mike Mason, The Mystery of Marriage

There are many people who think they want to be a matador, only to find themselves in the ring with 2,000 pounds of bull bearing down on them, and then they discover that what they really wanted was to wear tight pants and hear the crowd roar.
– Terry Pearce

I will not abandon you as orphans….I am coming back for you.
– Jesus of Nazareth

Friends, there is much to hope for in the face of our apparent waywardness with God and our nagging discontent. 

Christianity has tended to focus on right beliefs and right choices as the keys for personal growth. But biblical evidence and modern brain science show that our character is shaped more by whom we love than what we believe.
– Jim Wilder, Renovated

What if coming home to a new and secure attachment to God is the primary definition of salvation? 

All of life is a coming home. Salesmen, secretaries, coal miners, bee keepers, sword swallowers, all of us. All the restless hearts of the world, trying to find a way to go home. It's hard to describe how I felt then. Picture yourself walking for days in a driving snow. You don't even know you're walking in circles...the heaviness of your legs in the drifts, your shouts disappearing into the wind. How small you can feel. How far away home can be.

Home.

The dictionary defines it as both a place of origin and a goal or destination. The storm? The storm was all in my mind. Eventually I would find the right path, but in the most unlikely place.

– Patch Adams

Where have you taken your soul's need for unearned love?

In what or in whom do you seek a sense of unconditional belonging?

Where do you regularly feel joyful, nourished, and satisfied? 

In Isaiah 66, God unveils the secret to these questions with a promise brimming with hope and possibility:

“You newborns can satisfy yourselves

  at her nurturing breasts.

Yes, delight yourselves and drink your fill

    at her ample bosom.

God’s Message:

I’ll pour robust well-being into her like a river,

    the glory of nations like a river in flood.

You’ll nurse at her breasts,

    nestle in her bosom,

    and be bounced on her knees.

As a mother comforts her child,

    so I’ll comfort you.

    You will be comforted in Jerusalem.

You’ll see all this and burst with joy

  —you’ll feel ten feet tall—

As it becomes apparent that God is on your side.”

If this is God’s intention, then what's gone wrong? What is in the way of growing our attachment and attunement to God? Why do we find ourselves wanting and even genuinely loving God, yet continuing to attach our hearts and hopes to so many other things? 

Join Cherie and me in Part 1 of this series as we explore the hope of a palpable attachment to the living God as our Source of pleasure, joy, and comfort—a secure attachment through which we could feel ten feet tall, overflowing with loyal love for our Father’s good and precious world.

For the Kingdom,

Morgan

Taking Action:

List three unhealthy ways you seek comfort.

List three healthy ways you seek comfort.

What is the condition of your attachment to God? Not beliefs, or theology, but your operational, daily practice. 

In prayer and with God, explore this PDF.

There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.
– Wendell Berry

There simply is no distinction between sacred and unsacred work in the world. 

Now I have had most of the life I am going to have, and I can see what it has been. I can remember those early years when it seemed to me I was completely adrift, and time when, looking back, at earliest times, it seemed I had been wandering in the dark woods of error. But now it looks to me as though I was following a path that was laid out for me, unbroken, and maybe even as straight as possible, from one end to the other, and I have this feeling, which never leaves me anymore that
I have been led. I will leave you to judge the truth of that for yourself…
there is no proof.
– Jayber Crow

Aim at Heaven and you will get earth "thrown in"; aim at earth and you will get neither. It seems a strange rule, but something like it can be seen at work in other matters. Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health your main and direct object you start becoming a crank and imagining there is something wrong with you. You are only likely to get health provided you want other things more—food, games, work, fun, open air. In the same way, we shall never save civilization as long as civilization is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more.
– C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

We all need a witness to the particularities of our story, someone who takes in and holds everything from banal trivialities to what is so horrendous it can barely be seen, let alone spoken. Even truer, however, is that we are a proxy witness for the One who reminds us that our life is seen and held by a great cloud of witnesses.
– Dan Allender

Life is our resume. It is our story to tell, and the choices we make write the chapters. Can we live in a way where we look forward to looking back? Inevitably, we are all going to die. Our eulogy, our story, will be told by others, and forever introduce us when we are gone. The soul objective: begin with the end in mind.
– Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

To be a man, a boy must see a man.
– J. R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

What will they say about you when you're gone?

