Brian Mueller: Welcome to Follow Me to the MROP, a podcast dedicated to the journey of the masculine soul and the transformative power of initiation.
Brian Mueller: My name is Brian Mueller.
Brian Mueller: I live in suburban Dayton, Ohio, and I made my rites at Pilgrim Park in Illinois in twenty fourteen.
Brian Mueller: I'm your host, and in each episode of our show I'll sit down with one man who has made his rites, and I'll invite him to tell his story.
Brian Mueller: This won't be an abstract explanation or a theological lecture, just a real conversation about what it was like to cross that threshold at the rites and what changed afterward.
Brian Mueller: Before we begin, a quick word of gratitude.
Brian Mueller: This podcast is brought to you by choosing Presence.
Brian Mueller: We believe that the greatest gift a man can give his community is his own presence.
Brian Mueller: In a world of constant distraction, Choosing Presence provides the tools to help you stay grounded in the now.
Brian Mueller: If you'd like an easy way to begin learning about the practice of presence, you can download the free Practicing Presence app at choosingpresence dot
Brian Mueller: org slash app.
Brian Mueller: Now the Men's Rites of Passage, or MROP, is an experience designed to help men move from the first half of life into the second, shifting from a focus on ego and achievement to a life of meaning and soul.
Brian Mueller: On this show, we just don't talk about the rites in theory, we talk to the men who have walked the path.
Brian Mueller: Today we are joined by a man who has made his rites, and we're going to hear exactly what that journey looked like for him.
Brian Mueller: My guest today is Jared Adams.
Brian Mueller: Brother, I'm really glad you're here.
Brian Mueller: Thanks for making the time and for being willing to share your story.
Jared Adams: You bet.
Jared Adams: Thanks for having me.
Brian Mueller: Jared, tell us where you're from and how you spend your time these days.
Jared Adams: I grew up in Dodd City, Kansas.
Jared Adams: I've gotten the hell out twice.
Jared Adams: The high planes pulled me back.
Jared Adams: I got out again.
Jared Adams: Literally, no kidding.
Jared Adams: The shoot'em up, gun smoke, gunfight, Dodge City, Kansas.
Jared Adams: I worked there at Boot Hill in the summer doing gunfights.
Jared Adams: So, uh, man, I've lived it.
Jared Adams: Uh and in the last about twenty
Jared Adams: Seven, twenty-eight years I've lived near Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Brian Mueller: Yeah, what do you do?
Brian Mueller: How do you spend your time?
Jared Adams: Yeah, my
Jared Adams: My day gig is similar to you.
Jared Adams: Kind of the I live in the fluid career of webmaster, video editing, audio editing, graphic design.
Jared Adams: branding, marketing.
Jared Adams: You can't hardly wear one hat anymore in the freelance world like that.
Jared Adams: So it's led to a lot of adventures and a lot of learning curves.
Jared Adams: So I do a lot of that for Lumen as well, which has been a great
Jared Adams: Way to stay connected and keep giving back to an organization that's given me so much.
Jared Adams: And then the the evening gig, the Moonlight gig, has been a touring professional singer-songwriter for
Jared Adams: Gosh, I think I started in 96, 97.
Jared Adams: So that's pretty fluid as well.
Jared Adams: So I managed to pick two.
Jared Adams: Two career choices that are always evolving and changing, and absolutely no stability.
Brian Mueller: Now let's dive in and talk about the men's rites of passage.
Brian Mueller: The MROP has a unique experience.
Brian Mueller: It's not a retreat or a workshop, it's an initiation.
Brian Mueller: Many men arrive at the rites at a crossroads in their lives, looking for something they can't quite name.
Brian Mueller: Before we dive into the why and the how, let's start at the very beginning.
Brian Mueller: When and where did you make your rites, Jared?
Jared Adams: My rites were in twenty twelve at Pilgrim Park.
Brian Mueller: Yeah.
Brian Mueller: And who was the weaver and about how many men were there?
Jared Adams: We had the esteemed Belden Lane was our weaver.
Jared Adams: Stephen Gambill was the ritual elder.
Jared Adams: I think we had gosh, ma between thirty and forty.
Jared Adams: I feel like 'cause it felt like a lot to me.
Jared Adams: But then as I got to know some guys that say, No, we used to have two hundred people at these, it really changed my perspective.
Jared Adams: But the thirty felt
Jared Adams: Great to me because I got to know everyone's faces, and you don't have a lot of time for extended conversations.
Jared Adams: You're not really there to sit around the fire every night and get to know each other.
Jared Adams: You're doing the work.
Jared Adams: But it felt like I knew a little bit about each brother, and we were all kind of in it together.
Jared Adams: So I felt that encouragement.
Jared Adams: And there wasn't this a huge chunk of guys that I didn't recognize or know.
Jared Adams: I can't imagine if you had 200 people.
Brian Mueller: So when you think back to the weekend of your rites, what's the first feeling or image that comes forth for you?
Jared Adams: Yeah, these are fun questions.
Jared Adams: I've tried to ponder some of these before our chat here, just to go back.
Jared Adams: It feels so good to replace some of those locations and places in your mind.
Jared Adams: Yeah, I remember pulling in and parking, really just knowing I had, as Tom Pawlak, a dear brother here in Michigan, would say, I just had a yes in my heart.
Jared Adams: I had no idea what was in store.
Jared Adams: I just knew something was calling me to these rites.
Jared Adams: Maybe I was an exception.
Jared Adams: I didn't have there's a long on-ramp of reading Richard Rohr for ten years and attending a lot of other retreats.
Jared Adams: My only reference really was kind of the intellectual conference type retreats that I had done a little bit as I'd gotten older.
Jared Adams: It was always the weekend built around a single theme.
Jared Adams: The goal was to take as many notes as you could and go to all your breakout sessions.
Jared Adams: That was kind of oversimplifying, but that largely was my reference for a retreat.
Jared Adams: Before I got involved with Illumina and did my rites.
Jared Adams: So ask the question one more time.
Brian Mueller: Yeah, you know, what was the image or feeling that first came forth for you as you arrived at the rites?
Jared Adams: Yeah, the feeling that came forth
Jared Adams: There was a little anxiety, but it was a really welcomed type of anxiety, if that makes sense.
Jared Adams: I could tell I was stepping outside of what I was used to, but something
Jared Adams: At that age, let's see, I can't even do the math that fast, how old I was.
Jared Adams: You know, early thirties, something felt really great about
Jared Adams: Having no idea what lay ahead.
Jared Adams: I didn't have an agenda in my handy little packet.
Jared Adams: There weren't brochures.
Jared Adams: I was really intrigued.
Jared Adams: seeing the team and seeing the location and how much energy people had put into essentially exploring a lot of the unknown together.
Jared Adams: But that struck me that
Jared Adams: This didn't feel like the highly organized, super-rigid conferences and retreats that I'd gone to.
Jared Adams: It was kind of like nothing I had experienced.
Jared Adams: But I felt drawn to that deeper than any kind of Hilton weekend retreat
Jared Adams: You know, where you get your room and you choose your breakouts and everything was structured, where your enjoyment of the event was felt more so.
Jared Adams: How could you stick to the schedule?
Jared Adams: And really get the most out of it.
Jared Adams: I had no idea what the schedule was, and that really flew in the face of everything I knew about getting together with a group and exploring a topic or a theme.
Jared Adams: So I kind of felt like I probably was just a a pinball.
Jared Adams: I just kind of bounced around for a while.
Jared Adams: Do I need to be?
Jared Adams: Can you tell me how do I get?
Jared Adams: And I loved it.
Jared Adams: I've really, in some ways, I've never looked back.
Jared Adams: It brought me to such a beginner's mind.
Jared Adams: We throw that term around a lot, but in a lot of ways, that has stuck with me.
Jared Adams: The enjoyment and the beauty of walking into something where I don't need
Jared Adams: The whole itinerary laid out before me to know that it's just going to be good for my soul if I approach it with that yes.
Jared Adams: The Tom Pawlak yes.
Brian Mueller: Given that this was kind of a unique experience for you, something that you weren't familiar with up to that point.
