Gentleman's Purpose - November 2020 Edition

NOVEMBER 2020

“BOND”ING FOR THANKSGIVING issuu.com/GentlemansPurpose

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At GP, we want to give a platform to men that enjoy creative writing to build their brothers up and to be financially encouraged in doing so. We also want to provide an opportunity to give generously to important causes, and to easily buy the products that Gentleman’s Purpose features.

Contributing Photographers Justin Gaynor

Annie Spratt

Christian Birkholtz

Christian Hardi

LongHuynh

Andreas160578

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Thomas Kaczynski

Stefan Alan

Rico Robinson

Julie Rose

A. Thiemermann 3

What’s In FAITH Seeing the Other Side, Pg. 8

STYLE It Takes Two To Tango Pg. 20

DINING Right Up Your Alley Pg. 32

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RELATIONSHIPS

Falling in Love Again, Pg. 14

BUSINESS Competition and Consistency,

by James Buchanan Pg. 26

The Vineyard Pg. 34

FEATURE “Bonding” for Thanksgiving, Pg. 38

nside BOOKS

Your Father’s Story Pg. 54

GEAR

Jesus was a Carpenter’s Son, Pg. 66

MUSIC

Modern Poetry: It Goes Like This

by M.E. Shoe, Pg. 60

TRAVEL

Christmas in Ireland, Pg. 69

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FAITH 6

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Seeing the Other Side Written by Justin Gaynor Seeing We all see through a lens and sometimes our lens can hinder us from seeing the other side.

Emotional intelligence is something that allows us to percieve and connect at a deeper level. There is, however, a way to connect and understand at an even deeper level. In the Scriptures, this is described as being “born again”. It is in this way that the inner man of the spirit comes alive again. In this way, what is called the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ becomes accessable. You can see and enter. Being born from above of water and Spirit is the only way to have this part of your humanity restored.

Breakthrough This breakthrough in your human development is purposed to empower you to embrace being truly human. Your level of faithfulness, hopefullness, and your ability to love genuinely will begin to increase. This experience has been testified to and described by Christians for thousands of years. It is something every child of God has in common. It is the inward testimony of God’s Spirit that assures us and helps us to ‘know, that we know, that we know’ that we belong to God as His beloved children.

Understanding With this new level of being human, there is a divine understanding that comes progressively in the form of a Spirit of wisdom and revelation. This wisdom is different from normal human wisdom. It is described as being, ‘first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.’ In gaining and walking in this new wisdom from Heaven a person is equipped to navigate the world in a way that is far more fruitful. We all have one Teacher. Israel’s Messiah, the Word of God, Jesus.

Judge Rightly With this divine wisdom that is equally available to everyone, through the Word of God, you can begin to judge rightly. Judging rightly involves hearing both sides of an issue, yet does not render judgement based on what you hear or see, rather, you begin to judge scenarios in accordance with the voice of God. His judgments are always higher and in accordance with His purpose for the renewal of all things in love.

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Relationships

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Falling in Love Again Written by Justin Gaynor

Falling in love again after a long-term relationship falls apart can be difficult.

We wonder if what we experienced was ever truly love to begin with. Whether it was or wasn’t, we take the time to lick our wounds, allow healing to happen, and then, Lord willing, get back in the game with a little more wisdom. That is the healthy way to go about it anyway.

There are coping mechanisms that are beneficial and others that can actually take you into a whirlwind of chaos, depression, and worse. So, in this article we are going to explore some healthy ways to embrace healing and wholeness after your heart has been broken.

Acknowledge Your Wounds Playing the tough guy and pretending like someone you spent years loving didn’t hurt you when she decided to part ways is stupid. You won’t be fooling anyone, including yourself. Spending time thinking through the ways a person hurt you in an honest way can be terrifying and very painful. Allowing yourself to feel these things in their fullness, with the hope for a brighter tomorrow is healthy and necessary though. Take a full account of the damage done.

Allow Healing Once you’ve prayerfully thought things through and taken a full account, then the tough work begins. You need to do something with this huge debt that is owed to you. If you bury it, trying to stomach the pain and bitterness, there will be negative fallout. Health problems, more broken relationships, and depression are highly likely to result. The answer, is to genuinely forgive the debtor(s). To take that full record of what went wrong and ask Jesus to lift the burden of it off of you, and to do with it as He sees appropriate.

