Canyon Pathways Podcast

Jacob Johnson is the founder of Calion Wax Company, a home fragrance social enterprise that has donated nearly $900,000 to U.S.-based nonprofits fighting human trafficking since launching in 2017. But the number is just the surface. 

Underneath it is a kid who grew up with a front-row seat to his pastor father's hidden life — the scripture readings at 6 a.m., the moral failures after dark, and the arrest in Jacob's senior year of high school that ended the relationship. Jacob went into college with a plan: study criminal justice, become a cop, stop men like his dad. Every law enforcement agency he applied to said no. 

In this episode of the Canyon Pathways podcast, Luke Smith sits down with Jacob to trace the story from that rejection through a transformative summer with CRU in Santa Cruz, California, to a chance candle idea that became a mission, a marriage, and a slow, ongoing education in what it means to live not as a son striving to earn his keep — but as a son who is already enough. Jacob also shares what happened when Noel Bouché prayed over him at a Canyon Pathways retreat and gave him the word 'light' — his knee-jerk resistance (he runs a candle company and was trying to get away from candles), and the moment the real meaning broke him open. If you are a man who has been performing your way through leadership and faith and wondering why it still feels hollow, this conversation was recorded for you. Canyon Pathways runs free retreats for men in midlife leadership. Learn more and find upcoming gatherings at CanyonPathways.org.

Key takeaways

• Performance and faith can wear the same face — Jacob grew up in a home with daily scripture and deep moral failure happening simultaneously, and names the confusion that creates for a son trying to understand God
• The word 'light' at a Canyon Pathways retreat initially annoyed Jacob (he runs a candle company and wanted a break from candles) — but Noel Bouché's meaning, that God's burden and yoke are light, became one of the most freeing things he had ever heard
• Jacob applied to multiple law enforcement agencies after his father's arrest, was rejected by all but one, and names that closed door as the moment God redirected him toward Calion Wax Company and a $900,000 anti-trafficking mission
• Forgiving his father — whom he has not seen since the 2012 arrest — was not optional before marriage; a mentor pushed him to do the work first, and Jacob describes forgiveness as the thing that lowered the walls enough for God to go deeper
• The sonship message Jacob would give teenage Jacob, and the word he offers the Canyon brotherhood at the close: 'You are enough. In Christ, we are enough. We are secure.'

Resources

• Subscribe so every episode drops right into your feed.
• More field notes: canyonpathways.org/blog
• Bring our table to your inbox — the weekly devotional: canyonpathways.org/meditations
• About Canyon Pathways: https://www.canyonpathways.org/about
• Learn about our retreats: https://www.canyonpathways.org/retreats
• The Heart of Man Film: http://heartofmanmovie.com
• The Canyon Pathways Spotify playlist: https://canyonpathwayspodcast.com/cpspotify
  
  

Produced by the team at Maroon Harpoon LTD. Thank you to our donors who make this venture possible — and thank you, friend, for being part of this Canyon Pathways community as we together live like sons and lead like fathers.

In this episode of the Canyon Pathways podcast, host Noel Bouché explores the profound depth of what it means to be intentional. Drawing inspiration from an unlikely source—the 90s alt-rock hit "Father of Mine" by Everclear—Noel unpacks how intentionality is less about strategic planning and more about the relational effort of reaching toward another.

From the etymology of the word to the character of God as an intentional Father, this field note challenges the "box-checking" mentality of leadership and parenting. Noel invites us to move beyond mere methods and into the heart-level work of stretching out our hands to those we lead, mirroring the way Abba reaches out to us. It is a call to move from the striving of servanthood into the restful security of sonship, finding wholeness in the places that are often the hardest to reach.

Takeaways

• Intentionality is about motives, not just methods. Taking someone to the beach or the movies is just a means; the true goal is reaching the inner person.
• To be intentional is to "stretch out." Rooted in the Latin intendere, it literally means to reach toward another with effort, energy, and passion.
• True intentionality requires relational humility. It means setting aside our own agendas to discover what brings joy and delight to the other person.
• God is the ultimate Intentional Father. He is not distant or passive; He is constantly reaching out to rescue, comfort, and deliver His children.
• Our response to being reached is to reach back. We are invited to stretch out our hands in response to God, moving from fear into the freedom of being a beloved son.
• Intentionality pushes back chaos. By providing order and focus, purposeful intent acts as a proactive force against the dehumanizing disorder of life.

