Hero’s Journey® Foundation
Men’s Soul Tavern Retreat
Facilitated by Michael Mervosh, Joseph Jastrab & Josef Beraha
CRISIS-CHRYSALIS-EMERGENCE
FINDING RESILIENCE & AGENCY
IN AN UNRAVELING WORLD
January 8th-11th, 2026
“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake
is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land,
to experience each moment as completely new and fresh.
To live is to be willing to die over and over again. ”
― When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
Our ‘Soul Tavern’ provides us with the necessary space, atmosphere and conditions
to go beyond the usual confines of our lives.
It provides room for the ‘soul’ in us to surface, beyond
the usual ways we tend think, feel, speak and act.
We take up questions as ‘quests’, that take us to where we haven’t been before.
We practice listening deeply to our selves and others,
to be intimate witnesses to what is most real and to what matters.
We practice speaking about such matters in ways we don’t do anywhere else in our lives.
We come together as men who want connection, and need the necessary
emotional time and psychological space to reflect more deeply on the following:
- Facing the world as it is (and not just how we wish it to be).
- Facing ourselves as we are (and not how we wish we could be).
- Engaging with receptivity those who are different from us in every possible way.
- To search for the common ground of, and goodwill for, all people, across our differences.
4 DAYS
$1250-1750
All Inclusive
Deposit required
The Main Group Room At Lifebridge
The Labyrinth at Lifebridge
“People say that what we’re seeking is a meaning for life.
I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking.
I think that what we are seeking is an experience of being alive,
so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
– Joseph Campbell
The Quest(ions) To Be Explored
Those of us paying attention what is transpiring in the ‘socio-political surround’ in our worlds must come to terms with our experience of deep and profound disruption and dislocation.
We will be wrestling with deep and essential questions with no simple solutions and no easy answers.
As I face the world (and my life) as it is, where is the most hardened (and fixed) place in my heart?
What keeps me from surrendering my hard-hearted position towards life as it is?
What is my relation to people ‘other’ than me, who are ‘not me’ – do I carry any hard-heartedness towards these others?
What is my deepest experience of another’s tenderness towards me? How have I known this as a healing balm in my life?
What is it that I am unwilling or reluctant to mourn about my sense of loss or my sense of place in the world?
What will become of me if I acknowledge that something about my world, as I know it, has de-centered me? Or has dislocated me, or my loved ones?
Who am I now becoming? How can I be more receptive to new possibilities, beyond what I already know and have lived?
How can I be engaged and receptive to new and creative ways of perceiving the world as it is?
Be Awake| Become Aware| Get Engaged
Living Into The Quest(ion)
It is good to live in the question.
A pat answer is closed, it is finished; that’s it.
It goes nowhere
And leaves little room for hope.
A question, the mystery,
Opens the space for us.
It is full of possibility.
It gives hope and life
And ever more abundant life.
Our faith, solid as it might be,
Is full of questions.
And therefore full of life and hope.
– Basil Pennington
Be Present | Deepen | Enliven
Our new HOME at Lifebridge
All of us at HJF are thrilled to be continuing and refining the very best of what we know about deep inner work, and we are especially excited to be bringing this to our very own ‘Sanctuary’ space.
The Sanctuary’s main room provides us quiet, privacy and spectacular views in the mornings and afternoons.
It also offers a particularly intimate setting for the evenings, allowing for more ritualized experiences and personal sharing.
The Thing Is
by Ellen Bass
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.