Gain Wisdom The ancient writings tell us that wisdom that is from God is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. At this point, you will need to go and learn what this means with God. Don’t doubt though, He will teach you wisdom.

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Saturday Nights 8:30pm EST Faith Relationships Style Business Dining Books Music Gear Travel

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Style 18

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It Takes Two to Tango Written by Justin Gaynor

Learning to move through life with a woman requires skill, great timing, and an adventurous spirit. The tango is a dance that excites all of the senses and emotions. Its drama and passion has made it one of the most beloved of dances. Much can be learned from developing this skill. Lessons that will help to carry you and your beloved through years of having to improvise, adjust, and embrace graciousness.

You Need Instruction I don’t care who you are, men need instruction in something this profound and important. You will need instruction in learning the tango as well. If you happen to be in South Florida, my friend Fabien DeGuffroy would be happy to help you and the Mrs. to learn this insightful dance. My encouragement to you is to not miss the opportunity to consider the deeper applications of this dance to the rhythms of life with your wife.

Working Together Learning to dance will help you and your wife work together at a deeper level.

This skill can then be translated into how you do your finances, how you make decisions, how you worship and serve God, and...of course...how you make love. Working together on the spirit, soul, and physical level is vital to a fruitful relationship.

Commitment and Consistency Setting aside the time to learn to dance with your wife will require commitment and consistency. You have to show up. When I say show up, I mean you need to show up at every level. You will need to be intentional about disconnecting from all the other demands on your life and attention and commit to being fully present with her as you learn together.

The Joy of the Embrace In closing, learn to be embrace the unforced rhythms of God’s grace in your life together. You will both benefit greatly from this.

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Business 24

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Competition and Consistency Written by James Buchanan

When I was a boy my younger brother and I used to race BMX bikes and over time we became pretty good. We raced all over the state, my brother and I had taken our lawnmower and carved out a make-shift track in the woods near our house to practice on. It was South Florida so there was a lot of loose sandy dirt (very hard to pedal through). We had some jumps that we had made out of fallen trees and plywood from garbage piles we found around the neighborhood and the jumps got larger and larger as time went by.

Most of my friends shifted hobbies from bicycling to skateboarding to surfing, but my brother and I just stayed focused on racing bikes. It was an obsession for us. We learned how to set up our bikes for different tracks through our experiences in the woods. We would always do crazy things in the woods - like run huge gears so it was tough for us. That way, when we got to the racetrack it would be far easier.

We didn’t have very expensive bikes at first, I remember my dad saying,”When you start winning with this Huffy bike, we will start getting you better equipment.” That gave us something to aim for, it also let me know that he wanted to see if we were serious about the sport or if it was just gonna be some passing thing. I can remember when we started beating the local track guys and as a reward for our hard work we had gotten some decent bikes.

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Before each big race, we would study the new track, the turns, the jumps, each and every detail. One time, I remember we were in Daytona Beach racing a big state meet, I mean the best in Florida and Daytona and it was a very different track. It didn’t have a big starting hill you rolled down. You had to start pretty much on flat ground and it was a clay track. It had rained the whole weekend before so the track was very very muddy and all the kids in our age group had the super light bikes with super skinny rims and tires.

Since my brother and I had always been practicing in the rain and in the mud we knew exactly what set up to do: larger tires, smaller gears. We knew from the beginning, if we could get out in front quickly, they would be eating our dirt. Well let me tell you that was true. We came in first place in all three heats.

Then we came in first in the final race. That’s when I realized that champions are made in the off-season. Champions are made when no one is looking, in the rain and in the dirt.

When our friends were having fun and playing around we were practicing, we were grinding it out and figuring out what worked for different situations.

That really prepared me for everything we do in business. You see in business you have to be able to adapt quickly. Who knew that a few months ago we would have a worldwide pandemic? Most businesses had to change how we meet with clients among other things.

Racing BMX also taught me about consistency. You see, we had to show up every Friday night and race just to get the points to be able to qualify for the big state meet, even if we were sick and we didn’t want to.