Download Reflection Questions

Subscribe to the Canyon Pathways podcast and visit canyonpathways.com for show notes, discussion questions, and new episodes. Join us as we live like sons and lead like fathers.

Resources

• Subscribe so every episode drops right into your feed.
• More field notes: canyonpathways.org/blog
• Bring our table to your inbox — the weekly devotional: canyonpathways.org/meditations
• About Canyon Pathways: https://www.canyonpathways.org/about
• Learn about our retreats: https://www.canyonpathways.org/retreats
• The Heart of Man Film: http://heartofmanmovie.com
• The Canyon Pathways Spotify playlist: https://canyonpathwayspodcast.com/cpspotify
  
  

Produced by the team at Maroon Harpoon LTD. Thank you to our donors who make this venture possible — and thank you, friend, for being part of this Canyon Pathways community as we together live like sons and lead like fathers.

As 2025 draws to a close, I had the rare gift of sitting down with my brothers Sherman Bradley and Luke Smith for a roundtable conversation—not to wrap things in a neat bow, but to stay in the tension of grace, truth, and what it means to be sons who stay at the table.

This year has been marked by growth, correction, encouragement, and a few hard conversations. And what we've learned—what we keep learning—is that spiritual maturity doesn’t look like control. It looks like surrender. Not as a posture of defeat, but of trust. Of humility. Of remembering we belong, even when we blow it.

In this episode, we reflect on some of the moments that shaped us this year—not as leaders first, but as sons. We talk about truth-telling, being misunderstood, choosing to stay present, and practicing the kind of grace that actually costs something.

Reflection Themes

• Grace and truth are not opposites—they are companions on the journey of transformation.
• The invitation of sonship is not to perform, but to be received.
• Sometimes, the deepest spiritual growth comes through relational courage.
• Community is where sonship is tested, refined, and revealed.
• As the year closes, we ask: Where do we still reserve part of ourselves? Where is the Father inviting surrender?

What You'll Hear

• Why confession is a doorway into grace—not shame
• How we’re learning to lead from sonship, not performance
• The cost and beauty of staying at the table when it would be easier to leave
• Why memory, laughter, and honesty are vital to becoming trustworthy men
• A communal reflection on the year—and what still lies ahead

Resources

• Subscribe so every episode drops right into your feed.
• More field notes: canyonpathways.org/blog
• Bring our table to your inbox — the weekly devotional: canyonpathways.org/meditations
• About Canyon Pathways: https://www.canyonpathways.org/about
• Learn about our retreats: https://www.canyonpathways.org/retreats
• The Heart of Man Film: http://heartofmanmovie.com
• The Canyon Pathways Spotify playlist: https://canyonpathwayspodcast.com/cpspotify
  
  

Produced by the team at Maroon Harpoon LTD. Thank you to our donors who make this venture possible — and thank you, friend, for being part of this Canyon Pathways community as we together live like sons and lead like fathers.

Patrick Rooney is a husband, father of four, entrepreneur, and investment professional who has spent more than a decade living and working in the United Kingdom. He grew up in Wheaton, Illinois — one of the most church-dense communities in America, by his own admission — played collegiate football, and built a career in financial services that regularly puts him in rooms with billionaires. And yet it wasn't until a friend pointed him toward a Canyon Pathways retreat in Naivasha, Kenya that something fundamental shifted.

In this conversation with Sherman Bradley, Patrick unpacks the word 'wealth' through the lens of a man who has seen money up close: what it promises, what it can't deliver, and why he's watched a 'pretty high correlation' between extreme financial wealth and deep unhappiness. He connects that observation to the Canyon Pathways distinction between accumulation and access — and to the biblical truth that sonship grants an inheritance no performance can earn.

Patrick also shares the story of the personal word given to him at the retreat — 'route' — and how a Matthew 2:12 verse landed with pinpoint accuracy on the way God has always spoken to him: through dreams. Three nights of vivid dreams at the retreat directly shaped a major career decision he made upon returning home.

The conversation moves through fatherhood (twin 13-year-old sons, and the tension between systematic parenting and raising children to find their own path), marriage, a career-ending ankle injury at the start of his senior year of college, and the slow realization that striving — even the Christian kind — isn't the same as sonship.

