by MKP USA Chairman Elect Julien Devereux
“Is there anything around here that a man shouldn’t do?”
When the Adventurer rides into the Village in the Iron John story he asks, “Is there anything around here that a man shouldn’t do?” He is directed to the King who tells him about the Woods where no one goes anymore because no one comes out and that he sent men in there to fetch something for his table that tasted “Wild”’ The adventurer goes into the Woods and discovers Iron John and you know the rest of the story. The King having a desire to taste something “wild” is what gets it all going and the adventurer looking for something “that a man shouldn’t do.”
Again, a taste for something new, wild, unknown, challenging is what many of us were looking for when we enrolled on the weekend. That’s what I was looking for and I found it in MKP USA. A brotherhood full of men looking for something, wild, unknown, challenging and what we find is our own Hero’s Journey, something we didn’t know we wanted or needed.
We leave with a mission and a connection to a global brotherhood of men looking for something…..something new, wild, unknown, challenging. Paradoxically, we are all looking for the same thing but when we find it, it is uniquely ours. Some of us find it engaging further in MKP USA. I go to my PIT Group, attend an I-group, become a PIT leader, take a role in the local community, enrolling men on the weekend, create and attend social events, create and participate in local service projects serving the larger community, staff weekends, join the NWTA Leader Track, do MOS on weekends, become a member, take a leadership position in the community, in the area, Nationally, Internationally. Because I have a particular gift that I didn’t know I had before my weekend, I offer that as well as a way to contribute. All are ways to contribute to my growth, men’s growth, personally, emotionally, spiritually, and in my community. Growth is the only evidence of Life, so how do you grow?
We grow by our willingness to face and rectify errors and convert them into assets. We do that by challenging the known with the wild, the unknown. A seed in the ground has the innate sense that it needs to grow. It does so by pushing itself into the dark unknown soil around it. If that ground has the appropriate nurturing mix of minerals, water, warmth, it has a chance to grow. In order for us to grow as individuals, we have to be planted in soil that has what we need to grow. So the seed instinctively grows toward the warmth and the light.
We as men instinctively grow towards the warmth of connection with others and the light of hope that changed grown men can in fact, change the World. When we bloom, unlike the seed, we become the gardeners that prepare and enrich the soil so that each seed planted has a better chance of growing straight, healthy, tall and blossoming into healthy masculinity individually enriching the surrounding garden. Everything we need is already ours, we just need to notice that we have a taste for something new, wild, unknown, and challenging and start growing towards it. What does your King have a taste for and what is your adventurer willing to do that a man shouldn’t do?
Julien Devereux
Chair Elect MKP USA