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What I found out in sales and business was that not all your business comes from the first call or the first time you meet with the perspective client.

Actually, most sales people know it’s usually the fifth or sixth time when the sale or business happens. I also don’t agree with the whole mantra of, “everybody gets a trophy whether you win or lose.”

Sometimes you need to get beat and beat bad so you make yourself better.

Now what does this have to do with finance? Well, when I had first started in my business, I had a little experience and I got beat bad by a couple of other brokers. It drove me to get better, it drove me to develop better people skills, and to communicate more clearly to my clients how money works. I also learned that to get wealthy it takes time and consistency to win the race.

Just like my earlier racing days, it takes having a precise game plan to win the money game. If you’re shooting an arrow and there’s no target you’ll miss every time. To quote the great Yogi Berra the catcher for the New York Yankees, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else.”

Not everything’s gonna work out exactly how you want it at the exact time you want it, but if you stay competitive, and you stay consistent, you’ll beat 90% of the people out there, the other 10%, as they say, is a dogfight.

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Dining 30

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Right Up Your Alley Written by Justin Gaynor It was a dark and stormy night. The saltwater breeze was blowing while Florida rains pummeled the streets of old Boynton Beach. A little dramatic...ok, but it was a wet and dreary evening. I had an appointment in about an hour or so, but I was hungry and wanted to grab a bite to eat from a good restaurant.

Previously, I had a couple friends ask if I had ever tried Hurricane Alley in Boynton Beach, just a stone throw inland from the intracoastal waterway. This was my first experience dining with them.

I pulled right into a parking spot on the east side of the building. Seeing how busy it was, I counted myself lucky. Something seemed strange though. Never the less, I went inside and was greeted by a good looking hostess with a nice smile. Finding a seat wasn’t too bad, but the bar was pretty much at capacity.

My waitress promptly brought a menu and offered a couple beverage suggestions. They carry several locally brewed beers so I went with an IPA that had some nice citrus/grapefruit notes. I informed her that this was my first time at the restaurant and would be sharing about the experience in Gentleman’s Purpose eMagazine. She brought the restaurant manager over to chat with me for a few minutes. The manager explained a little further about what was going on with the restaurant as it relates to a recent article I had read in another publication. She then told me I better move my car or the neighbors will tow it!

Informed that I was on a tight schedule, the waitress worked quickly to get my entree order to the kitchen. She also promptly brought out a delicious appetizer of Oysters Rockefeller. The fish and chips that was to be my entree arrived shortly after I had finished the oysters and in good time. I asked my server about an advertisement I had seen on the menu. It turns out that the husband of the restaurant’s purveyor owns a fishing charter business that sails out of the harbor just across the street. If you have a good catch out on the boat with him, you can bring the fresh fish right into the restaurant and they will cook it however you like. So, I am thinking about a fishing trip...anyone interested?

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THE VIN An Interview with Jim Mann

I met Jim Mann all the way back in grade school in New Jersey. After high school, he attended the Widener University School of Law in PA and many moons passed, until a strange phenomenon called social media arose, and I found out Jim was Deputy Chief Counsel to the House Republican Caucus. I also found out he had taken his obsession with wine one step further than most, and had entered the world of homemade wine making.

He’d seasonally post photos of the process. Being that a few hundred miles now separated us, I’ve yet to have the privilege to taste his homemade goods, but thanks to Gentleman’s Purpose we can all at least take a sneak peak into the world of this Mann (no pun intended) who has circumvented the local wine shop and become his own bartender.

Joe Paul: What led you to journey into the land of the homegrown wine?

Jim Mann: I thought about making my own wine since the 1980’s when I was stationed at Fort Ord, CA. It’s near Carmel and Monterey and a short drive to Napa. Weird that a kid from Jersey finds himself thinking about being a vineyard and winery owner, but that’s about when it started for me. Since then, it’s become my retirement or lottery daydream.

Flash forward about 30 years, I put myself through college and law school and was working in the state House of Representatives in Pennsylvania - PA is one of the most backward states in the Union when it comes to alcohol sales (it’s us and Utah in a tie). The state controls everything. Anyway, I was tasked to lead a small team to develop a plan to privatize the wholesale and retail functions of the Liquor Control Board, shrink the bureaucracy, increase selection and convenience, decrease prices and end “border bleed” (people leaving the state to buy their booze because PA is just terrible).