If you're a man in midlife who has hit the markers and still feels hollow, or who is leading everyone else but no one is fathering you, this episode was made for you. Learn more and find a retreat at CanyonPathways.org.

Key takeaways

• Access is a clearer indicator of wealth than accumulation — the elder brother in Luke 15 had everything available to him as a son but didn't feel it, because access is relational, not earned (Noel's field-note recap, ~02:46–04:25)
• The word 'wealth' originally meant well-being — financial, relational, emotional, physical, and spiritual — not simply monetary accumulation (~04:31–05:08)
• Patrick found that spending an extra hour with God produced better outcomes in his work than spending an extra hour at the computer — and that the hardest part was explaining that to his boss (~19:07–19:34)
• The Canyon Pathways retreat surprised Patrick most with its lack of a rigid schedule — and the unstructured space to rest was the very thing that opened him to receive; people in his church noticed a change in him before he said a word about it (~34:36–35:22)
• Sonship changes the fundamental stance from 'if I do this I'll get this' to 'this is my Father and I know that I have this, whether I've earned it or not' — and Patrick found that shift pervasive in his fatherhood, marriage, and calling (~21:10–21:28)

Resources

• Subscribe so every episode drops right into your feed.
• More field notes: canyonpathways.org/blog
• Bring our table to your inbox — the weekly devotional: canyonpathways.org/meditations
• About Canyon Pathways: https://www.canyonpathways.org/about
• Learn about our retreats: https://www.canyonpathways.org/retreats
• The Heart of Man Film: http://heartofmanmovie.com
• The Canyon Pathways Spotify playlist: https://canyonpathwayspodcast.com/cpspotify
  
  

Produced by the team at Maroon Harpoon LTD. Thank you to our donors who make this venture possible — and thank you, friend, for being part of this Canyon Pathways community as we together live like sons and lead like fathers.

In this Field Note episode of the Canyon Pathways podcast, I reflect on the complex and often misunderstood idea of wealth. At midlife, many of us are asking deeper questions about what it means to be secure, successful, and significant. But what if true wealth has less to do with accumulation and more to do with access?

Through the lens of sonship, we explore how wealth shows up not only in financial resources, but in relationships, health, peace, and a sense of belonging. Servants strive to earn; sons inherit. This episode invites you to reconsider the metrics you use to measure your well-being—and to receive the inheritance of relational and spiritual abundance available to you as a son of the Father.

Key Takeaways:

• Wealth is not just financial—it’s relational, emotional, and spiritual.
• Access is a clearer indicator of wealth than accumulation.
• Community and connection are central to well-being.
• Comparison robs us of the peace that wealth can bring.
• Inheritance, not hustle, defines the wealth of a son.
• Financial security is meaningful, but not the whole story.
• Midlife leadership often surfaces questions about legacy and meaning.

Reflection Questions: https://canyonpathwayspodcast.com/wealth

Resources

• Subscribe so every episode drops right into your feed.
• More field notes: canyonpathways.org/blog
• Bring our table to your inbox — the weekly devotional: canyonpathways.org/meditations
• About Canyon Pathways: https://www.canyonpathways.org/about
• Learn about our retreats: https://www.canyonpathways.org/retreats
• The Heart of Man Film: http://heartofmanmovie.com
• The Canyon Pathways Spotify playlist: https://canyonpathwayspodcast.com/cpspotify
  
  

Produced by the team at Maroon Harpoon LTD. Thank you to our donors who make this venture possible — and thank you, friend, for being part of this Canyon Pathways community as we together live like sons and lead like fathers.

In this episode of the Canyon Pathways Podcast, host Sherman Bradley welcomes his longtime friend and brother, Dr. Pastor Jackie Jackson—a seasoned pastor, teacher, and community leader whose story spans decades of ministry, reconciliation, and faithfulness. Together, they unpack two deeply connected words in Jackie’s Canyon journey: Reserve and Surrender.

This conversation is rich with wisdom from a life poured out—through urban ministry, police chaplaincy, global missions, authorship, and spiritual fathering. Jackie shares how growing up with inner tension between holding back and giving all has shaped his path, and how God has been present in every space: the pulpit, the precinct, the prison, and the prayer room.

For every man navigating midlife leadership, this episode offers a mirror and a map—helping you discern what to hold, what to release, and how to live more fully as a son.

