This Journal feels like a new beginning of something old. Many years ago some of us now involved in MLA published a small paper called the Men’s Council Journal. It ran for several years and was a wonderful place for men to speak from their hearts.

I know this Journal is something different and will have its own unique style and focus but I trust that it will also be a place where men can speak from their hearts and souls. It will be a new place on the spiral.

As I begin to write this first article I notice that I feel some fear and trepidation getting started. I feel that old stereotyped masculine urge to get this right and looking good the first time out. I remember when I first began doing men’s work one of my biggest fears was of looking foolish or weak or stupid. It turns out that part of me still lives.

One thing I most love about the work we do together is that I can speak of my shadows. I begin here with this piece of personal shadow.

So what am I afraid of: Fear that I won’t be clear, fear that I might not be profound enough for the FIRST issue, fear that I won’t get to the important stuff, I won’t be able to pick up with the same juice I had years ago when I wrote for the Men’s Council Journal, fear that I will just get on my little soap box and get into my other fears about the state of our government or the health of the environment or our obsession with materialism These fears always have the critic behind them. My critic scares my writer self with all kinds “what ifs” and negatives.

Digging a little deeper, I can see how I want to protect an idealized image I have of myself. I might not live up to my own inflated expectations. The critic can get me for that too. “So now look who’s Mr. Cool and Important! Any guy who has done the amount of inner work that you have, should be over that by now.”

I noticed a paradox. What I like most about my writing when I feel I am at my best is that I let my vulnerability show and use myself as an example of what I am writing about. My fear and my strength come from the same source at the core of my being.

So here I am doing my inner work in public. Or to use my favorite metaphor, here I am digging around in my own compost pile. With all good composting, turning things over keeps life renewing. If I trust the process something really good will show up in the end even though it starts out looking like garbage.

Now that I have begun with a bit of inner work and stepped right into my paradox, I feel much more at peace and am ready to step into the next turn of the spiral. As that beautiful first nation prayer says. ”Starting within, working in a circle, in a sacred manner, we heal ourselves, our relationships, and our communities.”

So going to that next level I invite you all to join with me to honor the great circle of life that makes it possible for me to write and you to read this. The sun, the earth, the water, the air, the plants and animals, all the unseen realms, all those who have gone before us, all those who worked so hard to make it possible for us to have this opportunity to do our soul work, all our personal ancestors, and all the men who have taken the risk to do this work, all those who supported them, even honoring all those who caused us a little trouble along the way and all those who have been a part of getting us to this stage of our journey.

In our local community, on May 20th, I had the opportunity to join with the MLA Guide Council, Jeffery, Keith, and Mel and a huge room full of our soul brothers and many of their partners, some families with children, men and women friends, and friends of friends. It was such a joy to see our community both being held within and extending to the greater community. In many ways it was our coming out party.

There were so many wonderful words spoken and feelings shared that evening. (See photos posted on this web site and the words of others to speak more explicitly about the particulars of that evening.) What I want to say here now is some of what I didn’t say that night because of the time constraints.

After almost 30 years of doing this work I am still excited about our philosophy, what we are doing and our guiding vision. That vision for me answers the question, “Why do men’s soul work?”

I still do this work because I believe there is so much more to life than the stereotyped male pursuits of chasing power, sex, fame, and money. I believe we are here by divine grace to wake up and be whole and be of service. To me that means embracing all of who we are, the light, the dark, and everything in between. And no matter where we are on the spectrum we all remember that whatever is coming through us is a gift.

If there ever were a time, and there have been many throughout written history, for men to stand up for the good of the whole, it is now. To deal with the complexity and scope of the difficulties facing humanity and our beautiful earth, we must face our many, often-opposed selves.

I have always experienced that men and women who know their depths and have faced their own darkness, and have mucked around in their own compost are the people who can stand for all of us. Soulful, authentic men and women stand for the greater good for everyone, not just their own political party, or their own religious beliefs, or their own ethnic group, or their own social class. We all respect Lincoln, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, King, Mandela, and the Dalai Lama because their message is rooted in love, justice, and respect for the diversity of us all.

What our work has always been about from the beginning is trust in and respect for the organic unfolding of each man, boy, and elder that comes into our circle. We continue to hold the space for men and boys of all ages to find their own deepest questions and to live into them. We hold them to find what is uniquely theirs to do and be.

This takes courage and determination. To discover those inner treasures we have to be willing to go against much of what we have been taught it is to be a man: we have to make ourselves vulnerable, we have to ask for help, and we have to be able to face our pain and grief. We have to welcome the parts of us that have been suppressed, repressed, denied, rejected, and hidden.

One of the beauties of what we do together stems from the fact that most men I have know are very willing to support their brothers in this unfolding process. Supporting others we discover that we aren’t alone and that by loving and supporting other men we can learn to love ourselves and all our own unclaimed parts.

Being just on the other side of 60 myself, I am excited to be able to welcome all the boomer generation into the big question of how to spend the next 20 years in a way that is more about being and service, living a life with more heart and meaning. I meet so many men and women lately that are searching for what we have been offering all these years.

I am also excited that many younger men are awakening to the challenges of stepping out and making a difference. I imagine some wonderful alliances and creative solutions that will emerge as these generations begin to collaborate.

It is wonderful to see the Men’s Leadership Alliance is entering a new chapter as the next generation of leaders is emerging from our circle, and taking their role in shaping our organization and adding their unique beauty and power to this work.

How will we all respond to the great challenges of our local communities, our bioregions, our country, and our planet? For many of us the first and perhaps most important challenge will be how to handle our own busy-ness and the complexity of our lives. How can we apply our energy to the deeper soul currents and not be caught in the thousands of distractions that bombard us day in and day out. How will we balance the need for financial growth and material support with the desire to allow the natural and organic unfolding? How will we honor both heart and head, lover and warrior, artist and businessman?

Remembering that we need all those parts and that we don’t have to choose between them, I am excited by the prospect of living into those questions. I invite readers to respond with stories of how these dynamics are playing out in your own inner and outer world. Just begin where you are.

Many blessings,

Tom Daly