The father wound

As young men we look to our father for guidance, encouragement and even acceptance.  What happens in our life if we don’t get those things from our father?  Do we become the scum of the earth?  Because our father failed to give us what our little boy soul needed we now travel from town to town, living on the street and hardly eating.  Not the case but there are those times when we were growing up and we remember being wounded.

Is there a specific time in your life you can remember needed affirmation and it didn’t come?  Are your parents divorced?  Did your father give you the silent treatment?  Maybe you never did anything bad but he didn’t express his pride and love for the good you did do.

Now what?  You have spent the time getting to know yourself and that you do have some areas of your life with a wound.  Will being a Christian Catholic solve all your problems?

If you haven’t thought about and talked about the wounds in your life you may be hiding them, “posing”.  It could be working all the time or it might be sinking into the couch every night to avoid dealing with other people.

We have all heard the conversations where a man says he is not going to be a parent like his father was.  He is better than that and will help his children more than his father did.

What situations in your life do you not let anyone into?  Is it work, home, a sports team?  Where do you feel the most emotion, positive or negative?  My guess that there is where the father wound lies.

May–No More Porn Tour

Thanks to everyone who came out and stood to the evil of pornography today.  The weather was great but got a bit windy at times.

While protesting today 3 people made the effort to stop and talk with us about the No More Porn Tour and thank us for our efforts to shut down First Amendment.   One man has lived in the area for more than 20 years. 

We also prayed for the shops owner, employees, patrons and people who suffer with pornography addictions.

Thanks again to everyone for coming out and we hope to see you next month for an even more successful NMPT.

Tomorrow's Material

Tomorrow we will be talking about the father wound and its affects.  Read up and leave a comment if you have read this.

No More Porn Tour - May Stop

Come and join us for any amount of time this month at the May No More Porn Tour in Colorado Springs.

May 1st - Are you emasculated?

The 2 topics for this week are mothers and sons and from strength to strength.

Last week we talked about the wound that is created in our life through the relationships that form us.  This could have been from our father, the lack of a father or other men in our lives. 

Are we letting those people have to much control over who we are today?  Where is the accountability?  Are we not responsible for out decisions?

This week we will be covering the relationships that we have with our mothers.   I don't know that I have heard a mother call her son "my little boyfriend" but that relationship is important in the formation of a man.  As Eldridge says there is a time when the boys interests change from cuddling with mom to playing catch with dad.  The problem arises when the mother tries to continue to hold onto that child because her husband has filled his life with the things of a poser.  Interesting how men carry out the actions they learned as children and while developing and those actions are stifling their children.

In reality there are just some things that a woman just cannot do for a man.

When are some times when your father gave you some of his wisdom?  Did you go on a hunting trip?, camping?, out fishing?  What and when were the times that wisdom were imparted?

This passage of wisdom and letting go from the mother is so important.  How many marriages do we see these days where the man can't/will not be a man that the wife needs because he is too scared to be himself and truly does not have the tools to step it up?  If men would be men I believe that we would have a much lower divorce rate.  If men would be men and move past their fear and inadequacy (no one is perfect) then children woudl grow up in loving homes instead of broken ones.

Wild At Heart - Reading Outline

 Updated 4/27/11

Chapter 3 - The Question That Haunts Every Man
Week of April 10th - The Lion of Judah???, Our Fear, What is Man For?
Week of April 17th - Posers, Strength Gone Bad,


Chapter 4 - The Wound
Week of April 24th - A Man's Deepest Question, Where Does Masculinity Come From?

Week of May 1st - Mothers and Sons, From Strength to Strength

Week of May 7th - The Father - Wound, The Wounds Effect (Rounding out chapter 4)

Week of May 14th - Hike? 

Week of May 21st - (Start chapter 5) Introduction, Finishing Him Off, What's really going on here anyway?

The rest is to follow
Chapter 5 - The Battle for a Man's Heart
Chapter 6 - The Father's Voice
Chapter 7 - Healing the Wound
Chapter 8 - A Battle to Fight: The Enemy
Chapter 9 - A Battle to Fight: The Strategy
Chapter 10 - A Beauty to Rescue
Chapter 11 - An Adventure to Live
Chapter 12 - Writing the Next Chapter

April 25th - Weeks Material

I hope that you all had a great Easter and feel refreshed and ready for the summer.

This next week we will be covering 2 sections at the beginning of chapter 4.  The intent of a reading schedule is so that when we get to study we will all be on the same page and we have hopefully all put in a little thought about the topics that week.  Without further delay here is the material for this week.

A Man's Deepest Question

Mr. Eldridge talks in this section about encouraging his sons through a difficult rock climb.  When one of his sons gets stuck and is having a hard time there is "shop talk".  Encouragement.  And it works.

 What has been that time in your life that you have failed but refused to back down?  Has there always been someone there to encourage you with shop talk?

What happens to a man if there is no one there to give that encouragement?  Does he succeed?  Is there pouting?  What about procrastinating when times get tough?  Any of those sound familiar?

Is there a need for that shop talk or can we as men make our way through the world today without others around us giving that helping hand?


Where does masculinity come from?

 This is a tough section for me because John seems to say that the wound is always received from one's father as a result of the father not encouraging the son in the right way at the right time.

Do you think that is true that we get our identity from our fathers?  Do they give us our strength?  What if they are not perfect?  Aren't they for sure going to let us down just like we will let someone else in  our life down?