I learned a lot about how badly consumers get screwed for the sake of preserving the bureaucracy, and what a fiasco it is when the government tries to act like private enterprise.

Well, that day dream of making my own wine kept coming back with some regularity. Finally, 6 years ago, I said “to hell with this.” It was time to stop talking about it and do it.

From there, I started drilling down on how the process worked. I read a lot; joined a winemaking forum (winemakingtalk.com); and waded in to making wine from home.

I started with wine kits... think Betty Crocker cake mix for adults. Kits include juice, skins, oak, yeast, sulfites. Everything you need to make a decent wine. They’re great to learn the basics of winemaking, with very little danger of making vinegar. The saying goes, “the wine is only as good as its base.” So, kit makers tend to buy the best kits they can afford. Check out Wine Expert and RJ Spagnols kits online sometime.

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Please Drink Responsibly

NEYARD Written by Joe Paul

Then, once I got the hang of the basics, I started experimenting with different yeasts, oaks and tannins.

In 1996, I made my first wine from grapes - a tannic, inky dark (we’re talking ‘stain your soul’ kind of dark) Petite Sirah I sourced from the Suisun Valley in CA. PS’s take years to mellow. I still have a case of it. Great decanted for a couple hours with a porterhouse for dinner or a good cigar at the fire pit later.

I still make kits throughout the year (but I like to get a little ‘Spinal Tap’ with my process - and turn the wine up to 11). But, every fall I source some CA grapes and try something new.

JP: How much of this is done by you personally versus outsourced.

JM: I do everything but grow the grapes. Crush, de-stem, alcohol ferment, malolactic ferment, press, oak, age, bottle, capsule, label... and my favorite part... drink.

JP: Are you working with multiple wineries, or is there one good one that you’ve stuck with?

JM: Grapes aren’t nearly as hard to get as you’d think. I live in central PA and am a two hour drive from 4 or 5 good distributors. I can get grapes from CA (regions like Lodi, Suisun, Sonoma, Napa), Oregon and Washington. The last few years, I’ve been ordering from Washington Area Winemakers (a nonprofit). They source Lodi, CA grapes through Delta Packing Co. The prices are decent, quality has been very good, and they do it as a fundraiser for Catholic senior living facilities.

JP: I saw a recent batch of the Chard where you had upwards of 60 bottles. Is this a typical order? How many bottles justifies the process?

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JM: That chard is actually a kit wine. Each kit yields about 30 (750ml) bottles. This one is my wife’s favorite. It’s a blend of Australian and California Chardonnay, with oak and a nice spice to it. Full bodied, almost dry... And, with that last run, I have about 8 cases of it in the basement. Mrs Mann is very happy.

I’d say 30 bottles is about the smallest I’d go. Any less and you run the chance of drinking it all before it gets really good.

So, kits are easy to figure out. One kit = 30 bottles +/- 2 bottles.

Wine from grapes is a math problem. Typically 10 lbs of grapes yields a gallon of must (grape skins, guts and seeds), which will yield about 70% in finished wine. So, for example, let’s look at what I just brought home.

I bought 12 lugs of wine. A lug is a box with about 36lbs of grapes in it. That will give me 432 lbs of grapes, or 43.2 gallons of must. And that will yield about 30 gallons of finished wine (or 150 bottles at the end of day).

JP: How many of these homemade bottles might you have in the cellar at any given time?

JM: Not going to lie - COVID has been really hard on my wine stash. I typically have about 400 bottles on the shelf and another 36 gallons in bulk storage. Right now, there might be 200 bottles, with another 45 gallons of finished wine in bulk, waiting to be bottled. That will add another 224 bottles when I finally get around to it.

A wine (like a sauv blanc) can take a year before it’s ready to drink. Reds can take 2-5 years, depending. Let’s say I drink an average of 3 bottles a week (Usually, it’s 2 a week, but with holidays and parties, let’s call it 3). That’s 156 bottles a year. So, the secret is to always have wine in the process. When in doubt - make more wine.

