Print Vol. 9

Foreword

I have an assumption, one that colors the way I see the world and the way I interpret my life and the lives of the people around me. It’s more than an assumption, really. It’s become a bit of an inner conviction. I believe that most of us understate our experience. We play it down and we undersell or minimize to not be a problem or because we think that by squinting and minimizing we can change our reality. Perhaps it’s because no one has come by and offered the kindness of saying in our place, “Wow, that sounds really hard.”

I believe that each of us has been carrying our share of suffering and that to compare what you have walked through does little to process your own story and only makes those you compare with farther away, not closer.

I believe your journey toward wholeness, initiation, sonship or daughtership, hell…of even being present to the other people in the room for five minutes…has been filled with the fits and bursts that it has been for me.

I’ve adopted another conviction from psychologist and existentialist Irvin Yalom: If we refuse to face the great fear or pain or looming threat in our lives, we have only confirmed that it is, in fact, too big for us to handle. Sometimes death feels that way. Sometimes our marriages do, or our friendships, or the grocery bill, or the lonely quiet of our room at night.

Alone, our personal threats may be too big. We are not meant to walk that isolated path. Instead, I invite you, both through this volume of And Sons and through your internal posture throughout your day, to live this simple charge:

Be present.

Be curious.

Practice courage.

I will see you out there.

 – Sam Eldredge

Contents

The Fight to Keep Heart (and My Appendages)

The Line

The Purification Stone

On Marriage: Reflections from an Ice Bath

To Land Unseen

The Only Way Out Is Through

Nothing Is Lost

Taste Test: Sake

Life In-Between

Dawn Monsoon Jesus

The Hardest Hero

Able Shepherd

An Interview with Ben Greenfield

Will You Show Me How?

Hearing the Voice of God For Yourself

Contributors

WRITERS

Ben Manly, Ben Richardson, Blaine Eldredge, Brandon Palma, Daniel Terpin, Erik Swenson, Ethan Bolze, John Eldredge, Josh Skaggs, “Kate”, Luke Eldredge, Sam Eldredge

ARTWORK & PHOTOGRAPHY

Annie Spratt, Bundo Kim, Eberhard Grossgasteiger, Erik Swenson, Francisco Ungaro, Lukas Arias, Manuel Velasquez, Sebastian Unrau, Wookie Jones

DESIGN & LAYOUT

Wookie Jones