Key Takeaways

• Reserve is often formed by trauma—but it can also be stewarded by wisdom.
• Surrender doesn’t mean passivity; it means trusting the Father's voice more than your own.
• Ministry without sonship often leads to burnout or bitterness.
• God’s grace shows up in prison cells, police stations, and places we least expect.
• There’s a difference between being used by God and being known by God.
• The tension between reserve and surrender is part of the maturing journey of sonship.
• Teaching and fathering others invites us to revisit our own inner postures.
• Midlife is not a crisis—it's an invitation to release, recalibrate, and receive again.

Resources

• Subscribe so every episode drops right into your feed.
• More field notes: canyonpathways.org/blog
• Bring our table to your inbox — the weekly devotional: canyonpathways.org/meditations
• About Canyon Pathways: https://www.canyonpathways.org/about
• Learn about our retreats: https://www.canyonpathways.org/retreats
• The Heart of Man Film: http://heartofmanmovie.com
• The Canyon Pathways Spotify playlist: https://canyonpathwayspodcast.com/cpspotify
  
  

Produced by the team at Maroon Harpoon LTD. Thank you to our donors who make this venture possible — and thank you, friend, for being part of this Canyon Pathways community as we together live like sons and lead like fathers.

There’s a kind of strength we rarely talk about—one that doesn’t come from pushing through or pressing harder, but from loosening our grip.

In this Field Note, I reflect on the quiet courage of surrender. Not the surrender of defeat, but the surrender of trust. Of handing back what was never ours to hold in the first place. From Jeremiah’s counsel to the parable Jesus told in Luke 15, I’ve been moved by how surrender invites us—not into passivity, but into deeper agreement with the Father.

We don’t lose when we surrender. We receive what only the Father can give.

Key Takeaways:

• Surrender is not the end—it’s the beginning of agreement with the Father.
• We are not called to surrender into nothing, but into relationship.
• The journey from servanthood to sonship often moves through surrender.
• What we give back, God receives—and what He returns is always more.
• Rest is not passivity; it’s trust. It’s identity. It’s remembering we are sons.

Scriptures to Reflect On:

• Luke 15 – The younger and older sons
• Jeremiah 38:21 – “But if you refuse to surrender…”

Questions for the Journey:

• Where in your life is God inviting you to surrender—not out of fear, but into relationship?
• What are you still trying to earn, prove, or hold onto?
• What do you believe God wants to place in your hands if you’ll let go of what’s there now?

Episode Reflection Questions: https://canyonpathwayspodcast.com/surrender

Resources

• Subscribe so every episode drops right into your feed.
• More field notes: canyonpathways.org/blog
• Bring our table to your inbox — the weekly devotional: canyonpathways.org/meditations
• About Canyon Pathways: https://www.canyonpathways.org/about
• Learn about our retreats: https://www.canyonpathways.org/retreats
• The Heart of Man Film: http://heartofmanmovie.com
• The Canyon Pathways Spotify playlist: https://canyonpathwayspodcast.com/cpspotify
  
  

Produced by the team at Maroon Harpoon LTD. Thank you to our donors who make this venture possible — and thank you, friend, for being part of this Canyon Pathways community as we together live like sons and lead like fathers.

What does it mean to be a peacemaker when you've grown up inside a family that war almost destroyed? George Romeos — co-founder of Cosmovision ministry in Athens, Greece, and a key host for Canyon Pathways retreats on the island of Aegina — sits down with Luke Smith to answer that question through the lens of his own extraordinary family history.

George's mother, Irini — whose name means peace — was excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox Church at sixteen for asking her priest too many honest questions about the Bible. She left her island alone, walked post-war Greece with no buses or trains, and eventually built a life and a faith that would outlast every institution that tried to silence her. George's father came from the other direction entirely: a communist fighter who survived four years of German occupation in Greece, was convicted under the death penalty, and spent seven years in prison while guards knocked on his door every single morning and told him today was his day. He never died. When he finally accepted Christ, he understood Paul's 'die daily' in a way most men never will.

That is the soil George came from — and it shapes everything in this conversation. George and Luke trace the concept of peace from Greek mythology (the city that chose Athena's gift of peace over Poseidon's promise of victory in every war, and named itself Athens after her) through the declaration of war in Genesis, the angels announcing peace at the birth of Jesus, and the covenant that the Prince of Peace established at the cross. They sit with the tension that Jesus himself named: 'I did not come to bring peace but a sword' — and what it costs, practically and personally, to be a peacemaker in a world still at war.

