Patricia Jamie Lee

This is night four and here is Chapter 4.  I love this chapter and feel like if we paid attention to this, we really could recreate a vibrant initiation and rite of passage ritual for our young.  It would, however, ask a lot of us.  We’d have to shut down some equipment, say no more often, and spend more time talking to our children.  As I was proofing the chapter, I was thinking again of Dr. Rita Smilkstein’s book, We’re Born to Learn.  Do check out this book at www.borntolearn.net  And as usual, send me a note or sign up for my blog.  To those of you preparing to head to Hawaii for the Global Passageways retreat-keep me in your thoughts.

 Jamie

CHAPTER FOUR

The Five Common Elements of a Rite of Passage

 Bear Butte sits alone on the prairie along the western edge of South Dakota. Something in the wind at Bear Butte sim­ply makes you want to pray. On one of its upper slopes is the now-closed cave where the Cheyenne spiritual leader, Sweet Medicine, is said to have found the four arrows that were the foundation of Cheyenne law and tradition. There are endless stories of sudden storms arising fol­lowing the sweats and ceremonies on Bear Butte. Pairs of eagles may suddenly land mere feet from visitors and hover above the ground for several seconds before sailing off. Bear Butte is considered a place of power, the cathe­dral of the Plains Indians. The trees are adorned with the tobacco ties and colored ribbons from those who have come to pray.

It is to this mountain that Rick, a Lakota medicine man, now brings the young men and women who are bat­tling against drugs and alcohol. In traditional Lakota culture, “going up on the hill” is called a Vision Quest or Humblecha Ceremony¹. This ritual, as well as the Apache Sunrise Ceremony and many others, are performed to introduce the young person to the other worlds where spirit and vision replace parental guidance. The rite of pas­sage may also include instruction on practical skills and values needed to survive in the modern world.

These beautiful ceremonies are culturally specific. We can’t snatch what has been practiced for thousands of years and plug them into our own culture as if it would have meaning and purpose for us. Besides, that would be stealing, and our native cultures have lost enough. How­ever, we can study these remaining rituals to see what it is that works to initiate our youth.

The common age for performing a rite of passage ritual is fourteen to sixteen years of age. This, as we know, is a potent developmental period for young people. These rituals were performed for centuries long before psy­chology and science had any observations to make about human development. The Elders just knew this was the right time. For women, the time was determined by the onset of menstruation. For boys, the age was simply chosen by the Elders. Even in modern society it is at about age fourteen that the young person passes from middle school to high school.

When I first punched rites of passage into a browser on my computer, the Internet sent me 25,000 possible entries. I narrowed the search by entering ‘adolescent.’ It gave me 555 entries. I spent a great deal of time scanning these entries as well as other sources on traditional rites of passage ceremonies from many cultures. While they vary widely, I noticed that several common elements of initiation and rites of passage ceremonies emerged over and over again. The five most common include:

 1.  A period of initiation with preparation and instruction by the Elders,

 2. A time of purification of the body and mind,

 3. A time of separation from family and community,

 4. The undergoing of a test or challenge given by the Elders,

 5. And finally, the welcoming back of the young person into the family and community and a recognition of his or her changed status within that community.

  In the following pages, we will examine each element separately with the intention of helping parent or adults to create stronger rite of passage rituals by incorporating the elements into existing rituals and initiatory moments.

Please note, however, that we must also be respectful in planning any ritual movements for our youth. Whatever our worn-out ideas might be about a tribal ceremony, we should be careful not to make the event humiliating. One young female client told me of a ritual her mother and another woman did for her when she began menstru­ating. Whatever good intentions her mother had, the girl found the ceremony humiliating and embarrassing. It is best when the ritual comes out of natural events after a long period of initiation-and not simply imposed on the young person in an unnatural, New Age way.

One summer Milt and I did a simple ceremony with a group of boys camping with their counselors. There were no fires or drums, no feathers or costumes. We simply had each boy make a ritual crossing over bare ground from the “sphere of the mother” to “the sphere of the father,” a crossing that Bert Hellinger, a German psy­chotherapist, suggests is the natural movement in adolescence. It was amazing how seriously those boys took that simple ceremony. Many of them had not seen their fathers for a long time, and some not at all, but their desire to make that crossing was powerful.

Don’t try to fake an Indian ceremony. Keep it simple and beautiful without too much fuss. Keep in mind what the intention is-to steer your child toward maturity.