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We see the things we want to see, the things that confirm our assumptions and our preferred way of looking at the world.

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Christ from the very first moment of his existence virtually bears all men within himself....For the Word did not merely take a human body; he incorporated himself in our humanity, and incorporated our humanity in his humanity.
– G. K. Chesterton

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The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.
– C. S. Lewis

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Reading is the first thing, just reading the Bible. As we read we enter a new world of words and find ourselves in on a conversation in which God has the first and last words. We soon realize that we are included in the conversation.
The Bible is not only written about us but to us.
– Eugene Peterson, introduction to The Message

My old ideas were not adequate for the extremes of joy and grief I experienced. These [Bible] stories kept coming back, but they changed as if re-formed by the alchemy of time. They grew bigger and deeper, more fantastical and more astonishing. Wait, God asked Abraham to kill his own son?  I suppose this happens to most of us as we age; we get smaller, and our dependencies get bigger. We become less fascinating to ourselves, less inclined to think of ourselves as the author of all that we are, and at the same time, we realize how we have been the one shaped—by history, by family, by forces beyond awareness. And I think what came, in the most incremental, boring way possible, is that at some point I had the sensation that these stories are not fabricated tales happening to other, possibly fictional, people: they are the underlying shape of reality. They are renditions of the recurring patterns of life. They are scripts we repeat....These stories provide the horizon of meaning in which we live our lives—not just our individual lives, but our lives together....We are created and being created still.

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There are two ways of seeing. One is to look at a forest, and take in a landscape, and the colors, depth, dimensions, and nuances of all of it. But there is also the act of getting on your hands and knees and looking at one flower, and one petal.
– Walt Harrington, The Everlasting Stream

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Who will cry for the little boy, lost and all alone?
Who will cry for the little boy, the boy inside the man? 
– Antwone Fisher

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It was the Beauty I longed for, beyond the beauty that I longed for in her...
– Frederick Beuchner

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When I look at him there is a collection of awful memories. Memories I have spent most of my adult life trying to forget.
– The Kid 

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Live at Home.
Love at Home.
Thrive at Home.
Family First.
– Morgan Snyder

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Sometimes we have to leave what we know to find out what we know.
– Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey

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Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.
– Goethe

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Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage.
– Brené Brown

The Father is a wild one, undivided in his commitment to meet us where we are and father every uninitiated place in us. 

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My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours… It is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us more powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually.
– Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets

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A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not command his men's loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden, a king lifts first and sets down last. A king does not require service of those he leads but provides it to them. A king does not expand his substance to enslave men, but by his conduct and example makes them free.
– Xeones, Battle of Thermopylae, Gates of Fire

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Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.
– Ad placed by Sir Ernest Shackleton, 1915

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In 70-year-old men, the number one factor in shaping who they had become was the presence or lack of strong emotional bonds with a single consistent feminine caregiver.
– Robert Karen, Becoming Attached

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You speak often of my drinking, but little of my thirst.
– Scottish Proverb

For the Kingdom,
Morgan

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Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.
– N. T. Wright

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Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is men who have come alive.
– Howard Thurman

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I haven't made all A's in the art of living. But I give a damn. And I'll take an experienced C over an ignorant A any day.

– Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights 

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“I have not failed. I've just found 1000 ways that won't work.”
–Thomas Edison, inventor of electric light

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Thinking about something rather than trying not to think about something is much more successful. Walking toward rather than away from something allows us to get where we want to go.
– Bill Lokey

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To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

– C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“If you want to know how well you are doing as a parent, you can gently begin to ask that question when your kids turn 40. In the meantime, today, risk love.” They were generous words spoken to my soul by a wise guide years ago. Dan Allender is wise when he suggests that children really raise parents. Nothing in the world has the power to form us into loving parents like the steady act of parenting through the days and decades.