JP: You’re even doing the labeling yourself! Are you doing all of this work solo, or has the family been recruited?

JM: Family is around whenever I need an extra set of hands. But, so far they’re just heavily invested in the “wine drinking” part. My oldest daughter and her fiancé are interested in the process. I’ll invite them over in a couple weeks for press day. And, I’m working on my son.

He asked if we could make some mead. So, I sourced 20 lbs of raw honey from wildflowers and, when the active part of this wine making season is over, we’ll get to work on that.

JP: I see names on these wines like the cab called “Moondance”. Are you creating the names yourself? What’s the process there?

JM: I can spend 20 minutes or half a day in my wine room, depending on what needs to get done. And, I listen to music when I work - mostly classic rock, like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Van Morrison. Sometimes the name is obvious (I made a 16% ABV Amarone- style wine, so it had to be named after Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’). Other times it’s just the song that pairs with the wine in my head (my OVZ is named ‘Into the Mystic,‘ and that Cab is ‘Moondance,’ after two of my favorite Van Morrison songs). This year’s Malbec already has a name... ‘All Along the Watchtower.‘

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Please Drink Responsibly

JP: I saw that for 2020 you’re making two wines, one from fresh Lodi, CA, grapes - a field blended Super Tuscan, with a Sangiovese base, a Cab spine and Merlot to round the wine out. There was also a Malbec from France. I know the crops this year in California were smaller than prior years. What resources are you using to stay on top of this stuff?

JM: All the grapes are from California. We receive crop reports from Delta pretty regularly.

They communicate with their growers and produce a decent piece on what the season’s grapes are going to be like. There was a major concern with smoke from wildfires, but it never materialized, thankfully. And, the reports were pretty spot on. The grapes I got were in excellent shape and tested well (I check pH, TA and SG). These grapes will give me wine that can age for years and will come in at about 13.5 to 14% ABV. JP: You and I have had past discussions on how quickly you consume these gems. What’s the longest you’ve ever aged a bottle for? Are there any secret treasures lurking in the Mann wine cellar?

JM: I’m holding on to a few wines from 2016 - the PS and a PS- OVZ blend I did with a friend.

There’s a 2015 red blend down there that was a major disappointment until last year. It will make a nice Sangria.

But, I haven’t been doing it long enough to find that dusty old bottle of Cab from a decade ago. I hope to get there some day.

The French drink their parent’s wine and make wine for their children to drink. I like the thought of that. There’s really only one thing I need to do to make that work... Make more wine.

JP: Do you still find yourself going to the wine shop and buying established brands?

JM: Not too often. I’ll buy champagne (though I’m going to try an experiment this year, making a sparkling wine using the Champenoise method - should be fun). And, I’ll buy sweet wines for my daughters because I don’t make anything sweeter than off-dry. But, outside of that, I’ll buy something special only every now and again (like a Shafer or a Dominus).

My wines compare well with a bottle you’d get off the shelf for $15-25. Not bad considering it costs me about $5-7.50/bottle to make. Most are good; some are stellar. But, they’re all mine. When we have friends or family over for dinner or the holidays, other wines are welcome. But, most times, my wine is on the table.

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Feature 38

‘Bonding’ For

Thanksgiving

Written by Justin Gaynor

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A Warzone It has been lost somewhere in the devastation of normal life. Yet, every year we have an opportunity to search for it and rescue it. I am of course talking about the spirit of genuine gratitude that is, many times, so difficult to maintain track of. Sort of like an active two year old, sometimes it seems just as you get hold of him, he’s off someplace else.

We really have to be intentional about it, especially if we want it to be the ground that we bond from on this most beloved of holidays.

Focus on Our Blessings First, this Thanksgiving season, let’s overcome our tendency to slip into bitterness and cynicism and, rather, focus on our blessings.

Taking time to reflect on the past year, especially 2020, we are going to need to be really creative and ask for God’s help to see how all of it has been working together for our good.

That is a promise from God you know. It is written that ‘God will work all things together for the good of those that love Him and are called according to His purposes.’ So, it’s kinda like an excercise in creative writing. God is telling our story and it has some serious plot twists that take us from the depths of sorrow and unknowing to the heights of understanding His love for us.

