Presence. Intention. Integrity.

These are our Values. This is what Honor means to us.

Heroism

We hold those in honor who live as heroes. A hero is someone within a community who embodies the values of that community, acting as an exemplar for others within the community to emulate. By holding a hero in honor, the community’s core values are empowered to influence the behavior of all the members in synergy.

Sagehood

We hold those in honor who pursue sagehood. Sagehood is the maturity we only access by choice. We grow from infancy to childhood by accident, stumbling into it. We are then forced from childhood to adulthood by necessity, and then tend to stall there without external pressures pushing us to grow further. Sagehood is the maturity we enter into by pushing past our comfort zones and choosing the harder but better path.

Culture

We hold those in honor who engage with the culture inside and outside the Church by means of the act of creation. Culture is the traditioning of values from one generation of a community to the next by means of story, art, and ritual. We seek out the good, the true, and the beautiful both within and without Christianity and dialog with it proactively. We are activists, not reactionaries. We are not armchair critics of culture, we are proactive creators of culture for the flourishing of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Choice

We hold those in honor who opt into the values of our community by incorporating them into their regular behavior patterns and actions.

We hold those in honor who accept correction when they fail to live out the values of our community.

By opting in, you become a hero. Everyone in the community of the Academy is a hero. Some within our community are doubly heroes, for they have proven to live as heroes among heroes, and we hold them in double honor.

By failing to live up to the honor expected of sage herohood and choosing to not correct that failure you opt out of honor, herohood, and the community of the Academy.

Community

We hold those in honor who devote themselves to our community with vulnerability and defend each other in their vulnerability. Everything we do, we do together. The quality of the community of the Academy is our own quality. We adopt each other. Community is the catalyst that drives lasting transformation.

We hold those in honor who courageously develop relationships that are both intimate and chaste. Part of our mission is to redeem nonsexual physical expressions of friendship and trust as normative parts of human experience. Alongside this, we believe holistic platonic intimacy requires physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual expressiveness. To succeed in this, we celebrate the distinctive roles and glories of both the masculine and the feminine within the unity of humanity.

Growth

We hold those in honor who are dedicated to continual, consistent, purposeful growth towards meaningful accomplishment. We develop ourselves as fully human beings, intentionally pursuing excellence in every dimension. We are not focused on individual pass/fail goalposts to the exclusion of persistence along the journey of transformation.

We hold those in honor who choose to grow through challenges whether sought out or encountered. We embrace hardship with joy. We eschew comfort zones. We take inconvenience and actively seek ways to invest that discomfort into our own transformation. We look to add value to those around us in every situation, no matter how disadvantaged.

Key areas of growth we prioritize together include:

Development of Skill Capital

Polymathy – skill diversity across multiple domains – is our goal. Increasing the depth and breadth of your skills creates more intersections of capability creating unique connections not otherwise possible. We have seen an increasing shortage in artisanal and heritage skills within society, leading to a danger of their irrecoverable loss. At the Academy, we seek to expand our ability in a wide variety of domains, increasing the total functional capacity and confidence of ourselves individually, of the Academy community as a whole, and of society at large.

Development of Relational Capital

Relationships are the most powerful resource known to mankind. Authentic connection within a healthy community is the catalyst for personal and societal revolution. Community is the engine that drives lasting transformation. The quality and quantity of relationships you have has been proven to directly and causatively correlate with every measurable kind of success. We intend to cultivate relationships, community, and culture of the highest caliber so that we can accomplish goals of the highest merit.

Development of Maturity Capital

Maturity capital is the intentional investing of one’s energy, time, and resources into the development of character. Hardship is converted to growth by choosing that it should do so. More than cultivating capacity, this cultivates the application of our capacity, increasing our impact and wellbeing exponentially. By seeking to transform who we are on a fundamental level, we liberate ourselves from the tyranny of the default.