In How Children Raise Parents, Dan goes on to say, “We often realize that we learn as much from our children as they learn from us. So why don’t parents approach the task of child-rearing as a learning experience, rather than a mandate to make sure their kids succeed in life? To reduce the pressure and enjoy greater closeness in your family, turn your parenting upside-down by allowing God to use your children to help you grow up. Imagine what would happen if you began to prize what you’re being taught by your children’s quirks, failures, and normal childhood dilemmas, rather than worrying about whether you’re doing everything right as a parent.”

Friends, with a posture of joyfully embracing the “task of child-rearing as a learning experience,” we turn to part two of a conversation Cherie and I hosted with our mentor, counselor, and dear friend, Gary Unruh. His five decades of work with children and families have recovered some of the relational keys that can turn a catastrophe in relationship into a story that will bring us to tears with gratitude in decades to come.

In part one, we explored themes from Golden Rule Parenting. 

In this episode, we dive into LIFT for Children – Love Infusing Fear Therapy. It’s practical, accessible, and a brilliant onramp to recapture the hearts of children and deepen any other relationship entrusted to your care. To love is to be vulnerable. Having faithful, wise guides like Gary can help us keep risking in love.

Let’s dive in.

For the Kingdom,

Morgan

For Gary’s counseling services you can connect with him at GaryUnruhTherapy.com.

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He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another obscure village where he trained and worked as a carpenter until he was thirty. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never went to college. He never traveled more than two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things usually associated with greatness. He had no credentials but himself. He was only thirty-three. His friends abandoned him. He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery and humiliation of an unjust trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing, the only property he had on earth at his death. He was laid in a borrowed grave. All the armies that have ever marched, all the navies that have ever sailed, all the governments that have ever governed, and all the kings who have ever reigned have not affected the life of humankind on earth as powerfully as that one solitary life.
– Author Unknown

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“What grieves God most is not our sin but our refusing to believe that he is so kind, and that he desires to be with us so much more than we do with him.”
– Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ

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There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why he uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: he invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.
– C. S. Lewis

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Shall I abandon, O King of mysteries, the soft comforts of home?
Shall I turn my back on my native land, and turn my face towards the sea?
Shall I leave the prints of my knees on the sandy beach,
a record of my final prayer in my native land?
Shall I then suffer every kind of wound that the sea can inflict?
Shall I take my tiny boat across the wide sparkling ocean?
O King of the Glorious Heaven, shall I go of my own choice upon the sea?
O Christ, will you help me on the wild waves?

(excerpt from the Prayer of St. Brendan)

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“The intention of God is that we should each become the kind of person whom he can set free in his universe, empowered to do what we want to do. Just as we desire and intend this, so far as possible, for our children and others we love, so God desires and intends it for his children. But the character, the inner directedness of the self, must develop to the point where that is possible.”

–Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Recovering Our Hidden Life in God

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God, grant me character greater than my gifts
and humility greater than my influence.
–Scott Sauls

“God, if this is not your will, may it be rendered fruitless.”

Who  prays that kind of prayer? Very few indeed. Yet Zach Thomas does, and he has prayed this prayer again and again and again.

A husband, father of seven children, author of Leader Farming, and Kingdom entrepreneur through and through, Zach is a man who has consented to the path and process of becoming the kind of man to whom our Father can gladly entrust the care of his Kingdom.

It’s my joy and privilege to invite you into this soul-strengthening conversation with a fellow Kingdom apprentice.

Let’s dive in.

For the Kingdom,
Morgan

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"We must empty ourselves of that with which we are full so that we might fill ourselves with that of which we are empty."
–St. Augustine of Hippo, 425 A.D.

nothing to fear,
nothing to hide, and
nothing to prove?