For example, a very simple construction of a ritual that contains all the elements is to have your young adult make a trip alone across several states. This could be flying or driving but should be to go to something that he or she really wants to attend. Allow plenty of time for planning, and spend the time talking to him about how to get along alone. Tell him stories about your own initiatory moments and what they meant to your life. Have him earn all or most of the money himself, as well as make all the prepara­tions. Don’t even let him go with a friend. This is the challenge. When he has completed the trip, take the time to celebrate and give him a place of changed status within the family.  I use “he” here only to simplify.  The same applies for girls as well.

Many parents worry about liability and the dangers of the big, bad world. We’ve become programmed to believe that the world is a stark and dangerous place. If you believe this-and it rules your choices-you are not yet initiated yourself. What could be more dangerous than to contemplate a half-life entirely free of challenge and risk?

 Initiation

Initiation, the main topic of this book, is a multi-varied training conducted over the early and middle years of childhood. Initiation includes instruction, tools for prob­lem solving, a stirring of confidence, and a push toward self-identification. We are preparing the child to take his or her place as an adult in our society.

In essence, initiatory moments are what fill the days and nights of our lives. Each day is ripe with opportuni­ties to guide our children toward making choices, taking their strength, and even making mistakes. Sometimes it is difficult to recognize these moments as developmental turning points. We are too quick to do everything for them, make life easy, and take the conflict away so they can be more comfortable. When we do this, they cannot grow into adulthood. Initiation takes place from early childhood on. We must not wait for adolescence but raise the bar day after day, week after week so the child can stretch both physical and spiritual muscles.

Initiation takes place within the total sphere of the child, from parents to grandparents, and teachers to reli­gious leaders. We are all responsible for that child.

I want to distinguish this long developmental period from the critical initiatory moments mentioned earlier. Our ability to take large steps only comes after we have taken many, many small ones.

When I was fresh out of high school, I went to college in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The summer after my first year I wanted to travel, so I arranged a trip to New Mexico to see a cousin through a ride service at the U of M. The trip went fine, but my ride only took me to Albuquerque and I needed to get to Farmington. I hitch­hiked (a stupid thing to do) and managed to get safely to my cousin’s house but realized, later, that I’d done a dangerous thing. However, this trip prepared me and gave me the confidence to travel alone and spend six months in Europe two years later.

We are not parenting a child but initiating him. In one sense, the act of “parenting” was done in a few quick moments. We are also initiating and preparing ourselves to let go of that child. We have to take a lot of deep breaths and deal with our own fears in order to let them take chances.

Major initiatory moments are preceded by smaller initiatory tasks. For example, in many native cultures a special ceremony requires the young person to undergo special preparations such as performing prayers and rituals, collecting certain plants, sewing ceremonial regalia or items, preparation of the site for the ritual, or the completion of intellectual tests.

For those of us who do not belong to such cultures, we can still create specific initiation tasks prior to an important event such as a trip or graduation. Encourage the young person to consider the upcoming event in terms of how it will affect his or her life. What are his expectations, what does he hope to accomplish, how will he accomplish this, what resources does he need, what does he lack? Push them to go deeper than whether they have enough socks or traveler’s checks. Allow them to make the preparations, raise the money, and become ready for the trip.

Purification of Body and Mind

Most rite of passage ceremonies include a time of ritual purification and preparation for the ceremony. This may include many different processes from entering the Inipi or sweat lodge, to fasting and/or ritual cleansing in baths. The hair and body must be cleansed, special foods prepared, and often it includes adorning the body or wearing ritual garments and jewelry. All of these move-ments are intended to enlarge the significance of the event as well as to prepare the initiate, inside and out, to receive what the ritual may have to give.

Certain teachings may be offered as well as advice on what to expect and how to meet the challenge. Each small step takes the young person closer to his or her entry into the new role prescribed for them. Part of the purification may include music and chanting to clear the mind and body of residue and to create a harmony within.

How does this purification ritual fit into our modern world? Obviously, we all have habits of purchasing new clothes for special events or bathing and adorning our bodies. It is not a stretch to make the moment even more significant for our young person by caring about what is beneath their skin as well as what is on top of it. Ask questions-many, many, questions. How is he feeling about this upcoming event, what changes does she fore­see, does he know what he hopes to obtain from this trip/ceremony/ritual?

When my two youngest were growing up, we were fortunate enough to spend several summers in an Ashram, a beautiful spiritual center in the Catskills Mountains of New York. It was a wonderful experi­ence to see my children prepare for this time. Sure, they wanted to look nice, but they also sensed that we all had a greater goal in traveling so far and taking this time to deepen our life experience.