Brian Mueller: And I mean, it sounds like you had a good time.
Brian Mueller: But generally speaking, how would you characterize the weekend as a whole for you?
Jared Adams: profound.
Jared Adams: Profound in the really primal but surgical ways that it unraveled me.
Jared Adams: It taught me a lot about paradox and appreciating and recognizing paradox.
Jared Adams: So maybe even primal and surgical, even that might be a paradox.
Jared Adams: Just the rustic nature to it was really appealing.
Jared Adams: Like I said, you know, my background, I grew up reformed and then
Jared Adams: As I started doing more music, I got kind of pulled into more evangelical circles.
Jared Adams: It feels like a whole other life now I've I have
Jared Adams: certainly deconstructed from that now, but but like a good scrapbook, that's part of my past.
Jared Adams: But I was still kind of at the tail end of that at my rites.
Jared Adams: So everything I was used to was about the comfort, the convenience.
Jared Adams: Mainly speakers and ideas that confirmed my own confirmation bias.
Jared Adams: I just loved the
Jared Adams: how much the natural element was a part of our day-to-day activity.
Jared Adams: And the silence.
Jared Adams: I think I had been craving silence, but I didn't know how to
Jared Adams: Find it or how to seek that out without people kind of giving you the the side eye and thinking you're well, he's he's really struggling, he's spending a lot of alone time in silence.
Jared Adams: My upbringing wasn't a thing that
Jared Adams: Certainly wasn't celebrated, but kind of had a stigma to it.
Jared Adams: You were clearly struggling if you were alone and silent.
Jared Adams: And Belden, you know, being such a modern-day wizard
Jared Adams: As I know you asked about that moment, but I've realized post-MROP and the years after how much I learned.
Jared Adams: and was blessed by what he didn't say, if that makes sense.
Jared Adams: I just reread his book, The Soulless of Fierce Landscapes.
Jared Adams: Desert and Mountain Spirituality.
Jared Adams: I I don't know if you've read it, but he talks a lot about uh the notion of the ophthalmic.
Jared Adams: Kind of learning by what something isn't, knowing something by what it isn't.
Jared Adams: We could nerd out on that for quite a while, but
Jared Adams: He really lived into that as a weaver.
Jared Adams: He didn't over instruct, which, as an Enneagram 5, I tend to do myself, and I also.
Jared Adams: Can enjoy being on the receiving end of it.
Jared Adams: There was so much space for the magic of Pilgrim Park and the magic of the rites to do its work.
Jared Adams: That Belden just loosely, like a shepherd, just kind of steered us a little bit to the left, a little bit to the right.
Jared Adams: But he never said, Here's what you need to do now.
Jared Adams: Try and have this experience as you go into the woods, think about these specific things.
Jared Adams: There was none of that.
Jared Adams: He trusted that the magic of the rites would do its work.
Jared Adams: That's certainly something I've noticed more so after.
Jared Adams: But I remember someone said maybe it was Belden or Father Bob, at least encouraged me to not take notes.
Brian Mueller: You got a notebook with you at the Wrights?
Jared Adams: I think I did, yeah.
Jared Adams: And had, you know, like our our lodging assignments or
Jared Adams: You know, the cabins.
Jared Adams: I think I maybe it started taking notes, and like one of the guys next to me or someone was like, I don't think we need to do that here.
Jared Adams: And that was so great because I was falling back into that muscle memory of, oh, I'm here for an intellectual weekend.
Jared Adams: I'm going to take notes, really get my money's worth, and I can reflect and reread these notes.
Jared Adams: celebrate how good of a note-taker I was.
Jared Adams: And I I think someone said, you know, we're not here to take notes and report back to anyone.
Jared Adams: That also really struck me and has been something I remembered that you mean we're we're just going to be here?
Jared Adams: How are we going to validate this experience?
Jared Adams: If I don't meticulously take notes and Instagram selfies, there was none of that.
Jared Adams: But I think that's helped.
Jared Adams: Keep it such a fresh, vivid memory for me 'cause that's all I have, is my true authentic memories.
Jared Adams: I don't have any notes.
Jared Adams: So I have some rocks that I grabbed from the river.
Jared Adams: Just a few items and you know, little trinkets I found in the woods during our different outings.
Jared Adams: I have those on a little bookshelf downstairs, and I can look at those and
Jared Adams: Most of the weekend will come back for me, or most of the week, I should say.
Jared Adams: So I hold a lot of memory and a few of these items that I brought back.
Brian Mueller: That's wonderful.
Brian Mueller: I mean, very descriptive.
Brian Mueller: I really appreciate what you had to share so far.
Brian Mueller: Let me see if I can't get you to narrow it down though, though.
Brian Mueller: Is there a particular experience or was there a particular encounter with another man that was especially memorable to you that you don't mind recounting?
Jared Adams: Yeah.
Jared Adams: Well, the first one, a little comical, less on the spiritual side, but
Jared Adams: recognizing the beauty of friendship and brotherhood and Illuman, every time we would have our our time alone or our time to explore, you know, the the drum would always call us back.
Jared Adams: to the next event.
Jared Adams: And Gary Meagher was the drum elder for my rites.
Jared Adams: And it never failed that I would think, you know, I better use the restroom before we go back to sacred space.
Jared Adams: I would just climb through the cobwebs and swat all the gnats and flies away and get to the stall, and I'll be damned if Gary wouldn't start beating that drum
Jared Adams: Whether it was the morning, afternoon, or evening, I thought, is he like, is he watching me?
Jared Adams: How is he doing this?
Jared Adams: So it was frustrating and annoying and such a great memory.
Jared Adams: And I've served on some MROP teams now, and hopefully again this August with Gary.
Jared Adams: So it's such a fun bookend to
Jared Adams: remember little newbie me just stumbling around knowing that something valuable was waiting for me.
Jared Adams: With these men and in the woods.
Jared Adams: And Gary played a part in that, calling me to the sacred space.
Jared Adams: And now I get to still work with Gary and still be with him years, some years later.
Jared Adams: You still have those memories.
Brian Mueller: Yeah, that's beautiful.
Brian Mueller: That's funny.
Brian Mueller: I it's nice for you to share a memory like that too, because the rites in some ways for a lot of guys feels like such a profound and yet also heavy event.
Brian Mueller: But there's a lot of lightheartedness throughout the event.
Jared Adams: Yeah, there there can be.
Jared Adams: There were some wonderful conversations.
Jared Adams: I can remember kind of the the big
Jared Adams: picture moment of conversations was was two brothers.
Jared Adams: I had the oldest and the youngest attendees that year in my home group.
Jared Adams: I think 80 plus, and another brother was maybe 26 or 27.
Jared Adams: Not that that was a novelty necessarily, but I was just aware that I think
Jared Adams: I'm getting to hear some really epic perspectives here from both sides of not only age, but of manhood.
Jared Adams: Just stepping into manhood, having
Jared Adams: Lived manhood for 60, 70 years.
Jared Adams: That was really valuable.
Jared Adams: Obviously, there wasn't crosstalk, as we know, but
Jared Adams: Just them answering the prompts and knowing that no matter how how old you are, there can still be a longing.
Jared Adams: And just like I had, that mysterious magnetic pull.
Jared Adams: It's not specific to
Jared Adams: This perfect window of 30 to 35.
Jared Adams: You know, that's not the there's no optimum rites age.
Jared Adams: And they were both
Jared Adams: Getting so much out of it.
Jared Adams: We had lots of tears, lots of laughter.
Jared Adams: I kind of recall thinking, is there an age group?
Jared Adams: Is there a stereotype for this as I went into it?
Jared Adams: And they both helped me see, man, I wasn't quite in the middle, but it really helped me appreciate the beauty and the scope of what feeling initiated
Jared Adams: Meant.
Jared Adams: That it wasn't relative to a certain age or experience or the struggles of turning forty.
Jared Adams: It had nothing to do with that.
Jared Adams: We've all lived
Jared Adams: Vastly different yet somehow strikingly similar lives, that it meant as much for a twenty seven-year-old as it did for an eighty-one-year-old.
Jared Adams: You stayed in touch and emailed for a while.
