Presence Project

Brothers,

Thank you to every man who showed up for our Men’s Breakfast Club.

There was real strength in the room as we spoke about our fathers, what we received from them, what we are still learning to understand, and what we hope our sons and daughters will one day learn from us.

As Father’s Day approaches this Sunday, our conversation felt especially meaningful. It gave us a chance to honor the men who came before us, to name the gifts and the wounds we carry, and to reflect on the kind of legacy we are shaping now. Fatherhood is not only biological. It is spiritual, emotional, relational, and lived. It is the way we show up, the way we bless, the way we repair, and the way we model what it means to become whole.

So much of fatherhood is not taught through speeches. It is taught through how we live our lives: how we respond when things break, how we treat people when no one is watching, how we carry disappointment, how we begin again.

Rudyard Kipling’s If— gave language to some of what we were circling around:

“If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools…”

That image feels close to the work of being a man, a father, and a human being. Things break. Plans fail. We fall short. The people before us fell short too. But the invitation remains: to stoop down, pick up the worn-out tools, and keep building with humility and love.

Kipling also writes:

“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’”

Many of us know something about that kind of holding on. We carry families, businesses, grief, hopes, regrets, and responsibilities. And yet, when we gather honestly as brothers, the load becomes less lonely.

Thank you for your presence, your stories, your listening, and your courage. These mornings matter because men need places where we can speak truthfully, remember what we stand for, and become more conscious of what we are passing on.

This Father’s Day, may we each take a moment to honor what was given, grieve what was missing, forgive where we are able, and recommit ourselves to becoming men whose presence brings steadiness, safety, courage, and love into the lives around us.

May our sons and daughters learn from us not only strength, but tenderness. Not only discipline, but repair. Not only ambition, but presence.

We invite you to join us at the next Men’s Breakfast Club, and to bring a brother with you. There is room at the table.

With gratitude,

The Presence Project

I can't make you love me if
you don't. You can't make your heart feel something it won't

So goes Bonnie Rae's country song...

What If the Song Wasn’t About Someone Else?

So many love songs are built around longing.

I miss you.
Come back to me.
I can’t live without you.
You complete me.

We’ve heard them thousands of times.

But next time you’re listening to one, try a different lens.

What if the singer isn’t talking to another person at all?

What if the song is one part of you singing to another?

The masculine calling out to the feminine.

The feminine calling out to the masculine.

The mind longing for the heart.

Strength longing for tenderness.

Direction longing for flow.

Suddenly, the song changes.

“I need you” becomes the part of you that has been disconnected from its own wisdom.

“I miss you” becomes the soul calling you back home.

“Come closer” becomes an invitation to wholeness.

The longing is no longer about finding someone who completes you.

It’s about remembering the parts of yourself you’ve forgotten.

Many of us spend our lives searching for reunion in the world while an even deeper reunion is available within.

So next time a love song comes on, experiment.

Listen as if you’re singing to yourself.

You might discover that one of your greatest romances isn’t between you and another person.

It’s between the different parts of your own being learning to dance together again.

I recently finished David Deida's The Man of Zero. Having spent a few weeks with David this fall and hearing some of the story behind the book, I found myself reflecting on how it relates to his earlier classic, The Way of the Superior Man.

Many readers will see these books as describing different stages of a man's journey. I see them more as two movements within the same dance.

In The Way of the Superior Man, Deida calls us forward. Toward purpose. Toward truth. Toward service. Toward the courage to stop hiding and give our gifts fully to the world. It is a book that asks us to become more.

The Man of Zero asks something equally challenging.

Can you let go of even that?

Can you release the need to become someone?

The book reads almost like Marcus Aurelius' Meditations: not as a system to adopt, but as a series of reflections pointing back to what is already here. Again and again, Deida returns to the same inquiry from different angles. Who are you without the stories you carry? Without the roles you perform? Without the endless effort to secure an identity? The tone is contemplative, direct, and at times freaking unsettling in its simplicity and it's potential impact.

Can you stop tying your worth to your purpose, your success, your impact, your relationships, your spirituality, or even your personal growth?

For many men, our second life begins with a search for direction. We are awakened by challenge, love, responsibility, beauty, or a calling that pulls us beyond ourselves. We learn discipline. We build. We serve. We strive.

And then, sometimes, after we havecwalked a long long way another invitation appears.

It is not an invitation to stop serving, loving, or creating.

It is an invitation to discover what remains when there is nothing left to prove.

The man of purpose and the man of zero are not opposites. They are two expressions of a mature masculine. One penetrates life with intention. The other rests as life itself. Most of us move between these states again and again.

It is worth noting that while Deida writes primarily to men, he is really speaking to the masculine polarity wherever it appears. These teachings are not confined to biology or gender. They point toward a way of relating to life that can be embodied by anyone called toward direction, purpose, presence, and ultimately surrender.

Perhaps the deepest teaching is not to choose one over the other.

There is a time to sharpen the sword.

And there is a time to put it down.

A time to become.

And a time to simply be.

The invitation of both books is the same: to live so fully and honestly that nothing stands between you and reality.

Not your fear.

Not your ambition.

Not even your identity.

What if the next evolution of masculinity is not becoming a better man?

What if it is becoming free?

Held and Reconnected

This weekend, something beautiful happened at Sanctuary Farm.

Facilitators, healers, space holders, movement guides, therapists, coaches, artists, community builders, and deeply human people gathered together not to pour out, but to be poured into.

Held & Reconnected was created as an offering for those who spend so much of their lives tending others. Our intention was simple:
to create a space to exhale, soften, reconnect, move, rest, reflect, release, and return to themselves through community, reciprocity, and inner journey.

