What happens when a "top-heavy" intellectual, whose marriage and worldview are crumbling, lies face down in a dry creek bed and finally lets his body do the weeping?

In this twenty-second episode of Follow Me to the M-R-O-P!, host Brian Mueller sits down with Matthew Lyda for a deeply moving conversation about his 2018 initiation at Pilgrim Park, Illinois. Matthew, a spiritual director from Spartanburg, South Carolina, shares how he arrived at the rites in the midst of the "full catastrophe"—navigating interrupted dreams of living overseas, a marriage left in ashes, and a 30-year religious paradigm shift that was losing its grip on his life.

Episode Highlights

• The Top-Heavy Stick Figure: Moving away from a life dominated by head-knowledge to recovering a deep trust in the body's wisdom.
• The Dried Creek Bed: The visceral power of laying prostrate in nature and bypassing the thinking brain to release tears.
• The Grandfather Ambush: Unloading 20 years of hidden grief and the mysterious synchronicity that prepared him for a real-life loss.
• The 500-Year Rummage Sale: Navigating the terrifying freefall of a religious paradigm shift when deeply held beliefs stop working.
• A Warning for Young Men: Matthew's reverse-psychology advice on why you absolutely shouldn't attend the rites if you aren't ready to be loved and transformed.

Episode Specific Links

Matthew Lyda:

• Recover the Wild
• The Center for Sexual and Relational Health
• Recover The Wild: Unfiltered Poems and Prayers
• Defeated by Great Waters: Where is the hope inside of impossible places?

Links & Resources

• Choosing Presence (Sponsor)
• Practicing Presence App
• Illuman MROP
• Adam's Return by Richard Rohr
• Brian Mueller (Host)

Credits

• First and foremost, thank you to Matthew Lyda for sharing his journey and his heart with us today.
• Thank you to Fr. Richard Rohr and the men of Illuman who have stewarded the Men’s Rites of Passage since 1996.
• Thank you to Jim Heaney and Jim Taylor for their dedication to Choosing Presence.

Music Credits:

• Slow Mo Dreams by Soundroll
• Becoming a Legend by Vens Adams