Jared Adams: Kind of fizzled out as we were all on some of us were in different parts of the world.
Jared Adams: But I had a brother from Europe that was there, a brother from Canada.
Jared Adams: So I'm sure there were moments with one or two brothers, but the first thing that's really stirring for me was just how much was represented in my home group.
Jared Adams: It wasn't
Jared Adams: four guys, you know, all from the same cul-de-sac of suburban USA.
Jared Adams: We really came from literally different parts of the world and cultures, and that was really beautiful to me.
Brian Mueller: I appreciate the insight there.
Brian Mueller: Recognizing that as a ritual event, it has the capacity to transcend different people of different ages, people of different cultures and backgrounds.
Brian Mueller: Yeah, it doesn't really matter if the events if the rites fit you, they'll fit you.
Jared Adams: Yeah, absolutely.
Jared Adams: I think even then there was
Jared Adams: There was talk of the idea of the onion and the layers.
Jared Adams: On a surface level, I understood that.
Jared Adams: I'm like, well, sure.
Jared Adams: Most things have layers that might reveal themselves later.
Jared Adams: I kind of laughed it off, but holy hell, I have I have still seen layers reveal themselves in me through
Jared Adams: Shadow through even recognizing the golden shadow, you know, things I can really celebrate and honor the good parts of myself
Jared Adams: MROP just opened me up to vulnerability, compassion, empathy, self-compassion.
Jared Adams: I've seen those layers unfold deeper and deeper.
Jared Adams: almost for two decades now.
Jared Adams: It's it's really wild.
Jared Adams: And I think of I've seen some guys in the Illumina community, some of the I don't know if if I'm old enough to say the next generation of
Jared Adams: That guy's making the rites, but being involved with Illumina for a while, you know, brothers like you and knowing other chapters and leaders, I hear
Jared Adams: Some guys talk about, well, I'm not sure if I'm ready yet, or I'm reading this book, even thankfully, guys, listening to your wonderful podcast here.
Jared Adams: That are saying, I felt called a couple of years ago, but I knew I wasn't ready, or I had to work on more forgiveness.
Jared Adams: And I think that's beautiful, but so unrelatable to me.
Jared Adams: I just stumbled into it.
Jared Adams: The self-awareness that some of these guys have of knowing if they are or aren't ready for an MROP, I think that's great.
Jared Adams: It's so
Jared Adams: It's so far away from my experience.
Jared Adams: I just I had read Everything Belongs.
Jared Adams: My wife found it at a silent retreat.
Jared Adams: Literally just randomly pulled it from a bookshelf.
Jared Adams: And it was really intriguing ideas.
Jared Adams: We were kind of coming from pretty convoluted evangelical Reformed backgrounds.
Jared Adams: the exhaustion of keeping that scaffolding, a lot of the mental gymnastics for me, the cognitive dissonance it required to keep
Jared Adams: Living into that was really taking a toll.
Jared Adams: So recognizing the non-duality of everything belongs
Jared Adams: That we're all parts of a whole.
Jared Adams: Even just simple, profoundly simple truths like that.
Jared Adams: You know, and Richard's so great at just these little throwaway lines.
Jared Adams: That he probably doesn't even remember anymore.
Jared Adams: He just he says those things like you and I say, Oh, hey, how you doing?
Jared Adams: But some of those have really
Jared Adams: put a hook in me, you know, and that helped me change my whole perspective of life.
Jared Adams: But that's all I needed to know.
Jared Adams: I think there's something for me.
Jared Adams: whatever these rites are, simply based on I enjoyed that book.
Jared Adams: And kind of the the rest is it was all downhill from there.
Jared Adams: But I really also admire these guys that are doing so much work before their MROP.
Jared Adams: I feel like I did nothing but just I was just trying to survive capitalist America.
Jared Adams: I don't know what I was just
Brian Mueller: Well, I can relate to your story.
Brian Mueller: And I always think of the the book Everything Belongs, I've heard Richard say, you know, it's one of his best-selling books, but he thinks that it's because of the title.
Brian Mueller: Everything belongs and how that is really resonant for people.
Brian Mueller: And I would say though, that even that phrase, everything belongs, really applies to the rites.
Brian Mueller: You've kind of anticipated some of the questions I'm going to be asking, but one of the things I really am curious about is
Brian Mueller: What was going on in your life when you decided to sign up for the rites?
Jared Adams: Let's see.
Jared Adams: We had just moved back from Nashville.
Jared Adams: Jennifer and I have have done music together with our band Annagail.
Jared Adams: Already for many years by that point, we'd signed a record deal that moved from Grand Rapids to Nashville just for sake of proximity, for management and opportunities.
Jared Adams: And shortly after we kind of found ourselves here again, we learned that we were going to be pregnant with a son.
Jared Adams: I already had two daughters.
Jared Adams: And so I I carried that with me to the MROP, not just being a father, but knowing what I was seeking and that kind of that rites hole that was in my heart.
Jared Adams: Knowing, oh, now I'm also going to be the father of a son.
Jared Adams: That was just another one of those welcomed waits, the welcomed anxiety of fatherhood and
Jared Adams: And manhood that I carried with me.
Jared Adams: Yeah, there was a lot of changes feeling a little disillusioned with
Jared Adams: with some things.
Jared Adams: I was not full blown deconstructing yet, but certainly was in the process.
Jared Adams: And our record deal was kind of largely within the Christian market and some of the labels in that industry.
Jared Adams: So
Jared Adams: I was already feeling this conflict and tension that I'm trying to move towards something that on paper checks off a lot of the boxes of hopes, dreams, success, career, but it wasn't
Jared Adams: Doing that at a soul level.
Jared Adams: It was just the very shallow, kind of nameless, faceless, career level boxes.
Jared Adams: So
Jared Adams: I was recognizing the pole.
Jared Adams: I'm leaning into something that I don't think I want.
Jared Adams: And the MROP, it helped me in many ways, have space to quiet some of the racing thoughts.
Jared Adams: And really lay those out and be honest with myself.
Jared Adams: When we played Leonard Cohen's anthem towards the end of the rites, that was extra special.
Jared Adams: One of those
Jared Adams: Those little divine moments because we already knew our son was going to be named Cohen because Jennifer and I were both songwriting admirers of Cohen, his lyricism, his perspectives.
Jared Adams: He embodies some of that Richard Rohr everything belongs-ism about life, that there is no secular
Jared Adams: or sacred.
Jared Adams: It's all one.
Jared Adams: And growing up, definitely my there was a a strong dividing line between what's secular and sacred, and what's worthy of your time and what's
Jared Adams: Not worthy of your time.
Jared Adams: And that carried over to people as well.
Jared Adams: So the rites were such a great you know, when we break the mirror, no spoilers.
Jared Adams: If anyone's listening and you haven't done your rites yet.
Jared Adams: Don't tell anyone.
Jared Adams: That's another layer that's I've carried with me for so long 'cause that I got to be one of the rock breakers because I
Jared Adams: I said to Tom Pawlak yes to every volunteer opportunity.
Jared Adams: Breaking that mirror gave me a sense of just the space.
Jared Adams: The permission, maybe is a better word.
Jared Adams: Gave myself permission.
Jared Adams: to not have to have it figured out and to wrestle with a lot of things that on the outside I wanted to present like I had I had all that shit together
Brian Mueller: So when you made the decision to go to the Wrights, who did you tell and how what were their reactions?
Jared Adams: Man, I don't think I told that many people, honestly.
Jared Adams: Still was kind of largely in a community that I didn't know if I would feel misunderstood or judged because you know, good old self-righteous
Jared Adams: Christians w we're great about I don't know about that.
Jared Adams: We love to we love to gatekeep and we also love to
Jared Adams: to deter anyone from stepping outside of any of the safe spaces.
Jared Adams: I think I maybe told my parents
Jared Adams: My mom as y m most recently probably within the last year or two.
Jared Adams: Still asks if it's the Illuminati.
Jared Adams: And if I'm involved in anything, you know, questionable and is it safe?
Jared Adams: So I did tell a friend
Jared Adams: Ted, who went the following time the Pilgrim Park did it on fourteen, he was a confidante.
