From out 5th year anniversary celebration: Brad Golphenee, Steve Holt, Wayne Pignolet, Kyle Mercer, Owen Marcus, Michael Welp, David Barth, front row – David Mabelle

We just celebrated five years of meeting every week. The new evolution of Sandpoint Men’s Group, smg 2.0 is currently eight committed men who continue to not only change themselves, but also affect everyone around them. Change is contagious.

In part of our work as a men’s group I started a new blog – Grow the F Up – Men. The site is the seed for a book I am writing on how to grow up as a man. It can be simple.

a

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

When a man takes on a partner, then a family he gives up a part of himself for something bigger. He invites others into his space – an act of generosity and love. After a while, what he might feel as regret I propose is not regret, but our instinctual need for space.

We are the hunters of the hunter-gathers. Our ancestors roamed, we need to roam by ourselves and with other men. We need to go on our quests. Business travel was the assumed domain for much of this journeying. Even when it was just men on the road, it wasn’t enough.

The past couple of decades of Harley Davison’s growth express men’s need to be free. We spend thousands of dollars to put loud pieces of metal between our legs in some ways to escape the other pleasure we put between our legs. Before Harleys there were horses as the vehicle of escape.

If we don’t want to ride our bike out of town, then we want to walk to our space.  Here in North Idaho men have shops.  Men escape to their shops to build, repair and just hang. Yes, often we escape to escape expressing our emotions. Yet, there is a light side to needing to escape.

Sam Martin spoke on “manspaces” at last summer’s TED Global 2009 conference. His need for space spawned him to put on a tool belt for the first time to build a studio. Being a writer, he wrote a book on menspaces. In his research the found beautiful creations that were much more than crude spaces with pinups on the walls. He discovered men whose spaces were works of art.

We need space. Men need it differently than women. I can see it now… there will be a “menspace movement” to create our space.

Every Wednesday night for soon to be five years, men have gathered in my house to cultivate in ourselves the men we want to be and seed the development of other men’s groups to do the same. Until seeing Martin’s TED video, I didn’t think much of how our group is also an expression of our need for menspace.

Our need for space is in our DNA. If we don’t create it consciously, we will create unconsciously – that is often not pleasurable for others or ourselves. How do you get space? Whom do you share it with? What are you willing to do to get and keep it? Let us know.

a

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

“What has astonished and delighted me about my husband’s participation in the Men’s Group is not just HIS growth, but how that growth has affected the other men in our life–cousins, brothers-in-law, friends, co-workers. Something in him has shifted, and his men friends–even casual men friends–open up to him in amazing ways. At a family reunion, he sat and listened to a male cousin-in-law tell him about a painful betrayal he had suffered. The man’s wife said, ‘Oh honey, let’s not go into all that unpleasantness.’ But the man looked at her and said, ‘No, I need to talk about this.’ He must have just talked ‘at’ Eldon for 20 or 30 minutes. Eldon was mostly quiet, but when he did speak, it was supportive, understanding, and encouraging the man to speak more. When he was done talking, the man said, ‘Wow. I feel a lot better. My hat’s off to you, Eldon. Thank you for just listening.’ I was so proud of my husband.” Theresa Renner, wife of Eldon, member for 19 months

a

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

You run up to me with sad joy.
You have missed me. We have
missed each-other. Sometimes apart, sometimes
together we have missed each-other.

Why is it so hard for me to ease your anger?
How come I cannot find what it is in me that you need?

I was never guided into manhood,
just encouraged to stay in worship.
How can I see this in you and do nothing?
I feel helpless in the face
of my own past revealing itself.

At the times we don’t miss each other;
as we wrestle or share something that
links us. I own that sure knowledge of love
and reverence for this time and each-other.

At times it seems that this deep reverence only
emphasizes the space between us. How I wish
my spark was bright enough to transfer to you
the sure knowledge of your beauty.

How I wish that you could know, as I know that
you are a gift to us all, and to humbly let us
bask in the warmth of your skill and grace amplified
by our imaginations into the future.

My love is challenged by my own knowledge
of my inadequacy to provide for your soul,
and the bitter knowledge that one day you will
go on without me, perhaps angry and resentful
of my failings.

I will go forward with you, hoping to become
large enough to bridge the gaps between us
while allowing you to see my flaws, my humanity.

I will go forward hoping that
perhaps you will grow enough to love
me in a way that will forgive my ineptitude.

The joy of your creation came to me late and I fear
the full measure of it will not be enough. That you
will not know, as I did not, that you are my beautiful boy.

This poem was written by Kyle Mercer a Senior Teacher and Coach at The Garden Company, an organization dedicated to the awakening of human potential, and is a recently joined member of the Sandpoint Men’s Group. See his website at: www.thegardencompany.com. When he read his poem at a recent meeting, he had every man in the room in tears.

a

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.