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“There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.”
–Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

For the Kingdom,

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Authenticity is a collection of choices we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.
–Brené Brown

If you’ve hung around these parts for any length of time, you know that we hold dearly to our core principles, beginning with the dearest of the dear: the clarion call to “Own Your Awkward.”

I gotta tell you, though, in this particular episode with Morgan Snyder from Wild at Heart and Become Good Soil, that little value of ours was put to the test, and I was tempted to edit the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks out of it.

Don’t get me wrong. It was a great conversation, not just about Morgan’s new book, Becoming a King, but about, oh, a lot of things. The “new normal.” God as “genderful.” Acknowledging wounds and healing hurts. 

There is deep insight, let me tell you. In fact, so much so, that at one point in the conversation it took a turn toward the vulnerable, and I had to make a choice as to whether I’d keep that part to myself or share it with you all. 

In the end, I decided not to edit it out, ‘cause, well, sometimes a little vulnerability makes for a much more interesting conversation. 

For the Kingdom,

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It is profound how different our experiences can be inside our own skin. When it comes to sensations in the body, we are not on a level playing field. To love and be loved, to know and be known, it’s so important that we practice story-informed relating with ourselves and each other. Jesus is the most brilliant story-informed and trauma-sensitive teacher and friend who has ever lived.
– Cherie Snyder

Many of us—or those whom we love—have contended with the agonizing sensations of acute anxiety. In attempts to regulate these sensations, we often reach for substances, co-dependent relationships, or control over external circumstances to mitigate the pain and upheaval we feel on the inside. Sometimes the efforts we make to soothe our bodies end up causing harm to ourselves or to those we love.

Friends, if acute anxiety has been a part of your story or the story of someone you love, there is reliable hope for encounter, comfort, and transformation. I can speak to this hope on a very personal level: over the past 18 months, God has been tending to the root of the anxiety in me and offering new freedom, restoration, and internal peace beyond what I ever dreamed was possible.

My bride, Cherie, has her own story of acute anxiety. Out of her own story and path toward wholeness, she has consented to the slow and steady process of becoming a trauma-informed educator. She works regularly with fellow travelers to help listen for the sacred information that the body might be conveying and experience loving and compassionate transformation.

Join her in this podcast as she shares a hopeful framework and practical steps to help us listen to our bodies, learn our stories, encounter God, and move compassionately from anxiety through transformation and toward greater peace.

For the Kingdom,

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Many people die with their music still in them. Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.
–Oliver Wendell Holmes

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“Make margin in your life, or life will make margin for you.”

–Chuck, from a federal prison cell

No one stops to think.

These five words, spoken over two thousand years ago,1 have the potential to change your life more than any others. 

These five words are the headwaters from which a single idea is found, an idea that might be the universal narrow gate through which all like-hearted apprentices of the Kingdom of God must travel if we are to recover the Gospel in our age.

Having nothing to do with COVID-19 or a pandemic, we find ourselves in an unprecedented time in the history of humanity in a wholly other respect.

Thankfully, every unprecedented challenge comes with its own unprecedented possibility and particular provision, for such a time as this.

Join me as we risk going after the deeper things of God and his Kingdom together.

Below, you’ll find resources referenced in the podcast that will help you dive deeper.

There is a revolution being seeded around the globe. It’s a revolution of the human heart. It’s taking hold. This is our hour.

Let’s go.

For the Kingdom,

Linear vs. Exponential Growth Curve

Human Function Curve

1Isaiah 44:19a NIV

Reflections Questions: 

1. Observe the current condition of the space that exists in your life between your load and your limits. What does this reveal, through your actions, about what you believe about margin? 

2. Notice what has happened to your attention and your affection...

     over the last year

     over the last five years

     over the last decade

3. What if this life we find ourselves in is not normal? Notice your capacity for adaptation. How has it been a blessing? How has it been a hindrance?