Jared Adams: Yeah, I think I shared more after the fact, upon my return.
Jared Adams: than going.
Jared Adams: It was just such a cloud of unknowing to steal the term.
Jared Adams: I didn't hardly have anything to share.
Jared Adams: Besides, I'm just I'm just going on this woodsy retreat, which was the full extent that I could describe it myself.
Jared Adams: So
Brian Mueller: But it sounded like Jennifer was aware of you know, she was the one that found the book Everything Belongs, had brought that to you and I mean those were the that was sort of the breadcrumbs that led you to
Brian Mueller: Learned about the rites, yeah.
Jared Adams: Yeah, yeah.
Brian Mueller: She was on board, right?
Jared Adams: Yeah, she was yeah, she was on board.
Jared Adams: We didn't know about the the very valuable, worthwhile detaching from devices and clocks and
Jared Adams: So if there is an emergency, you know, here's who to call.
Jared Adams: And so I think in a way that never having experienced that at a super safe Hilton retreat before.
Jared Adams: That was also a good kind of jarring because I loved I loved the danger of some of these things.
Jared Adams: And I say danger heavy air quotes.
Jared Adams: There's no saber toothed tigers or mammoths out there, but it was as primitive and primal as I could be in twenty twelve.
Jared Adams: Pulling up in my suburban, there was at least some separation from from life as normal.
Jared Adams: Even still, I kind of get goosebumps knowing how great that felt.
Jared Adams: Someone gets it, and someone's giving a space to
Jared Adams: cross a threshold and change our everyday normal behaviors of just sitting around talking heads and taking notes, and then we go home.
Jared Adams: I really, really appreciated that.
Jared Adams: And I think that sent her on a bit of her own retreat as well, knowing, oh, communication is cut off for a while.
Jared Adams: Yes.
Jared Adams: So certainly we talked a little bit leading up to it.
Jared Adams: And my application, some of the questions were pretty revealing answering those.
Jared Adams: I'd never really responded to questions like that before.
Jared Adams: So
Brian Mueller: I remember having her read those.
Brian Mueller: You know, I do have a question that echoes one of those questions that was on your application.
Brian Mueller: Initiation is sort of a loaded word in our culture.
Brian Mueller: Was there something that you were hoping to be initiated into when you arrived at the rites?
Jared Adams: Funny, it's in some ways it's a non-answer, but the answer's in the question I was just hoping to be initiated into.
Jared Adams: That's as far as I got.
Jared Adams: I think just the recognition and acceptance, the embrace.
Jared Adams: That wonderful letdown, not necessarily adrenaline, but it's like a soulful adrenaline.
Jared Adams: That could possibly be the facade of manhood, the facade of having your shit together, the facade of
Jared Adams: Everything in your career is checking the boxes.
Jared Adams: You're just climbing the ladder.
Jared Adams: Some of those things we can unknowingly
Jared Adams: build around ourselves or are built for us in some cases.
Jared Adams: I certainly was guilty of that.
Jared Adams: I didn't I don't think I knew enough about
Jared Adams: Initiation and what was lacking until I got into it.
Jared Adams: It was another layer.
Jared Adams: I realized the beauty of it towards the end of the rites.
Jared Adams: Kind of like
Jared Adams: Belden in these in these apophatic ways.
Jared Adams: I knew the value of rites when I finished my MROP because I realized I hadn't had them.
Jared Adams: Up until then.
Jared Adams: So I it truly was the gold, the gift of it at the end.
Jared Adams: Yeah, I've I've seen that
Jared Adams: play out metaphorically in a lot of ways.
Jared Adams: The the gift of my rites was was just that it was the gift of exposing me to some of the lacks.
Jared Adams: That I had in my life.
Jared Adams: As a parent, from my own parents, doing the best they could.
Jared Adams: And I grew up with a farming operation in Southwest Kansas.
Jared Adams: Nothing wrong with that, but kind of a stoic family.
Jared Adams: We did the best we could.
Jared Adams: And if my life had never changed from that, I probably would have never known different.
Jared Adams: But I did have a yearning and a sense of more.
Jared Adams: It was this nameless
Jared Adams: kind of cloud that was out there as I was wrestling and struggling with simply believing my parents' beliefs, sitting in the same pew every Sunday.
Jared Adams: A lot of the
Jared Adams: Utilitarian functions of religion were really I was kind of wary of.
Jared Adams: So I think I was questioning and wrestling even as an adolescent in ways I didn't understand.
Jared Adams: But there was never any kind of threshold.
Jared Adams: Of not that we achieve manhood, but moving towards that.
Jared Adams: So I think in some ways, a long answer to your question, but I think we're all maybe just looking for that village, even a couple men.
Jared Adams: To welcome you back from when you come out of the woods on your walkabout and say, Brother, feast with us.
Jared Adams: And for a lot of ways, for me, that was some of the team members, you know, Father Bob and some of the others that I really felt held by and seen by.
Jared Adams: And man, that was all it took.
Jared Adams: The power of being seen.
Jared Adams: It was great that there were forty other guys there, but in some ways, if it was Belden
Jared Adams: Building in some wisdom teaching, and then, all right, Jared, why don't you go out for six or eight hours and then come back?
Jared Adams: Father Bob's gonna give you a big hug and then you'll have dinner together.
Jared Adams: You know that
Jared Adams: If we really distilled it down, that was my MROP.
Jared Adams: And everything else that happened was a perk.
Jared Adams: That just further solidified the need for it and the gift of it.
Brian Mueller: You bring up something that's sort of a common thread, common theme through a lot of my conversations.
Brian Mueller: just how much the support, how loving the team is at an MROP, you know, creates that warmth, that sense of belonging, that sense of welcoming.
Brian Mueller: I'm hearing that in your story of the rites as well.
Brian Mueller: So, thank you for that.
Brian Mueller: Let me ask you a little bit about the last day of the rites.
Brian Mueller: So, the rites are, you know, you've gone through the closing ritual.
Brian Mueller: You've made it through the weekend.
Brian Mueller: It's now time to get in the car and drive back to Grand Rapids.
Brian Mueller: How are you feeling at that moment as you leave, pull out of Pilgrim Park, and up the hill, back up onto the plains?
Jared Adams: Yeah, that's a great question.
Jared Adams: I feel like I kind of had the gift of epilogue, sort of the addendum attached to the end, because I had accidentally locked my keys in my car.
Jared Adams: So, as we're leaving and packing up, you're waving to guys and they're wheeling their suitcases and sleeping bags out.
Jared Adams: And you're hugging and waving goodbye, and everyone's pulling away, and I realize I'm I'm locked out.
Jared Adams: And track down a locksmith on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of Illinois.
Jared Adams: But he couldn't get there for like two or three hours, he said.
Jared Adams: So uh so Father Bob and I just sat on a stump, this old tree by the towards the entrance of Pilgrim Park, and just kind of reflected and decompressed.
Jared Adams: Because then he was able to also kind of let his guard down because he's not on team anymore and not trying to keep you at arm's length anymore so that you're having your own experience.
Jared Adams: And we just chatted for hours waiting for the locksmith to come.
Jared Adams: But that was really great.
Jared Adams: It helped me reflect, like in real time, very recent reflections.
Jared Adams: It would kind of be like the questions you're asking me now.
Jared Adams: He has to be like immediately at the end of the MROP.
Jared Adams: So that was fun.
Jared Adams: Formed a good relationship with a lot of the Illinois guys.
Jared Adams: I feel like I kind of have.
Jared Adams: brothers and and both I mean, I've brothers all over the world and Illuman, but I have felt uh like I belong to these two chapters.
Jared Adams: So that's been great.
Jared Adams: I pulled over maybe an within an hour.
Jared Adams: I think it was just the side of the road, no rest stop or anything, and just had to break down for a while.
Jared Adams: just felt that it that it wasn't sadness, it wasn't joy, it was an anonymous emotion, maybe just overwhelmed.
Jared Adams: I knew something had happened.
Jared Adams: I didn't know the extent of it.
Jared Adams: And again, I didn't have a notebook full of all my session notes that I knew I could reflect back on and sink my teeth into later.
