Real Brotherhood
At Intentional Warriors we talk all the time about the needs every man has when he is tackling his addictive pattern with pornography and lust.
We talk about the need to Come Clean: to finally tell the truth — all of it — and stop posing. We must bring it into the light and speak out loud the reality of our private lives.
But that alone only gets the process started. True, it’s a practice — Coming Clean, that is — that needs to continue, and into which we must grow, but much more is required for our hearts to receive the healing they desperately need.
We must also have Real Brotherhood. Men become men in the company of other men. And if we are to heal and change, we must become real men. In order for that to happen, we need Real Brotherhood.
There is a deep place in the masculine soul that knows this. The vulnerability we feel about it, however, is unsettling to the point we remain silent about it. How can we even talk about something like this?
Blaine does a great job in his piece Comrades of drawing the picture for us and saying what many of us only feel as a groaning in our souls that is too deep for words. And while i am at it, And Sons Magazine is — unlike so-called men’s magazines — that place where each visit makes you a better man.
Here’s a gem from Blaine’s piece:
Look at it this way: James Bond is great at everything he does. He doesn’t need friends, and he doesn’t have any.
Friendships are not a talent show. They are the necessity of camaraderie in the face of demands because given this life we are living, we are not enough on our own. James Bond has no friends. Aragorn does.
Friendships are built upon mutual enjoyment but also on the sense that weareinthistogether—“this” being a task, a game, a battle, or the Great Story we’re all living in.
Real Brotherhood is critical to freedom from porn and lust because the longer you spend in that world, the less you know what a real friendship is — to say nothing of a real romantic relationship.
But there’s more, because it’s never just about getting free from pornography. It’s about grabbing hold of authentic life. The longer i take this journey the more i see that everything i did in the early stages of my recovery is the same stuff i keep doing on a macro level to taste the life that is truly good.
Real Brotherhood is what i need for the long haul. And so it is with all men.
Blaine knows this and articulates it so very well.
The life we long for; that rich experience of goodness and belonging and meaning, cannot be had alone.
Intentional Warriors 
One Response to “Real Brotherhood”
[…] Source: Intentional Warriors […]