One night at the ashram, when my son was about eight, we had participated in a feast and celebration with a dancing circle. There were probably three to four thou­sand people at the ashram at the time and my children had made some friends. During the celebration, Thomas and another little boy went around and around the dancing circle. I was enjoying watching them dance when suddenly they both broke away and went running off. I caught up with them and asked where they were going. “We’re going to the temple to give thanks,” they yelled.  They looked half-intoxicated from the dance.

Like other spiritual establishments there was a certain protocol about going “to the temple” and I was afraid my son and his friend would raise a ruckus, so I followed them. These boys were wildly high on life. They didn’t know I was watching them.

When they came to the door of the temple, they suddenly dropped all their wild energy, quieted their bodies and their minds, touched the floor in a gesture of respect, went into the temple and, in complete hushed silence, bowed deeply before the alter.

I was shocked at how quickly they had contained that wild energy. I stood outside watching in awe, touched and weeping for their tender souls and hungry spirits.

We needn’t fear introducing ritual and ceremony to our young people. They understand it. At the level of soul or spirit, they understand and desperately desire it.

Separation from Society

Another common element in a rite of passage ritual in traditional cultures is a time of separation. The Elders literally or symbolically separate the youth from the pro­tective umbrella of family and familiar territory. This time alone acts as a preparation for moving into a new level of being.  It is a time to leave the old structures behind and embrace new structures that will guide the individual into further maturity.

Separation is the beginning of the journey toward adulthood. In America, however, statistics indicate that the kids are staying home longer, living with Mom and Dad, or running out briefly only to return to the fold without winning the grail.

Perhaps one of the reasons our young are having trouble separating is that the moment, the passage, is unmarked and unguided in our society. A first break from family is often haphazard and unintentional; a school trip, a weekend get away, spring break, going off to college, or camping. All of these informal occasions allow the young person to leave home, but are often heavily influenced by peer initiation.

This critical period of separation is not just a chance to party. No, the solitude and separation required during this time has an entirely different quality to it. In this contained space and time, the young person is often given tasks to complete or specific thoughts to hold and con-template. All distraction is carefully removed to allow the process to unfold from within. Separation might include long periods of seclusion and isolation that can last as long as 24 weeks (the Okiek people of Kenya)² or a brief seclusion of hours or days.

Separating the child from his familiar (and comfort­able) world seems to be an important beginning of the rite of passage ceremony or ritual. It is both symbolic and literal. It brings to the surface the fears and doubts buried within us. Can I make it alone? Am I strong enough? What will it take for me to survive? The separation period is both a breaking of old dependencies and the formation of a new state which includes both independence and a greater dependence on higher realms.

In some tribal societies, taking the child from the mother is an integral part of the ceremony for both mother and child. Mother must also separate from the child and deal with the fear, grief and loss that it brings. She undergoes her own rite of passage as she leaves one stage of life behind and enters another.

For youth, the separation may be isolation in a hut or lodge, time spent on a mountain or, as we have seen in many adult initiation stories, a trip or journey. We find this most essential theme in all literature, poetry and mythol­ogy throughout time. The Three Little Pigs must go off to seek their fortune, the prince must undertake a challenge to prove himself, or the youth must leave the home of his or her parents to go on a quest. This theme is universal across cultures. In order to discover what is next, we must leave what we know behind.

Although we mark this with ritual in a formal youth rite of passage, we actually undergo this many times throughout life. This adolescent rite is offered only as an early teaching on how to separate and go on.

As I have grown in my work with individuals and groups, I see so many who suffer from an incomplete separation from the parents. This separation is necessary to continue on the human path. We must leave the parents and grandparents behind us, taking only our learning and our connection to the earlier generations. When we stay too long, we become entangled in the past, unable to move toward the future.

In my last year of college, I decided to study in Europe for six months. When I got on the plane to leave, my mother and father followed me right out to the plane. I was terrified but putting a brave face on things. I felt as if I had an orange in my throat. It took everything I had not to rush out of the plane and back into Mom and Dad’s arms. How important and how necessary that movement was for me. It allowed me to stretch and grow, to find my own imprint in the world.

The Task or Challenge

Most rite of passage ceremonies include the under­taking of some task or challenge that forces the initiate to face fear and doubt of his or her abilities. In ancient tribal societies, this was generally more severe and dramatic for boys as I mentioned in an earlier chapter. Historically, it has been the job of men and boys to protect and shelter the women and small children. In tribal societies the Elders knew that the woman would undergo her own challenge in giving birth to a child.

The inner intricacies of many still-existing tribal rite of passage rituals are often not shared with outsiders. They are closely held secrets that only the Elders know. Milt and I found, as we traveled in Indian country, that native people carefully guard their rituals and ceremonies. Generally, non-tribal members are not even allowed to attend or participate.