Eventually, we learn that it is in our best interest to just focus on His steadfast love and faithfulness. It smooths out the emotional rollercoaster that we experience when our eyes are set too closely on the wrong things.

Let us count our blessings then, and don’t sidestep the difficult things.

Look for the plot twist.

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Family Matters With so many broken families in America these days its hard to imagine God’s purpose for thanksgiving in all that. This time of coming together, connecting, and bonding, sharing stories and a feast. Celebrating all that has been diligently worked and waited for as what it is: a harvest of blessing from God that commands thankful hearts to praise Him. Of course, in the midst of that, there are broken relationships. There are situations that have left families devastated. There have been divorces, deaths, and broken down cars. Can this be a time to not only focus on our blessings, but to choose to forgive and forget?

Can we use this time of bonding on the common ground of gratitude, to be thankful that our sins have been forgiven, and to allow that thankfulness to empower us to do for others what has been done for us? To die a little death to self and do the hard work of faith and forgive those that have done us wrong?

Can we allow our hearts to start to heal this Thanksgiving?

A Father’s Heart, A Mother’s Love If you are blessed enough to have a good woman this Thanksgiving, have you considered allowing this to be a season of revitalizing and strengthening your relationship with her?

I want you to give some serious thought to listening more, and communicating with your beloved. Let her know your intentions. If you have been through a particularly difficult year, you may want to bring in a pastor and his wife, or a deacon and deaconess, or a family counselor. Make the effort to fully leverage this season towards an even more fruitful 2021. Take the time to be intentional and specific about remembering that as husband and wife, you are in this thing together, and you are on the same team.

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Please Drink Responsibly

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The Faith of a Child Little children have a faith that makes them free. To them, there are no boundaries. They bust into the bathroom when you’re sitting on the toilet. They drop trough and run around naked in the yard. They simply love and trust you as their dad, and their mom.

They don’t question whether or not you will be there when they wake up in the morning. You are their parents and while none of us is perfect, we all get a very brief amount of time with our children.

God has entrusted these beautiful treasures to us. Now, at Thanksgiving, we get to remember that it is God’s desire for us to love and trust Him with child-like faith. In doing so, we show our kiddos that they have been doing good and they are perhaps well on their way to becoming really great people.

Can we use this Thanksgiving season to build up and strengthen our children together?

The Darkside of Thanksgiving The injustices associated with the American Thanksgiving holiday are no secret. There were significant cultural differences between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans. There were wars and murders and violence, there were lands conquered in all sorts of aweful ways.

Yet, here we find ourselves on the other side of the turmoil, in a land filled with diversity and opportunity. Americans are still learning the hard lessons of loving and respecting one another, and fearing God. Unfortunately, we have not come to a point in human existence where any of us can say we are without sin. So there is still a war being waged within us, a war between loving genuinely and desiring to put ourselves in the top spot. We are learning that we can flourish without having to put others down. There is a way forward, a way to win the race, and bring many others to glory with us. There is plenty to be thankful for.

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Memories: The Tapestry of Our Life Together Emerging from the dark forest of American history, and our own dark stories, we have a tremendous offer on the table. A chance to awake each day to new mercies. To learn from the dark seasons of life and history. We can choose something better, something greater. We can start this Thanksgiving season.

Let’s begin to gather up all of the memories and love our wives and children better. We can be intentional about participating in what it means to be thankful together. We can connect with our brothers and sisters. We can honor our fathers and our mothers. However, if we are going to do these things, let us not go it alone. Committing to common goals with one another will make our journey far more of a blessing.

A Happy Thanksgiving from everyone at Gentleman’s Purpose!

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Books 52

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Your Father’s Story Written by Justin Gaynor

This month’s showcase book isn’t so much a book you read as it is a book that will read you. It is designed as a journal to help a man break the ice with his dad. To talk about all of those things that so many men wish they had talked with their dad about, but never thought to until their father had passed away.

On the front cover it instructs you to give the book to your father and have him fill it out and just return it to you. I personally didn’t like that idea, so I called my dad and told him about the book. I asked him if we could walk through it together. He agreed and so we started some dialogue.

