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

Suffering is brutal. 

Suffering is lonely. 

And suffering is a sacred space of masculine initiation. 

As we mature, we are made ready to walk through suffering redemptively, allowing it to transform us rather than destroy us. In The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis wrote, “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

So often in masculine initiation, it is through this megaphone of pain that God rouses parts of us long dead and dormant. 

Aaron, John Scott, and Ryan have become the kind of men transformed by pain. In Part 2 of this conversation, we explore the brutally beautiful intersection of pain and possibility in masculine initiation. 

It hasn’t been easy. But it’s worth it. 

Join us for the second part of an intimate conversation between like-hearted men of the Become Good Soil fellowship. 

For the Kingdom,
Morgan