Margin by Richard Swenson

The Overload Syndrome by Richard Swenson

Hurtling Toward Oblivion by Richard Swenson

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The great problem of the earth and the great aim of the masculine journey boil down to this: when can you trust a man with power?
– John Eldredge

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No life of faith can be lived privately. There must be overflow into the lives of others.
–Eugene Peterson

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The owner of the company maintained his poker face; it was not simply for the card game. This was the face he now donned for every public moment in these dark days. He was in trouble, and under no circumstances would he let it show. The investments he had made in the good times were now worthless. Ever since the waves of panic and the dread of complete collapse had gripped the region, commerce had careened to a violent stop; his tenants had no means of making money, much less paying him. Who knew when the next dollar would come? The economy was like concrete—it had moved well when it was wet, but now the scorching heat of oversupply, panic, and free-fall had dried it up overnight. Later, people would swear they had seen the terror behind his eyes. But in those first dreadful days, they had refused to admit it even to themselves.

This story isn’t from 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a glimpse of the grim inner reality of a landlord and investor in 1931, a paraphrase from a story told by Timothy Egan in his brilliant and award-winning book The Worst Hard Time.

In the early 1930s, a terrible collision of deadly drought, global economic instability, and the dire environmental consequences of man’s misuse of power gave rise to a cataclysm of dust storms that devastated the southern high plains of the U.S. Nothing like it had been seen before; and to this day, the total ruination of the ecosystem of the Great Plains is often credited as the worst environmental disaster of human history.

Not surprisingly, few lived to tell the story, or if they did, it was a story too painful or shameful to recount.

I can’t help but connect the stories in The Worst Hard Time with elements of our current global challenge. No one knows the outcome of these times in which we find ourselves. There is no crystal ball; there are no material guarantees. Yet by Grace there is a brilliant, kind Teacher who wants to guide us through all of it into Life. And there is a map of human history that can educate our souls to survive, to endure, and to make the way for future generations to thrive as a result of abiding wisdom applied in the midst of an unprecedented crisis.

Which brings me to a question: In times of crisis, when life shifts in some distinct ways from normal to survival, who lives, who dies, and why? Laurence Gonzales wrote a compelling, research-based narrative exploring the mystery behind this question in his fascinating book Deep Survival.

In the hope of offering some soul-strengthening counsel from shapers among us as well as shapers of old, my aim in this podcast is to pause and consider some very practical aspects of “surviving survival” that we could lean into today in order to become even more the kind of men who can receive life and bring life, in partnership with God, for such a time as this.

Specifically, I highlight 10 ideas that can help us first receive love and then lead in love, even in this uncertain hour.

Friends, let us stand together, holding onto the hope that Paul expressed to the community of God’s people in Galatia: the hope that we who have chosen to receive the gift of God’s generously available life are given the resources we need for union with God and to express our faith in love. Not in our own strength, but in union with the Trinity today. Paul assured us that we do have direct access to remarkable qualities of God’s own life and experience:

Joy that overflows,

Peace that subdues,

Patience that endures,

Kindness in action,

a life full of virtue,

Faith that prevails,

Gentleness of heart, and

Strength of spirit.

(Galatians 5:22-23, The Passion Translation)

And in the midst of these unique times, may we both receive and offer this kind of faith-filled life into our spheres of influence. May the fruit of our union with God be so nourishing and strengthening to those around us that the world will know that God is with us and we will not be shaken.

As One,

Morgan

P.S. As shared in the podcast: Want to join Cherie and me for 30 minutes of refreshment and soul centering? It'd be a great gift to your spouse or nourishment for you or even a mid-day date! All you'll need is a quiet space where you can center in God and move your body in a comfortable space. Grab an exercise mat if you have one.

Join us April 9th at 11:55am MT:

https://zoom.us/j/425375870

Meeting ID: 425 375 870

If you're new to Zoom, you can find helpful instructions HERE.