The conversation moves into the thirty-year story of Cosmovision, the ministry George built in Athens as waves of refugees arrived — Eastern Europeans after the Iron Curtain fell, Syrians in 2015, North Africans, Indians and Pakistanis, and most recently IDF soldiers. Over two thousand baptisms and counting. And the unforgettable scene from a 1992 Balkan conference where nations that had been shooting at each other weeks earlier stood up mid-service and began serving each other communion — Turks to Cypriots, Greeks to Turks, Kosovars to Albanians — while reporters watched.

For Canyon Pathways brothers in midlife leadership, George's closing word is direct: peace doesn't come through programs or presidents. It comes through peacemakers. And peacemakers are not the strong, the firstborn, or the well-resourced — they are the ones who have made peace with God, who fear not, and who are willing to die to themselves daily so that something more beautiful can come up next to the old self, the way Alexander the Great built his cities not by destroying what was already there but by building something new beside it.

This is one of the richest conversations in the Canyon Pathways catalog. Come to the table.

Key takeaways

• Peace is not the absence of war — it is a covenant, a pact, a formed agreement. George traces this from the Latin root 'pacem' through Greek mythology (Athens chose Athena's gift of peace over Poseidon's offer of victory) to the new covenant Jesus established at the cross.
• George's father survived seven years on death row with guards knocking daily. That daily practice of dying — literal and figurative — became the spiritual foundation for his family's legacy of fearlessness and peace.
• Peacemakers are made, not appointed. George argues that peace can only come through people who have first made peace with God — and that the biblical pattern is that God tends to work through the underdog, the second-born, the least likely.
• The Father's table is real and it crosses every war. George witnessed Turks and Cypriots, Greeks and Albanians — nations at war weeks earlier — rise spontaneously at a 1992 conference and serve each other communion. That scene is his lived proof.
• Cosmovision's model for loving refugees: work alongside them (not charity to them), eat with them, teach them a trade, and let the gospel arise naturally from shared meals and shared labor — dignity first, always.

Resources

• Subscribe so every episode drops right into your feed.
• More field notes: canyonpathways.org/blog
• Bring our table to your inbox — the weekly devotional: canyonpathways.org/meditations
• About Canyon Pathways: https://www.canyonpathways.org/about
• Learn about our retreats: https://www.canyonpathways.org/retreats
• The Heart of Man Film: http://heartofmanmovie.com
• The Canyon Pathways Spotify playlist: https://canyonpathwayspodcast.com/cpspotify
  
  

Produced by the team at Maroon Harpoon LTD. Thank you to our donors who make this venture possible — and thank you, friend, for being part of this Canyon Pathways community as we together live like sons and lead like fathers.

In this Field Note episode of the Canyon Pathways podcast, Noel Bouché reflects on the true nature of peace—not as a passive absence of conflict, but as a courageous and costly reality rooted in covenant. Drawing on the ancient understanding of peace as shalom and its connection to sonship, Noel explores how peace is formed through sacrifice, maintained through covenant, and often misunderstood when defined merely as comfort or the avoidance of tension.

Through personal insight and spiritual reflection, Noel invites us to consider where we have made agreements with shame, confusion, or fear in order to keep the peace—and whether those agreements are actually stealing the very peace we long for. He reminds us that God’s peace is not forged through control or appeasement, but through love, invitation, and trust in the Father’s provision.

Key Takeaways

• True peace is not the same as passivity or comfort; it comes at a cost.
• Biblical peace (shalom) is rooted in wholeness and relational harmony.
• We often trade true peace for false agreements in the name of “keeping things peaceful.”
• The Father invites us to the table not as servants, but as sons—at peace with Him.
• Real peace requires covenant, sacrifice, and often a death to self.
• Jesus is our model of peace, secured through the cross—not through avoiding conflict.
• Shame and fear can masquerade as peacekeepers but ultimately undermine wholeness.
• Sonship is the foundation of spiritual peace; it is received, not earned.

Download Reflection Questions

Subscribe to the Canyon Pathways podcast and visit canyonpathwayspodcast.com for show notes, discussion questions, and new episodes. Join us as we live like sons and lead like fathers.