However, we don’t need to intrude on other cultures in order to design or discover the right test or challenge for our youth. Throughout antiquity we find numerous stories of great tasks and challenges. Of course, many involve confronting dragons and Orcs and such, but our modern world has its own equivalent scary creatures. We must all find and fight that demon we fear most. For some it is talking to a neighbor about his noisy dog, for others it is the job interview, for still others it is going six months without a boyfriend or girlfriend.

The test or challenge is the thing we must go through in order to get to the other side. When we have done this, we are changed forever. Offering a true test or challenge is difficult in our fear-riddled society. We are immersed in news and advertising messages that teach us to fear one another, fear our own inner being, fear the food supply, and fear the very world that contains us.

Recently I was in a Wal-Mart rest room where a young woman had taken her two small children. She had her hands raised like a surgeon who has just scrubbed for an operation and was yelling at them with a panicked voice, “Don’t touch anything.” Her little ones were fear­ful-both of her and of the hidden enemies in the bath­room.

Fear has become a controlling factor in how we parent and challenge our children. It’s disgusting. We’re under a wicked spell, controlled by fear. This is, perhaps, the meanest dragon we must face-fear.

In the fall of 2002, Milt and I made a trip to northern Austria to interview Bert Hellinger, the grandfather of Family Constellation Work. I was stunned at the easy pace and relaxed atmosphere of the small town of Kufstein where we stayed. The shops closed for lunch, kids roamed the streets at all hours, and there was a general feeling of safety around us. I hadn’t realized how fear-driven we’ve become in America. Muggers, shooters, germs, bankruptcy, the IRS, job loss, smallpox, terrorists-we are bombarded with messages of fear. We’re afraid to touch one another, afraid to challenge our children appropriately, afraid for our lives it would seem. The first time I went to New York City, I was so under the spell of television that I expected muggers to be handing out business cards at every subway stop. Instead I saw only friendly people going here and there. Never once did I feel threatened.

Fear is not the answer. One of the goals of the test or challenge embedded into the rites of passage ritual is to overcome fear. Castenada (1968)³, in his classic journey book, The Teachings of Don Juan, is told by his teacher that fear is the first of four enemies that we must be overcome in order to become a person of knowledge. Don Juan tells Carlos that the “four enemies are fear, clarity, power, and old age.” When Carlos asks Don Juan how we can overcome fear, the old man answered:

The answer is very simple. He must not run away. He must defy his fear, and in spite of it he must take the next step in learning, and the next, and the next. He must be fully afraid, and yet he must not stop.

 In my own experience, fear is often the stuff of illusion and not based on current reality. Fear comes from what we imagine will happen, not what is actually hap­pening. To overcome fear, we must be based in reality.

Early in my training in Neurolinguistic Pro­gramming (NLP), I made plans to study out in Santa Cruz for five days with two competent practitioners. My plan was to travel to California, rent a car in San Francisco, and drive south to Santa Cruz. While having a cup of cof­fee with my neighbor lady, I told her about my trip. She was completely baffled, even horrified, that I would make this huge journey all alone. “Aren’t you terrified?” she asked me. I wasn’t-but clearly she was.

Parents and adults need to confront the reality of their own fears. Robert Fritz (1989)⁴ wrote about how “fear of imagined negative consequences” can rule our lives.

Much of my work with clients these days is more coaching than counseling, and I’m struck by how many people feel that making a real life change in career or relationship will destroy the world as they know it. Within ten seconds of contemplating the change they imagine themselves homeless, broke, living under a bridge-and all alone. This unreasonable fear, I believe, is caused by our own lack of initiation. Perhaps we should occasionally destroy life as we know it.

Challenge yourself. What is that thing you fear? What is the reality of that fear? How will you be able to chal­lenge your children if you are unwilling to challenge your­self? If we take our fears and inspect them closely, they generally disappear, melting into the bath of non-reality.

 A Public Welcome and Acknowledgement of the Changed Status of the Youth

The final element of the formal rite of passage cere­mony is when the youth returns to the community with public acknowledgement of his or her changed status. This, for many tribal communities, is a time of feasting, dancing and celebration. With this change comes recog­nition, acknowledgement, and a shift both in position within the community and expectation. The child is now an adult-expected to take his or her place as such.

How our modern youth must long for that! The high school graduation ceremony is perhaps the strongest link we have to this element of the ritual rite of passage. Our children are polished and cleaned, adorned in colorful robes, gathered together before the entire community and honored as they take their hard-earned diploma. There is a moment in the ceremony where the entire class switches the tassel from one side of the cap to the other as a visible signal that this change is now complete. After the public ceremony, there is often feasting and parties in the homes of the graduates where the adult child again is celebrated by family and friends.

