Growing our capacity for

 greater complexity, paradox & surrender
IN AN UNRAVELING WORLD

January 7th-10th, 2027

“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. ”
― Pema Chödrön 
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 significant life questions as ‘quests’, to take us to where we haven’t been before.

We practice listening deeply to our selves and others,
becoming intimate witnesses to what is most real and to what matters.

We practice speaking about such matters in ways we may not do anywhere else in our lives.

We come together as men who need real connection, making the necessary
emotional time and psychological space to reflect more deeply on the following:

1.  Facing the world as it is (and not just how we wish it to be).
2.  Facing ourselves as we are (and not how we wish we could be).
3. Engaging with receptivity those who are different from us in every possible way.
4. To search for the common ground of, and goodwill for, all people, across our differences.

 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?  How does this foreclose opportunities to deepen into my own human complexity?

In what way do I keep from surrendering my hard-held position towards life as it is?  What is the paradox I am unable to hold about life?

What is my relation to people ‘other’ than me, who are vastly different in their views, who are ‘not like me’ – how do I carry a ‘hard-heartedness’ towards these others?

What is the deepest experience I know of another’s tenderness towards me?  How have I experienced this as a healing balm in my life?  How do I lose sight of its effects?

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 becomes of me when I acknowledge something about my world, as I know it, that has de-centered me?  

Who am I becoming now, that it is now possible to embrace?  How can I be more receptive to new possibilities, beyond what I already know and have lived? 
What allows me to be engaged and receptive to new and creative ways of perceiving the world as it is?