This made me happy. I love my dad very much and don’t get an opportunity to spend time with him nearly as much as I would like to, for various and mysterious reasons.

The conversation started off slow, a few questions about my dad’s siblings and his relationship with his father and mother. Within a few minutes we were both warming up a little, feeling somewhat nostalgic. I could tell that my dad was struggling a little when asked to think about some of these things. Family history is nice and flowery and whatnot for some people, but not everyone and not with all relationships or topics.

Working through these things with my dad feels a little like an adventure. I am learning new things about the man that my whole being originated through and that is pretty cool. It is also filling in the gaps on some events and correcting my understanding of others. All of these events have affected my dad in one way or another, and so they have also affected me. That is part of what it means to be part of one of the most important human relationships that exists. A father and son.

We haven’t completed the journey together yet. Actually, I feel as though we have barely gotten started. We have gotten started though... and sometimes, the first step is the most difficult.

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Available at Barnes and Noble

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Facebook.com/GentlemansPurpose

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Please Drink Responsibly

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Music 58

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MODERN POETRY It Goes Like This

by M.E. Shoes

Youth starts the engine Courage takes the wheel Love kicks the accelerator Exhileration is the feel Strength flexes the muscle Ego stares at the mirror Dreams scatter illusions Fantasy brings them nearer Creativity paints the canvas Emotion is a rhythmless dancer Devotion pulls the rip cord Curiosity wants an answer Vision takes in the present Memory scribbles the past Ambition charts the future Imagination makes it last Friendship writes the book Nostalgia draws the pictures Vanity grooms the look Belief gives the lectures Relaxation takes it in stride Impatience wants it faster Motivation takes you for a ride Humanity needs no master Even best guesses are hit or miss But it always goes like this...

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Gear 64

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Jesus Was A Carpenter’s Son Written by Justin Gaynor

The ancient writings tell us that Jesus had a mentor. Being the Son of God did not remove the need for Jesus to have a male mentor in his life. A man that would love him and guide him. This very human need of the divine Son, in becoming human, is part of what makes His story so compelling.

The humility is almost unfathomable. This man, Joseph, would be the father figure in His life until at least the age of 12. That is the last time we hear about Joseph in the Scriptures. He may have been there in the background some place, but we do not know for sure. What we do know is that it was important that Joseph was involved in Jesus’ life.

My grandfather was a wood-worker, a Canadian craftsman. I think back to his woodshop and what it was like. The smell of oak and cedar. All of the amazing things that he built: from the deck that ran about his home to the intricate birdhouses and other crafts. Somewhere along the way I picked up some of these skills.

My dad’s older brother owned a lumberyard, my dad was a stucco man, and my dad’s younger brother worked in hospitality and real estate. Each of these men have impacted my life significantly. In addition, I have a Ken. Ken is my step-dad. I have spent many hours through the years working with his extensive collection of tools in his garage building things. There I built everything from wooden signs for my mom’s restaurant to a Volkswagon Beetle for my highschool sweetheart. Having mentors in our lives as men is important.

So what does that have to do with gear? One of the best pieces of advice my younger brother ever gave me was to pick up a new tool every time I get paid.

This way, I don’t have to borrow other people’s tools and I will always be able to apply my aptitude for quality craftsmanship to a trade. I don’t think I’ve ever met a man I respected that didn’t love tools, own tools, and know how to handle tools.

Is there some skill you would like to learn or develop that requires you to build up a set of tools? Consider buying from Harbor Freight. I have found their tools to be high quality and quite reasonably priced. In closing, don’t keep your craft and skillset to yourself. Invest in teaching 2, 3, or a dozen younger people the things you know.

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Travel 68

Christmas in Ireland: Roundtrip tickets starting at $558 69

Start your Irish adventure traversing the C.S. Lewis Trail.

Discover the landscape that helped to inspire one of the most beloved writers in history as you visit the childhood stomping grounds of this amazing human.

Then discover what it’s like to play golf on some of the most renowned courses, hike around the beautiful countryside, and take up in some of the local pubs for a great time with delicious cuisine and, of course, a touch of Irish whiskey. Please Drink Responsibly

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