In the podcast I reference the following books that I’ve found incredibly helpful:

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, by Laurence Gonzales

Life Without Lack, by Dallas Willard

The Worst Hard Time, by Tim Egan

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Standing up and owning our reverberating pulses of passion rarely comes down to a singular event or momentary intersection with destiny. There is a daily-ness to our noble and sensible resignations. We dutifully go about our lives for years, decades even, and suddenly we look up to find ourselves with parts or whole swatches of our lives unlived.

–Aaron McHugh

What if the current challenges you're facing could lead to an inner transformation that facilitates, over time, a flourishing finish to your story? Paul prayed this daring prayer for his like-hearted allies in a place called Philippi (Phil. 1:6). I too pray this regularly for the hearts of family and friends entrusted to my care. But sometimes in my own struggle, it is strengthening to see it being lived out by other climbing companions.

Become Good Soil is about setting as paramount not what we do, but who we are becoming. The hope is that together we will be strengthened and guided more deeply into becoming the kind of men to whom God can gladly entrust to the care of his Kingdom.

It takes the like-hearted to get there.

Over the years, I’ve made it a priority to invest in friendships with men who are also risking it all on God and his Kingdom. In some upcoming podcasts, I hope to pull the curtain back on other men's lives so you can draw courage and strength from the fruit of their commitment to the slow and steady process of deep inner transformation.

Aaron McHugh has been side by side with me in this since the beginning. He attended the first Become Good Soil Intensive (which was a dozen guys in camp chairs and sleeping bags at Bart’s ranch) and has helped provide leadership for every U.S. Intensive over the past decade. I’ve participated in and had the privilege of witnessing hundreds of Aaron's largely unseen choices where he gave a risky yes to God, allowing his apprenticeship in the Kingdom to be the primary driving force of his days and his last two decades. For years he’s been putting pen to paper the story of what it has looked like to live out this process in a corporate context. Part of Aaron’s mission as Kingdom ambassador has been to offer a framework for discovering the work you love without quitting your job. He tackles fear and self-preservation head on while mapping out philosophical, emotional, tactical, and heart-centered shifts that can help recover the narrow road in the context of work.

Aaron's new book, Fire Your Boss: Discover Work You Love Without Quitting Your Job, launches January 14, and it’s with joy that I recommend it to you. Woven through its pages is living, breathing evidence of the slow and steady that leads to the life we were meant for, from the inside out.

Two years ago I sat down to interview Aaron to celebrate a milestone in the stewardship of his podcast and to take a hidden look behind the scenes as he was steadily shaping what would become his new book. In the spirit of featuring soul-strengthening stories of the like-hearted, I wanted to bring some of that conversation to your heart in this episode.

For the Kingdom,

Morgan

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Much of our effort to do things for the Lord is really the resurgence of our desire to dominate and make things happen in our own strength.

– Dallas Willard, Life Without Lack

We celebrated the 50th Become Good Soil podcast by asking you like-hearted listeners around the globe to send in the questions coming up as you travel the narrow road. 

The response was far more than we anticipated, and so deeply encouraging. And included far too many to address in one podcast! 

The depth and breadth of the questions set the stage for Q & R to become a regular part of the mix for the Become Good Soil tribe.

In that vein, this podcast is a Volume 2 of responses to the original questions that listeners offered, including these:

When it comes to risks, which ones should I be taking?

I long for life-giving mentorship. How I do I find mentors?

When is it too late to begin the process of excavation for the soul?

I’ve done the slow and steady work of putting to death the false self. Yet I find myself in the deepest places of doing what I don’t want to do and not doing what I want to do. How do you put to death the final parts of the false man within?

Do you have questions you’d love to see considered in a future Become Good Soil podcast? Type your question on this form or leave a voice recording.