Jared Adams: I just knew I'm leaving this thing that feels profoundly powerful, but I I have no real tangible thing to show for it except me and a pocketful of a couple of rocks.
Jared Adams: And it was just such a beautiful, overwhelming moment that I just pulled over and wept for a while.
Jared Adams: I've thought of that even at other
Jared Adams: things in life as I've had to travel that same highway.
Jared Adams: I'm like, it's probably right around here where I completely unraveled post-MROP.
Jared Adams: It was very sacred.
Jared Adams: And it felt felt safe to do.
Jared Adams: It felt
Jared Adams: Like good self-care pre-MROP, I don't recall ever pulling over to honor emotions.
Jared Adams: It was just kind of
Jared Adams: And you push through it.
Jared Adams: You know, driving has a way, like you and I talked even the other day.
Jared Adams: If you've recently been driving around the world, it does give you a kind of a different space and time
Jared Adams: To ponder and reflect, and you can kind of rewind back through some memories and moments that can be really emotional.
Jared Adams: So I've always loved that about traveling, even when touring with the band.
Jared Adams: I loved being the driver.
Jared Adams: It's like, oh man, I got eight hours to just ponder everything about everything.
Brian Mueller: No, I hear you.
Brian Mueller: What has changed in your life since making the rites?
Brian Mueller: I'm I'm thinking practically, relationally, even spiritually.
Jared Adams: Coming back was still kind of at the tail end of the the arc, I think, of
Jared Adams: Fully laying down the I think of it as scaffolding kind of the structure that I had built up, call it faith and religion that
Jared Adams: that I inherited just because where I was born and the family I was born into, I came back and still had a big part of my
Jared Adams: livelihood was through worship leading and a more a little bit more evangelical dynamic type churches
Jared Adams: And it really it really ruined me for that environment because it just a few short days in the woods, but in that intense honesty
Jared Adams: Being called to that intense honesty and reflection and authenticity, it ruined me to go back to that business as usual.
Jared Adams: sort of dynamic.
Jared Adams: Not naming any names, but oh, there's a lot of churches like this that there was such a push to
Jared Adams: Be incredibly entertaining and this immersive experience.
Jared Adams: But yet to me, it was lacking the beauty and the simplicity that I had just experienced.
Jared Adams: Sitting in the woods and watching the ants and watching a garden spider like inches from my face.
Jared Adams: And that was immersive to me.
Jared Adams: So coming back to
Jared Adams: The again, kind of supporting the facade, bigger, better, faster.
Jared Adams: Great things are in store.
Jared Adams: In my experience,
Jared Adams: I grew up with the God that was always about to do something.
Jared Adams: God's about to fill in the blank.
Jared Adams: It was always a couple of weeks out.
Jared Adams: Sort of prophetically speaking over people that I God is about to I sense in a couple of weeks that you just hold on, God's going to turn this around, and that really became like
Jared Adams: Sugar, pouring sugar in my mouth post rites.
Jared Adams: I couldn't stomach the show and the theater of it all.
Jared Adams: I just remember thinking, isn't if we're really, really honoring this, why isn't Jesus enough?
Jared Adams: We have these giant video screens and we've got
Jared Adams: every creature convenience you can imagine, but we're using seems like we're leaning into that a lot more to get people in here, and we're just selling them something.
Jared Adams: It honestly, without it, sounds like hyperbole, but it felt really gross to me.
Jared Adams: I would feel nauseated driving to these churches knowing
Jared Adams: How we were going to kind of be expected to manipulate for thirty minutes.
Brian Mueller: Was a performance that sounded like for you because you were doing the music and it was, yeah.
Jared Adams: Yeah.
Jared Adams: And you learn
Jared Adams: how to use hush tones and how to passive aggressively say things.
Jared Adams: I just I couldn't do it anymore.
Jared Adams: So the last church that we were involved with, that we were actually fired from, met us at the door and had all of our gear on a big loading loading cart.
Jared Adams: And essentially, like, yeah, we're we're good here.
Jared Adams: Don't need you anymore.
Jared Adams: I think I had suggested what if we because it was a launch, we were helping launch a big church
Jared Adams: What if we put away all the chairs and we just sat in circles?
Jared Adams: Because I still was so fresh with the energy of I've just sat with people being honest in a circle.
Jared Adams: And we weren't critiquing each other and feeding back.
Jared Adams: We were just hearing and seeing each other.
Jared Adams: What if we tried that here?
Jared Adams: That didn't go over well.
Jared Adams: And trying to stop some of the theatrical
Jared Adams: Manipulations of worship time.
Jared Adams: When I couldn't do those anymore, people noticed.
Jared Adams: I was like, I think you've lost the anointing, brother.
Jared Adams: But on a Saturday night those exact same things are celebrated.
Jared Adams: It is entertainment.
Jared Adams: But we would also be
Jared Adams: Kind of judged if it seemed like it was entertainment on Sunday, but it was the exact same thing.
Jared Adams: You're just trying to put on a good show.
Jared Adams: Because as I said, Jesus seemed like Jesus wasn't enough.
Jared Adams: If that's the only selling point you had, there's no coffee, there's no
Jared Adams: Fog machines, better sound system than most venues.
Jared Adams: Like, people didn't seem interested.
Jared Adams: And I I just was distraught over it.
Brian Mueller: Yeah, it sounds like you came away from the rites with a really appreciating the authenticity.
Brian Mueller: And I want to highlight what you said about sort of
Brian Mueller: I guess in your home council, your home group and home council, you experienced a lot of vulnerability and just straight talk that you maybe had not experienced prior.
Brian Mueller: I hear that same theme of people that go to twelve step groups.
Brian Mueller: I think it's jolting for some people.
Brian Mueller: I think it really does shake them up and then it becomes something that you really desire.
Brian Mueller: It's really hard to live without it.
Jared Adams: Absolutely.
Brian Mueller: Yeah.
Jared Adams: Yeah.
Jared Adams: It just feels so good, especially when you're aware that there's a lot that you have to catch up on.
Jared Adams: I pity some of my poor brothers that have sat in some of those early councils where
Jared Adams: I got 30 years of bullshit.
Jared Adams: I got to get out here.
Jared Adams: So hang with me.
Jared Adams: They're like, okay, please put down the talking stick.
Jared Adams: You're done now.
Jared Adams: Yeah, but I could kind of feel that in, you know, in an abstract way, I could feel when, at a heart and soul level, I caught up to my real self.
Jared Adams: And that when I'm in council now, I can respond as current Jared.
Jared Adams: I wasn't trying to.
Jared Adams: Use the right keywords or buzzwords.
Jared Adams: I wasn't coloring it to make it more interesting or less interesting, depending on
Jared Adams: You know, reading the room.
Brian Mueller: You weren't putting together a playlist or a set list.
Jared Adams: Exactly.
Jared Adams: Yeah.
Jared Adams: Exactly.
Jared Adams: Yeah.
Jared Adams: I still remember, you asked about specific moments.
Jared Adams: It wasn't with a brother, but.
Jared Adams: I do remember kind of the this hurricane of emotions when we sat down the first time and did the I am statements.
Jared Adams: I think that's what we kicked off our very first council with.
Jared Adams: So we've just had an hour or two in sacred space.
Jared Adams: We go out to our chairs, and we started with I am.
Jared Adams: And fill in the blank.
Jared Adams: And I think we were supposed to do maybe 10 rounds of that.
Jared Adams: And by the second or third one, I realized I don't know what to say.
Jared Adams: Scrambling like to just think of a dictionary.
Jared Adams: Like, what's a really great adjective or something that sounds profound?
Jared Adams: What I have
Jared Adams: Yeah, that was such a a humbling but wonderfully terrifying moment that it it was beyond language.
Jared Adams: I couldn't fall back to my usual two or three shallow words.
Jared Adams: Kind of as we do in society.
Jared Adams: Hey, Brian, how are you doing?
Jared Adams: I'm good.
Jared Adams: You?
Jared Adams: Yeah, freaking good.
Jared Adams: And then we go on.
Jared Adams: Society would grind to a halt if we were too honest in some of those moments.