There is no intention here to disparage this very impor­tant moment in the adolescent’s life. They’ve worked long and hard to obtain that diploma and paid a price for it. However, it is possible to boost this important movement by paying careful attention to the above elements and perhaps add (in the senior year?) a more significant chal­lenge that would test them not only on the level of intel­lect but on the level of personal integrity, spirit, and soul as well. We could simply call it “The Senior Challenge” and make it as holistic and all encompassing as possible with special status recognition for those who choose to undergo it.

 What is the ‘Whale’ in modern culture?

Always, I come back to the loaded question of what a modern day rite of passage ritual would look like, After the many years of working on this book, I have come to despise that question.

What would a modern day ritual look like if it con­tained all the above-mentioned elements? In how many ways can we steer this sinking boat of culture toward one of our own design? It’s here that we lean our heads toward one another and ask the following questions:

•  What is the modern day equivalent of hunting the whale?
• What would make a rite of passage relevant and meaningful to young people?
• What is the right age for a rite of passage in our modern culture?
• Should there be a process that begins earlier as well?
• Is the rite of passage ritual different for girls and boys or the same?
• Should the final rite of passage ritual be individualized or done as a group?
• What characteristics, values, and challenges do our young people most need in today’s world?
• How can we create actions that satisfy the need for initiation and rite of passage, and cause positive ripple effects into the future?
• How can we sweep our current culture of the broken shards of dead ritual-and strengthen the remnant rituals?

 Unfortunately, I have no easy answers to these ques­tions and invite you to join me in attempting to redefine our culture. This is no easy task.  There is no quick pill to swallow, no page to turn, no buck to pass-not any more. Our children are dying or entering adulthood unprepared to deal with its challenges.

Several years ago I went back to my hometown to work with a group of community members interested in revitalizing the downtown. It was a strange experience, walking those streets the afternoon before I was sched­uled to speak. Cass Lake, Minnesota, is a small town on the Leech Lake Reservation. It’s a beautiful bit of earth with lakes, rivers and forests, but the town suffers eco­nomically and socially. The school I had attended is gone. The stores I wandered in as a child are burned, boarded, or demolished. Grass grows wild in the places that still mean something to the child in me. It was profoundly sad-and yet somehow liberating at the same time.

When I rose to speak to the community that night, I felt very lighthearted. I looked out across those people who were my friends, teachers, and family and told them, quite frankly, there is nothing here to rebuild. What we have is a blank canvas. This community is free to become anything it wants to be. We are free-free from whatever it once was, free to be creative, inquisitive and energetic.

I feel the same about our American culture. We keep trying to fix old failing systems and boost weak structures when we could be focusing our energy and vision on what we want it to be now-in this time and place.

Cultures are constantly razed-and constantly rebuilding themselves. The sooner we turn from the razing-the sooner we can rebuild. The past one hundred years have so dramatically altered the slate of our communities that we can, essentially, pretend the slate is blank and begin anew. It’s time to create a new culture based on this new world. We can begin by asking what do we want rather than what is wrong?

How creative can we be with educational systems, economic systems, rituals and rites? It will take a lot of work between us. It will take a lot of energy and ideas. We will have to stop simply measuring the problems with endless task forces and committees. Measuring the prob­lem does not solve the problem. Instead we should analyze our existing rituals, whether they are church, school or family-related and strengthen what is already being done.

As this book has evolved, I’ve discovered that many great minds are at work on this issue. It will take many great minds to begin to shift the culture away from one that dismisses the needs of its young to one that encom­passes and enfolds them.

I’ve chosen to focus my own work on strengthening the core of the family with constellation work, which is described in a later chapter, and my writing and teaching. Others are working at the legislative level, in politics, in business, and in schools.

Perhaps critical to this discussion is the way in which we approach education. When I entered a graduate program at St. Mary’s University program in Human Development, I had the richest educational experience of my life. I was allowed to choose my courses and, essentially, to track the course of my own learning.

Learning does not happen in slotted chunks but should flow naturally. In this modern world, the entre­preneurial mind-the mind that can see patterns and connection-is the mind that will take us to a new level.

Initiation, the test or challenge, purification, the ritual moment, and the celebration of a changed status-all are part of the whole treatment of the child. As a culture, we have a giant whale to hunt. We must kill off old systems and create new ones. I welcome hearing about any and all means that communities are currently doing to create this new world. The following chapters outline a few of the worst and a few of the best approaches I have found.