For the Kingdom,

Morgan

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Start by doing what's necessary;
then do what's possible;
and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
– St. Francis of Assisi

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Prison was so holy, because there was such a dependence on God. I had the gift of desperation. I couldn't fix anything. I couldn't do it. I had to lean into the Father.
-Chuck Bolton

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I've spent 15 months in federal prison, but I can say the loneliest, darkest prison I've ever been in was my addiction. It was because I was alone and because I was living in secrets.
-Chuck Bolton

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“Love and relationship are the bottom line of the Kingdom of God. And they must be ours if we are to establish a Kingdom culture in our homes.”

-Danny Silk,  Loving Our Kids on Purpose: Making a Heart-to-Heart Connection

“Son, God has made you strong for a reason. I love your strength. I see your strength. But do you think God made you strong to hurt or to help your brother?”

Brooks intimately scrutinizes key historical figures whose lives exuded a particularly generative power, illustrating how each of these uniquely transformative men and women consciously devoted themselves to an ongoing process of personal reformation. Through his study,  Brooks distills this universal theme: “You have to give to receive. You have to surrender to something outside of yourself to gain strength within yourself. You have to conquer your desire to get what you crave. Success leads to the greatest failure, which is pride. Failure leads to the greatest success, which is humility and learning. In order to fulfill yourself, you have to forget yourself. In order to find yourself, you have to lose yourself.”

How rare it is to sit with a man who has traveled this crooked timber way, a man who reckons honestly with our God-given capacity to participate with God’s life and offer genuine strength for the sake his Kingdom, and also continually confronts the bent places within. How much rarer it is to lean into a man who has not only been initiated himself, but has also invested much of his strength to initiate five sons over the course of more than two decades. (This video is an example, a glimpse into one of the many initiation stories of Paul's son Aaron.) Simply put, we are initiated as we initiate others.

Paul Ryan is this kind of man.

As part of the living legend series, I had the privilege to host an initiation conversation with Paul, a Become Good Soil mentor who serves as Director for Ellel Ministries in Australia, and more importantly is husband of Joanne and father to five sons and a radiant daughter.

Join us as we dive deep, excavating another layer of masculine initiation.

For the Kingdom,
Morgan

Note: In our conversation we reference Healing the Masculine Soul by Gordon Dalbey.

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It is not what a man does that is of final importance, but what he is in what he does. The atmosphere produced by a man, much more than his activities, has the lasting influence.
–Oswald Chambers

Dear Sirs,

I am.  

Sincerely yours,

G. K. Chesterton

What’s right with the world?

I am.

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For a human character to reveal truly exceptional qualities, one must have the good fortune to be able to observe its performance over many years. If this performance is devoid of all egoism, if its guiding motive is unparalleled generosity, if it is absolutely certain there is no thought of recompense and that, in addition, it has left its visible mark upon the earth, then there can be no mistake.
– Jean Giono, The Man Who Planted Trees

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The world has yet to see what God will do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully consecrated to him.
– Henry Varley

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How are you arranging your days?

Dallas suggest that there is a possibility and a promise that, in time and over time, we can indeed arrange our days so that we are "experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in our everyday life with God."

Friends, it is available. By day and by decade.

Join me as we once again dive behind the scenes for a portion of another session from the most recent Become Good Soil Intensive.

In this episode I refer to two images:

Through October 12, we are accepting applications for the next Become Good Soil Intensive. Find out more.

For the Kingdom,

Morgan

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I break the limits I have made with
who God can be,
what God can do,
and how God can do it in my life.

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What was it about Jesus that allowed him to become quite possibly the most relaxed and lovingly unpredictable person who ever lived?

Join me as we explore part two of an eight-part series in which we're going behind the scenes into the most recent Become Good Soil Intensive.

If you haven't listened to episode one, start there.

You can find the Part One, Part Two and images I refer to in Getting Naked—and much more—here.

Through October 12, we are accepting applications for the next Become Good Soil Intensive. Find out more.

For the Kingdom,

Morgan