Jared Adams: So
Jared Adams: I realized I had done my little my niceties.
Jared Adams: I've been polite for two or three I am s.
Jared Adams: But then I thought I'm I'm going to have to really
Jared Adams: dig deeper and I s I just remember that feeling of like, why can't I think of how I feel or how I'm doing?
Jared Adams: And that that was the huge that may may have been the crest of my MROP Hill.
Jared Adams: Anything I was holding on to, any fear like, okay, let's
Jared Adams: This isn't going to get any easier, obviously.
Jared Adams: So I might as well say yes to this now and be vulnerable.
Jared Adams: I am scared.
Jared Adams: I am.
Jared Adams: unfulfilled.
Jared Adams: You know, I am jealous.
Jared Adams: I don't remember what they were, but just vulnerable words that I wasn't used to sharing with strangers.
Jared Adams: But that was that cracked it for me.
Brian Mueller: I want to recognize you mentioned earlier that you and your wife were pregnant with your son.
Brian Mueller: You had two older daughters, two daughters that are older than your son already.
Brian Mueller: But as you were going through the rites, you were expecting him.
Brian Mueller: That's it sounds really significant, especially in the context of the rites.
Brian Mueller: So usually at this point I ask, how has your ideas and thoughts about masculinity
Brian Mueller: male initiation, even the male journey through life changed and been impacted on this.
Brian Mueller: And knowing too that now you have a son.
Jared Adams: Yeah, it's been a beautiful ride.
Jared Adams: One thing that I jumped into a few years after the ride, even Cohen was still just a baby.
Jared Adams: Tom Pollock and Michael Whitman had developed a really beautiful youth rites of passage around building
Jared Adams: an honest drum, but all the pieces to it were metaphors of stepping into boyhood, manhood.
Jared Adams: as well as the things that the father or mentor hopes for their son.
Jared Adams: And I've been so blessed and honored by that, they asked me to start helping out on the team.
Jared Adams: In twenty sixteen, we did our first one.
Jared Adams: So 10 years we've been doing this now, doing a twenty four hour version suited for thirteen to seventeen year olds using some of the
Jared Adams: The moments, the concept feels like too simple a word, but elements maybe is a better one.
Jared Adams: Some of the the elements of the MROP
Jared Adams: Shaping that for young men.
Jared Adams: Been a fascinating gift to see and be a part of, to see fathers and sons walking through this together and mentors and young boys.
Jared Adams: Post-MROP it, it created opportunities for me to be involved in helping that play out.
Jared Adams: Any fears or insecurities, ways I might have felt self-conscious.
Jared Adams: I've been able to help
Jared Adams: I can inject that in as well and work through that with these other dads doing the same thing.
Jared Adams: So that's been, beyond words, a gift to me.
Jared Adams: And Cohen is looking forward to doing it this year.
Jared Adams: So I'll be stepping off the team for the tenth year, and I get to do that with him.
Jared Adams: which we've both been looking forward to.
Jared Adams: I saved one of the slats that's used on the drums that Tom Pawlak just so masterfully created.
Jared Adams: I thought I'm going to keep one of these and
Jared Adams: Someday when Cohen's old enough to do these rites and we can do it together, I'll have this from ten years ago.
Jared Adams: Kind of creating the this bookmark, but I think it's helped me
Jared Adams: In personal ways, just honestly, just relax about it.
Jared Adams: So much of the religious upbringing I had, very little spirituality.
Jared Adams: I knew there was
Jared Adams: Something spiritual was calling me, but within the construct of religion, I was not finding it for sure.
Jared Adams: It was more about what you avoided, what you resisted, what boxes you stayed in.
Jared Adams: Don't do this, don't say that, don't think about this, don't entertain that, these are the people you should avoid.
Jared Adams: But then the Sunday morning messages were quite the antithesis of that
Jared Adams: Loving your neighbor and compassion.
Jared Adams: So it was very confusing for me.
Jared Adams: I think.
Jared Adams: So I say relaxing in that
Jared Adams: I realized no matter how hard I fight to maintain this construct in my mind, it's not changing anything.
Jared Adams: It's just making me miserable.
Jared Adams: So it opened me up to the larger life of seeing, respecting everyone's journey, realizing I had some of the privileges
Jared Adams: I had, or the also the things I was lacking, simply because of where I was born.
Jared Adams: And people were born all over the world, believe it or not.
Jared Adams: I don't know how I missed that.
Jared Adams: Thinking that
Jared Adams: That everyone needed to be drawn to this one idea of religion, of masculinity, of faith.
Jared Adams: That somehow we would all work our way into this funnel of domesticated, watered-down religion.
Jared Adams: It blew that up for me.
Jared Adams: And I realized, oh my gosh, people are beautiful right where they are.
Jared Adams: I don't have to change anything.
Jared Adams: About anyone.
Jared Adams: That was a huge release.
Jared Adams: And it was kind of, I mean, even saying it out loud, I've talked about it before, but like, it's a little bit embarrassing to feel like
Jared Adams: You know, you're almost middle age and you're finally stepping into these global, like cosmic truths that have been around forever.
Jared Adams: But I encountered it when I encountered it.
Jared Adams: I couldn't change that.
Jared Adams: Just like.
Jared Adams: You know, the early twenties brother and the eighty-year-old brother in my home group.
Jared Adams: When you're on the path, just this path of surrender, this path of seeking just honest spirituality, it
Jared Adams: It encounters you whenever it does, and there's no right or wrong.
Jared Adams: Like I said, there's no optimum window of really stepping into that.
Jared Adams: So
Jared Adams: Yeah, so I just relaxed and I let myself off the hook.
Jared Adams: I don't have to keep anything propped up.
Jared Adams: I don't have to keep my neighborhood propped up.
Jared Adams: I just need to be present and kind.
Brian Mueller: I know a lot of our men in our work really identify with Father Richard Rohr as one of the great spiritual teachers and leaders.
Brian Mueller: And of course, he really developed the rites that we
Brian Mueller: We continue to adapt and share through Illuman.
Brian Mueller: And we all have our own common threads with Richard.
Brian Mueller: Mine goes back to his time in Cincinnati.
Brian Mueller: I wonder about you with being from Kansas, that Kansas upbringing, that very Midwest, somewhat rural farm upbringing, those sorts of things.
Brian Mueller: And coming, you know, Richard talks a lot about his conservative roots in Kansas, conservative faith, you know, as a hymn for him as a Catholic.
Brian Mueller: But you've also come through your own, you know, faith tradition and that experience into a much bigger world, as did Richard.
Brian Mueller: And so you've been you mentioned a couple of times talk about deconstruction.
Brian Mueller: And I'll be honest, that's not a term that I was familiar with until a couple of years ago.
Brian Mueller: When I went to the Wild Goose Festival, when I really encountered a lot of people, a lot of earnest people, a lot of deeply faithful people
Brian Mueller: In their own Christianity and traditions, really trying to figure out a path forward for them through with faith, with a deeper faith.
Brian Mueller: So how how did the rites help you with that that uh journey of deconstruction that you and I know your wife has been on as well?
Jared Adams: Yeah.
Jared Adams: Yeah, good old Kansas.
Jared Adams: It's it doesn't get much more mid.
Jared Adams: I think there's even there's very little west to Kansas.
Jared Adams: It's just mid.
Jared Adams: I mean, I grew up 20 minutes from Kinley, which I think is the like
Jared Adams: The cardinal center of everything, I can remember a really profound moment that's just kind of coming back for me.
Jared Adams: I remember a really profound
Jared Adams: Moment that after I had marked myself the night before, it was the day of your death.
Jared Adams: You know, the M up started with the retreat, end to your death, end to your death, breaking the sticks.
Jared Adams: I just tried to stay fully committed and to not intellectualize, to not try and fill the gaps that Belden might leave and think, what is he really saying about that?
Jared Adams: What's the deeper metaphor?
Jared Adams: I just try to leave that and just be present with beginner's mind.
Jared Adams: So I'm sweaty.
Jared Adams: I'm covered in this blood that's marking me.
Jared Adams: I haven't showered 'cause Gary wouldn't let me shower 'cause he'd always beat the damn drum.