Resources

• Subscribe so every episode drops right into your feed.
• More field notes: canyonpathways.org/blog
• Bring our table to your inbox — the weekly devotional: canyonpathways.org/meditations
• About Canyon Pathways: https://www.canyonpathways.org/about
• Learn about our retreats: https://www.canyonpathways.org/retreats
• The Heart of Man Film: http://heartofmanmovie.com
• The Canyon Pathways Spotify playlist: https://canyonpathwayspodcast.com/cpspotify
  
  

Produced by the team at Maroon Harpoon LTD. Thank you to our donors who make this venture possible — and thank you, friend, for being part of this Canyon Pathways community as we together live like sons and lead like fathers.

David Kosobucki came to the Canyon Pathways retreat in Spearfish, South Dakota, not knowing what the retreat was about. What he found there mirrored almost exactly what God had already been doing in him — quietly, over decades, pressing him toward a question he hadn't been able to name: What does it mean to be a son?

On paper, David's credentials are substantial: lead pastor at Horizon Central City Way Church, provost of Horizon University, and author of Fatherless: Reflections on the Fatherhood of God. But his origin story carries a different kind of weight. His birth certificate listed his father's name as blank and his own name simply as 'male.' His birth mother, Francis, had given birth to three children by three different fathers before David was taken into foster care and eventually adopted. His adoptive father died when David was thirteen. His adoptive mother's cognitive limitations meant that from early elementary school, David had more comprehension than any adult in his household — and no one to guide him.

What followed was a life shaped by that absence in ways David couldn't always see: a teenage encounter with a Genesis album that led him to pull an old Catholic Bible off a basement shelf, a friendship that led him to Christ at sixteen, a cross-country move to San Diego and the Calvary Chapel movement, and ultimately years of smuggling Bibles into Soviet-era Eastern Europe — including a now-legendary winter evening in Rostov-on-Don when a little girl pulling her brother on a sled said, 'yeah, we're Baptists — I'll take you home and introduce you to my father.'

For all of it, David says, he still hadn't fully internalized what it meant to be a son of God the Father. It wasn't until his fifties — watching his adoptive mother decline, reckoning with how insufficient his parenting had been, and sitting with the Canyon Pathways community — that the move from comprehension to understanding finally happened.

Luke Smith and David explore the distinction Noel Bouché unpacks in this episode's Field Note: understanding isn't grasping and controlling, it's standing under — near to a person, near to a promise. For men in midlife who have been leading everyone else while quietly starving for someone to lead them, this conversation is both a mirror and an invitation.

David's book Fatherless: Reflections on the Fatherhood of God is available now.

Key takeaways

• Comprehension and understanding are different things: comprehension is grasping and controlling, understanding is standing under — near to a person and a promise. A son lives in understanding, not comprehension. (Noel's Field Note, ~00:02:25–00:05:07)
• 40% of men now grow up without a father in their life — which makes it harder, not impossible, to receive God as Father. God, David says, 'more than compensates for anything that we've been missing.' (~00:16:10–00:18:23)
• You can spend decades in ministry comprehending the fatherhood of God without ever internalising it as a son. David didn't recognise it as a deficit until his fifties. (~01:02:42–01:04:42)
• The people around us who love us can often see what we need before we can — Rob brought David to Canyon Pathways; Luke and Noel pushed him to finish the book. The community is part of the path. (~00:14:54–00:15:14)
• It's never too late. Noel's closing word: 'even at that point, even with all of that, it wasn't until recently… and incredible fruit now coming from it.' (~01:14:06–01:14:30)

Resources

• Subscribe so every episode drops right into your feed.
• More field notes: canyonpathways.org/blog
• Bring our table to your inbox — the weekly devotional: canyonpathways.org/meditations
• About Canyon Pathways: https://www.canyonpathways.org/about
• Learn about our retreats: https://www.canyonpathways.org/retreats
• The Heart of Man Film: http://heartofmanmovie.com
• The Canyon Pathways Spotify playlist: https://canyonpathwayspodcast.com/cpspotify
  
  

Produced by the team at Maroon Harpoon LTD. Thank you to our donors who make this venture possible — and thank you, friend, for being part of this Canyon Pathways community as we together live like sons and lead like fathers.