We are now celebrating the Easter season so take some time to yourself and think about these questions.  If all of this is true then how do we move past that wound?  Do you want to move past the wound?

Week of April 18th

We continue this week in Wild at Heart by reading and discussing 2 sections to round out chapter 3.
Last week we talked about what is man made for?  What are you meant for?  You are meant for greatness and we all have different ways to get to greatness and greatness looks different for everyone.


Posers
Have you ever met that person who is trying just a little too hard to be everyone’s friend?  That man who is excellent at his job and has all the ability in the world to complete his daily tasks but is still not happy?  It seems both people realize that there is something more for them but can’t quite find it and so are “looking for love in all the wrong places”.

How can we verbalize this struggle to find what makes us come alive?  First of all I think that we need to start talking.  It is macho to be THE man and THE man doesn’t talk about deeper issues.  That would not be manly. 

Men should be able to express themselves without being weepy all that time and without uncontrollable anger.
We see posing in our church every week.  Men think what if everyone really knew what I have done?  They would never accept me or let me be around anymore.  That is a fear of acceptance.

Are you that man that can talk about more than the score of the game last night?


Strength Gone Bad
Men tend to be goal driven and task oriented.  They want to have an objective and get it done.  Thank God we are made this way.  We need to understand why we are made this way.

Adam falls and with that we are all stuck with concupiscence.  How’s that for a $10 word? 

The Catechism defines it as human appetites or desires which remain distorted due to the temporal consequences of original sin, which remain even after Baptism, and which produce an inclination to sin.

What are your strengths?  Great writer? Amazing musician?  Mountain Biker? Theologian? Mechanic? Thinker?

How has your ability to focus on one task and get it done with precision combined with the fall of man kept you from achieving greatness?

I have noticed in my own life when things get hard I tend to concentrate on stock piling money to pay off some debt but because I am not perfect I want so badly to blow it on technology.  A new computer, updated software, new video games, cell phone accessories, etc…

My ability to focus on budgeting money is a great strength but because I am not even close to perfect I want so badly to spend it on things that I don’t need.

How can we move beyond being posers in our own lives? 


Do you have a strength that is masking something deeper?  Is that strength protecting you from really seeing the man that God designed you to be?

No More Porn Tour - Success

Today's stop of the No More Porn Tour was a success.  The weather was great all day and there were multiple people who stopped and talked to us about the work The King's Men is doing.

One person who stopped said that he had seen TKM in front of First Amendment a couple times over the last couple months.  He was from Cincinnati where he said these types of protests were seen quite often.

We are looking forward to the next stop next month.  May 21st from 1 to 4 pm.

See you all there.

No More Porn Tour

Today will be our next stop on the No More Porn Tour.  Come out and help us raise awareness that there are men and women that will not sit silently in the corner while this evil is in our community.

We will be at First Amendment from 1pm to 4pm.

Week of April 10th

The Lion of Judah???
Have you ever felt trapped?  It seems that there are about a billion books out there that talk about getting out of the job or career that you are "stuck" in and getting that dream job.

Why is that?

This culture has a deep urge to be something great but seldom wants to put in the blood, sweat and tears to get to where they want to go.  Most of the time they don't even start!  Something is better than perfect.

Eldredge quotes Thoreau in saying that we as men are "leading lives of quiet desperation".

I don't know about you but I have been known to have moments of self pity and feeling bad for myself.  When I look back at those times it wasn't my pouting that moved me through that time, it was doing something.  Anything.

Our Fear
I hear many people say that the times today are so hard.  What if they step out of their comfort zone and try something new and it fails?

SO WHAT?  Who cares?  Seriously?  Who has the time to sit around and point out failures?  Are those the people that you care about?

It has been said that the people with the most success are standing on all of their failures.

How does fear make you feel?  Anxious, sleepless, short tempered, tired, slow to act?

Wouldn't you rather be a strong, confident, wise, and thoughtful man?  Hint:  you don't get there by never doing

What is a Man For?
Eldredge starts this section talking about Adam and why God would create Adam.

"Desire reveals design, and design reveals destiny."

Sit with that a moment.  God's desire is revealed in how we were designed and our design reveals out destiny.

• What are you afraid of accomplishing?
• What is keeping you from being free?
• What is your purpose?

Discussion Every Week

Every week there will be an updated topic on Monday before the Wednesday meeting that will be up for discussion on the material.

Let me explain.  If the reading for the next week was about how apples fall from trees, you would read that material in the book before the next group meeting and on Monday before that meeting there would be a post relating to apples falling.  The intent is to start up a dialog before the meeting on Wednesday and to get men thinking so they don't have to be Johnny-on-the-spot with forming opinions.

Welcome

My intention for this blog is to have a location to catch up with the previous weeks study topics, find out the upcoming topics and have discussion about the weeks topic.

The best way to stay up to date with this information is to subscribe to the blog feed.  When you do this you will get the latest posts delivered to your email when they are posted.  This is great because you can read the post, read that weeks material and make some comments for the upcoming study.

How do I subscribe?
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Click on it and when a new post arrives on the site it will also end up in your email.
You can also subscribe to the comment replies if you wish so when someone posts a comment it is emailed to you.

If you have any questions shoot me an email.
springsnmpt@gmail.com

Pax Christi