Jared Adams: But I walked out of sacred space as we all kind of file out into my death and I I laid in the meadow
Jared Adams: Let my knees give out and I laid on my back, and it was a hot August day, of course.
Jared Adams: Lay there for a while, trying to
Jared Adams: Trying to unthink and just be.
Jared Adams: But I noticed that, you know, some gnats and flies would land on me.
Jared Adams: And I'm committing to this.
Jared Adams: But I would still kind of swat a pesky fly away, and then I would see ants crawling up on my leg, and I would try and do that away.
Jared Adams: And I realized dead men aren't going to be bothered by a fly or an ant crawling up your leg.
Jared Adams: So I fought that, and it, as simple as it sounds, again, back to the profoundly simple truths: like, oh, yeah, dying to yourself, if you're really going to
Jared Adams: Experience that in a deeply ritual way, you need to stop worrying about the ants and the flies.
Jared Adams: And oh, that was so hard.
Jared Adams: It just butted up against my convenience.
Jared Adams: I want the benefit of these rites, but I still want to be comfortable.
Jared Adams: So then I just told myself, we're not swatting any more flies, trying to not pull myself out of the moment.
Jared Adams: And I just laid there for another
Jared Adams: I have no idea how long.
Jared Adams: I remember very little after that moment.
Jared Adams: But the surrender at the ego level, the spiritual level of just letting
Jared Adams: the flies land on me and the ants crawl over me.
Jared Adams: That was the the closest up till that point I'd I'd really surrendered at such a deep, soulful level and committed to staying that way.
Jared Adams: Give me the question one more time.
Brian Mueller: Really, you know, I was asking how has I was asking about your deconstruction, how that's been impacted by the rites.
Jared Adams: So I just surrendered to letting
Jared Adams: the bugs, the gnats, the flies crawl on me and recognize I'm just honoring my death right here.
Jared Adams: I think a lot more cracked and let go on me than I even had language for that day.
Jared Adams: Another layer of the MROP.
Jared Adams: coming back kind of fast forwarding few weeks, months post MROP, I grew up with good old Reformed religion.
Jared Adams: Like I said, if you weren't in church and your pew, people would often call
Jared Adams: Ask if you're okay, like it would initiate a, it would trigger a welfare check if you weren't in the same pew.
Jared Adams: But it felt like
Jared Adams: Like you said, I I didn't have deconstruction in my vocabulary either.
Jared Adams: I just thought you were a believer or you were an atheist.
Jared Adams: as simple as I saw it.
Jared Adams: So it felt like, well, I I surrendered a lot of stuff out there and laid down the the God of my parents' beliefs, the God, the idea that I had been trying to
Jared Adams: maintain, you know, in my scaffolding.
Jared Adams: So to me, it it felt like you either were a believer or you were an atheist.
Jared Adams: It was very black and white.
Jared Adams: at least how I interpreted it growing up reformed in Kansas.
Jared Adams: Those were your two avenues.
Jared Adams: There wasn't any deconstruction that fit the gray area.
Jared Adams: So I wrestled for a while thinking, I don't know, if I don't believe virtually anything I've been holding on to
Jared Adams: And struggling to make these concepts feel real to me, I guess I'm an atheist.
Jared Adams: Maybe I'm an agnostic atheist.
Jared Adams: What am I now?
Jared Adams: Because I left all that in the woods.
Jared Adams: The beauty of an MROP, like the guys that have been anticipating it, I mentioned.
Jared Adams: You know, taking a few years before they they do their rites
Jared Adams: They might come into it and gain all kinds of spirituality and freedoms.
Jared Adams: And equally, I feel like I was able to lay down
Jared Adams: A lot of the wrestle of spirituality and religion and what I thought was freedom that was just mental bondage.
Jared Adams: I left all that out there.
Jared Adams: and had some really honest conversations with I didn't even didn't even call it God at that moment.
Jared Adams: I just felt the release of
Jared Adams: This is a profound moment and I'm going to take full advantage of it.
Jared Adams: And I'm not going to pretend and glamorize this moment, especially my full day out there.
Jared Adams: It was pretty raw and pretty ugly.
Jared Adams: And especially opening those damn
Jared Adams: Envelopes.
Jared Adams: Everyone just reduced me to tears.
Jared Adams: Because at the same time, it was kind of this paradox I was letting go of so much that
Jared Adams: You know, I thought I was important.
Jared Adams: And I thought I was doing pretty good at pretending life wasn't all that hard because, you know, insert spiritual bypassing excuse here.
Jared Adams: But I was also having my heart broken for realizing it's hard for everyone, for all those people that I realized were born in different parts of the world, to different religions, to different cultures, to
Jared Adams: to their own parents' beliefs that maybe they were struggling with.
Jared Adams: And I realized, oh my God, we are I just felt such a huge connection to mankind, to humanity, and such a
Jared Adams: A cracking and separation going both ways, shrinking for me and expanding for the world.
Jared Adams: So I came out of it thinking, I have no
Jared Adams: Fall back right now.
Jared Adams: And I didn't want to muscle memory myself into the same routines and eventually appeasing any discomfort that I had.
Jared Adams: trying to treat any anxiety with my quotes and and scriptures, I let that go.
Jared Adams: I said, Those are in in the woods, and if somehow those come back without me
Jared Adams: telling myself I need them, if they come back to me in a real honest, organic way that isn't going to be
Jared Adams: pulling me back into everything I was before the rites, then I don't want them.
Jared Adams: And surprisingly, uh not much came back, at least for me.
Jared Adams: And I've talked to guys that have had the opposite experience of that.
Jared Adams: So I don't know if maybe I'm the MROP podcast exception.
Jared Adams: I don't know.
Jared Adams: But it allowed me to replace all the certainty and all the structure with mystery.
Jared Adams: Yeah, I can still feel agnostic most days, but I can still lean into a divine mystery that leads me in unexplainable experiences and connection and moments.
Jared Adams: But it doesn't intervene with me the way that I needed my pre-MROP God to do.
Jared Adams: I came back with a love and an appreciation of mystery that can feel like God.
Jared Adams: That's something we could call it.
Jared Adams: It's also opened me up to a lot of other brilliant truths from a lot of other religions that, as I said before, I was told to
Jared Adams: reject and resist, and those are footholds of the enemy, and you can't let the enemy get a foot in the door.
Jared Adams: Everything was was this cryptic spiritual battle.
Jared Adams: And thankfully, I left that in the woods as well.
Jared Adams: I said, I'm exhausted.
Jared Adams: I'm not that important.
Jared Adams: I'm not this key player in this cosmic spiritual battle, and I alone.
Jared Adams: Can pray the right prayers to change things.
Jared Adams: That was also a relief.
Jared Adams: Could lay that down and just get in the river of
Jared Adams: of mankind.
Jared Adams: That's that's a cheesy man of imagery, but it works that you know, we're all just
Jared Adams: We're all just kind of floating down this river of mystery.
Jared Adams: And sometimes people climb out and do whatever they want to, you know, offshore.
Jared Adams: That's their journey.
Jared Adams: But I'd just rather stay
Jared Adams: Stay in the river.
Jared Adams: Letting go of certainty was a h perhaps one of the biggest revelations the MROP gave me.
Jared Adams: anything that happened.
Jared Adams: I didn't need to keep giving it significance.
Jared Adams: If it didn't work out, then it was the enemy.
Jared Adams: If it did, then it was God's favor.
Jared Adams: And somewhere in between there is the spiritual battle.
Jared Adams: That was just my
Jared Adams: That's what happened in my brain for many, many years.
Jared Adams: And the MROP gave me the space to lay that down.
Jared Adams: And I think driving, you asked about the moments immediately after when I just had to pull over.
Jared Adams: Overwhelmed by nothing, by this non-emotion, I think, you know, fifteen years later, I can just barely start to take a guess at what that emotion was.
Jared Adams: And I think it was
Jared Adams: The relief of not holding all that up anymore.
Brian Mueller: That's wonderful.
Brian Mueller: Thank you for sharing that.
Brian Mueller: That's profound.
Brian Mueller: And I think I just want to ask you one more question, and that would be.