Over the course of the weekend we shared movement, meditation, gardens, meals, silence, nature walks, deep conversations, sauna, ritual, music, tears, laughter, and meaningful connection. We watched strangers become a temporary village. We watched people arrive more fully into themselves.

To every person who came:
thank you for your openness,
your courage,
your tenderness,
your presence,
and the work you do in the world.

Thank you for trusting us.
Thank you for helping create the atmosphere that made this gathering feel grounded, nourishing, restorative, and real.

We are also deeply grateful to everyone who helped hold the retreat behind the scenes, prepared meals, tended spaces, supported logistics, and cared for the land and the people on it. This weekend was truly built through reciprocity and shared presence.

We took many beautiful photos and will be sharing more memories from the weekend soon.

This was never about creating a perfect retreat.
It was about creating the conditions where people could feel held long enough to reconnect with themselves and one another.

And it feels like this is only the beginning.

With gratitude,

The Presence Project

In the valley of Vibble-Vain Vroom,
Where the Trizzle-trees trembled in bloom,
There bubbled bright streams with a silver-blue gleam,
That giggled and wriggled and zoomed.

The streams had names like Snibble and Sneet,
And one little brook called Baboodle-Beat.
They danced over stones
In musical tones,
With splash*ty-splooshes so merry and sweet.

Now deep in the hills near the Grumpity Mine,
Lived the Once-ler of Goo and of Glumpentine Twine.
He said, “Why let streams simply burble and beam
When I could bottle their sparkle for nine ninety-nine?”

So he built a huge factory clunking all day,
With Snozzlers and Fizzlers and pipes made of clay.
They slurped up the rivers,
The creeks and the quivers,
Till the streams lost their singing away.

And farther beyond where the cold mountains bent,
Great data centers rose up immense.
With CLICKETY-HUMS
And ELECTRO-DRUMS,
They drank streams for machine nourishment.

They swallowed cold rivers by day and by night
To cool all the blinking blue boxes of light.
While trout in the reeds
Asked softly with grief,
“Why must thinking machines always thirst with such might?”

The fish gave a flop.
The frogs gave a sigh.
The dragonflies drooped as the mud puddles dried.
And the children once splashing
Went sadly home dashing
Beneath a gray smudgified sky.

Then up from the reeds came a fellow named Gleam,
With boots made of moss and a whispery theme.
He spoke for the streams,
For the bubbles and beams,
For the places too gentle to scream.

“You cannot drink money,” said old Mister Gleam.
“You cannot replace a moonlit stream.
A river’s a song,
And if it is gone,
You and the earth forgets how to dream.”

“And people forget,” said Gleam with a sigh,
“That water lives not just in lakes or the sky.
It flows through your veins,
Through your joys and your pains,
Through the tears that you blink from your eyes.”

“You’re mostly made water from forehead to toe.
A walking wet river wherever you go.
Yet people stomp fast
As though none of this lasts,
As though streams are just someplace else that we throw trash.”

“Yes deep in the rivers now drift strange debris,
Invisible trouble called PFAS, you see.
They linger and stay
For years and for days,
Like ghost-glue that clings endlessly.”

“When rivers are poisoned with stress, fear, and speed,
Your body remembers each hurried deed.
For water holds traces
Of all times and places,
More deeply perhaps than we humans yet read.”

“Water remembers,” said Gleam to the crowd.
Not loudly exactly, but somehow aloud.
“It carries the sound
Of what swirls around,
Whether tenderness soft or machines roaring proud.”

“But people keep filling the waterways strange
With fluoride and foams and laboratory change.
And who really knows
All the things that now flow
Through the pipes and the clouds and the rain?”

Just like that time with the trees the Once-ler looked out at the dusty brown land,
At the crumbling banks and the dry pebbled sand.
And his heart gave a thunk
Like a dropped hunk of junk,
As regret fluttered in like a stranded small swan.

But one day, today?, the people stood up,,,, said no more
And when that really happens before it nothing can stand
What the told us are lies of dystopian horror
The call rang from the rooftops and all the land

The factories, they stopped.
The machines gave a wheeze.
For once the hills heard the hush of the soft evening breeze.
And the people together
Through all kinds of weather
Replanted the stream-loving trees.

The old and the young,
The loud and the shy,
All stood by the rivers beneath open sky.
And for one shining day
They all could agree
That clean water matters
For you and for me.

So they danced in the moonlight
With fiddles and flutes,
With Splasher-McSnorkels
And Gumbleberry boots.
And the streams sang along
Their babblified song
As the whole valley wiggled its roots.

Now Snibble and Sneet splash happy once more,
Baboodle-Beat sings by the shore.
And children all know
As the bright waters flow:

A stream is not just water.
It is memory.
Body.
Breath.
And the earth keeping score

Inspired by Dr Suess... thank you for your magic...

Today we celebrated the inaugural Women’s Presence Project Breakfast Club, held alongside our Men’s Breakfast Club on the Third Thursday morning.

One of the things I love most about these gatherings is that you never know who will show up, what conversations will unfold, or what kind of connection may emerge around the table.

Thank you to the women who came to help begin this. Your presence, honesty, and willingness to gather are what make it meaningful.

If you’ve been looking for authentic community and grounded conversation, we’d love to have you join us.

Third Thursday mornings.
Men’s and Women’s Breakfast Clubs held in parallel.

“Come back to yourself”

Not the version that’s performing.

The one underneath the noise.

That version doesn’t need fixing.

It just needs space to be heard again.

“Presence is a practice”

It’s not something you master once and move on from.

It’s something you return to, over and over again.

In small moments.

In quiet pauses.

That’s where it builds.