Brian Mueller: What advice or what counsel would you give to a man who's trying to discern whether or not to participate in the rites?
Jared Adams: Yeah, that's good.
Jared Adams: I remember the year
Jared Adams: I think it was in 14.
Jared Adams: I was helping on the the team because I was pretty pretty quick to recognize I wanted to stay involved and I also wanted to help give back.
Jared Adams: So helping out the Illinois brothers on the team setting up like you and I have done registrations now for
Jared Adams: chapters and but serving on the the team, we were assigned a few people that had maybe had questions.
Jared Adams: So we called them back and and talked to them.
Jared Adams: When they had questions about their MROP.
Jared Adams: And even then, like I said, I was just so perplexed.
Jared Adams: Like, what is it like to know what you're getting into?
Jared Adams: How you even have a question?
Jared Adams: Mine would be my advice.
Jared Adams: And I can only speak it really truthfully because it was so fruitful for me, was that it was such a gift to not have any preconceived ideas or
Jared Adams: Maybe guardrails that I wanted to try and fit this experience into.
Jared Adams: If anything, I had the awareness I didn't want to look for confirmation bias.
Jared Adams: I didn't want to try and reinforce anything because I had done so much of that as a worship leader.
Jared Adams: I felt like I had said a lot of things that simply reinforced
Jared Adams: What I knew the congregation already believed and wanted to hear.
Jared Adams: I just didn't want that element of spirituality anymore.
Jared Adams: To where it was all originating from me.
Jared Adams: And then I would also say, Yeah, yeah, that's what I think.
Jared Adams: That's good.
Jared Adams: I wanted to be open.
Jared Adams: To this primitive notion of sitting around a fire with wisdom teachers that I wasn't looking for
Jared Adams: links to my belief and faith and my prejudice, my biases.
Jared Adams: I didn't want any of that.
Jared Adams: So I would say
Jared Adams: If possible, trying to detach yourself from it being something that's going to please you on all those levels.
Jared Adams: Because in some ways, you know, the me before my MROP, I think I could have left completely unsatisfied and miserable because it was so different than
Jared Adams: any other retreat or conference I had attended again for the listeners air quotes doing heavy lifting there with previous retreats
Jared Adams: They just always felt like there was an agenda to send you home believing even more fiercely the things you already believe.
Jared Adams: And some small voice told me that I might not have a chance like this any time soon, knowing
Jared Adams: what I carried from Everything Belongs and the very little bit I had read about the retreat, I just thought I want to seize this moment.
Jared Adams: And be open to this grand reorienting.
Jared Adams: I needed it in my life.
Brian Mueller: I'm hearing you say to the man who might be discerning whether or not to come is
Brian Mueller: Don't come with a lot of preconceptions.
Brian Mueller: Try to come with an open mind, an open heart.
Brian Mueller: And also, don't expect to leave with a lot of extra baggage or things like that.
Brian Mueller: You're probably going to leave a lot of stuff behind.
Brian Mueller: So.
Jared Adams: Yeah.
Brian Mueller: Yeah.
Brian Mueller: That's what I hear your your was your experience somewhat and what you might advise others as well to do.
Jared Adams: Yeah.
Jared Adams: And be be gentle.
Jared Adams: I think the Weavers probably still
Jared Adams: Give the the subtle warning.
Jared Adams: Be gentle with yourself afterwards, because it is disorienting, at least for me.
Jared Adams: Disorienting, but in a great way.
Jared Adams: Yeah, don't expect to plug in all these amazing insights that you might think you have.
Jared Adams: Just sit with them for a while.
Jared Adams: Let the dust settle.
Jared Adams: Let some of those layers reveal themselves.
Jared Adams: Pull over and cry for absolutely no no
Jared Adams: conscious reason.
Jared Adams: Don't feel like you have to run home to your family or friends and just start spilling everything that happened and explaining the significance of every single thing.
Jared Adams: There was very little I knew how to explain.
Jared Adams: I remember coming back in our kitchen and I just leaned kind of sat down in the corner of the cabinets and cried again.
Jared Adams: But I just felt such a relief.
Jared Adams: I thought that I might float away
Jared Adams: Because I did leave some baggage, I think.
Jared Adams: If you grew up similar to how I did, you you want to start analyzing and figuring out what it all means, what was significant about it, and what can I implement.
Jared Adams: I don't think there's there's anything to be anything of value for you to jump right to analyzing and trying to plug in the data.
Jared Adams: I'm still unwinding.
Jared Adams: I I mean, I've I saw some truths and realized things just talking with you here today in twenty twenty-six.
Jared Adams: So I think the MROP exists a little outside of time and space.
Jared Adams: If you really surrender to it, as opposed to, like we said at the beginning, another note-taking
Jared Adams: Selfie opportunity.
Jared Adams: It's none of those things.
Jared Adams: And it's the closest I feel like we can get to some really deep, honest, sacred truths.
Jared Adams: with just sticks and rocks without devices and big screens and all the entertainment and comforts.
Brian Mueller: Jared, thank you so much.
Brian Mueller: This has been wonderful to talk to you.
Brian Mueller: One of the great surprises to me and benefits of my own involvement in Illuman has been
Brian Mueller: of being part of this community for so many years and to being able to call brothers like you friends and even more than that.
Brian Mueller: I don't know, people may not be aware, but you've had deep involvement not only in your local chapter, Indiana, Michigan, but also in some of the national work.
Brian Mueller: been involved with helping chapters, like you said, set up registrations for MROPs.
Brian Mueller: You were involved with one of the web design
Brian Mueller: New web designs for Illuman.
Brian Mueller: org.
Brian Mueller: Last year, you helped us with the logos and stuff for the Awaken, you know, our annual gathering.
Brian Mueller: So much else I probably don't even know about, but
Brian Mueller: You're a beautiful man.
Brian Mueller: You're gifted.
Brian Mueller: You have a beautiful family.
Brian Mueller: And I really appreciate your vulnerability and telling your story.
Brian Mueller: I love you, brother.
Brian Mueller: Thank you so much.
Brian Mueller: Love your brother - any time.
Brian Mueller: For those listening who are now feeling a tug in their own soul and are curious to learn more, allow me to share a bit about the history of these rites.
Brian Mueller: The Men's Rites of Passage was originally developed by Father Richard Rohr, and was first offered at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, in nineteen ninety six.
Brian Mueller: While it was supported for many years by the Center for Action and Contemplation, since twenty twelve a Illuman has been the steward of this work.
Brian Mueller: Preserving and adapting the rites for men all over the world.
Brian Mueller: To learn more about the history and the theology behind this work, I highly recommend reading Adam's Return by Richard Rohr.
Brian Mueller: If you are ready to make your rites, there are four opportunities in the United States and another in the United Kingdom in twenty twenty-six.
Brian Mueller: The first is in Northern California, May thirteenth through the seventeenth.
Brian Mueller: the second in the United Kingdom, July twenty second through the twenty sixth, and in Illinois, August twelfth through the sixteenth.
Brian Mueller: There's one on the East Coast, in New Jersey, September sixteenth through the twentieth.
Brian Mueller: and the final one of the year is in Texas, which is in MROPN Umbrales, our Spanish language rites, September thirtieth through October fourth.
Brian Mueller: You can find details and registration information at Illuman dot
Brian Mueller: org
Brian Mueller: slash MROP, or Illuman dot
Brian Mueller: org slash events.
Brian Mueller: Additionally, mark your calendars for Awaken, the annual national gathering of Illuman.
Brian Mueller: taking place November fifth through the eighth in New Mexico.
Brian Mueller: You can find more at Illuman dot org slash awaken.
Brian Mueller: Finally, a special thank you to our sponsor, Choosing Presence.
Brian Mueller: If today's conversation moved you, I encourage you to bring more intentionality into your daily life.
Brian Mueller: Download the Practicing Presence app for free at choosingpresence dot
Brian Mueller: org slash app
Brian Mueller: It's a simple but profound way to stay connected to the journey we've discussed today.
Brian Mueller: Thank you for listening to Follow Me to the MROP.
Brian Mueller: Until next time, brothers, stay present.