Rites of Passage – Cultivating Soul Sparks in a Dark Time

By Randy Morris, PhD

We live in strange and difficult times – the biggest pandemic since the 1918 flu, the biggest economic crisis since the 1929 depression, the biggest racial unrest since the riots and marches of the 1960s. It seems that society is unraveling before our eyes. What can a small nonprofit organization like Rite of Passage Journeys contribute to a world in need of hope and healing?  

For over 50 years, Journeys has insisted that intentional rites of passage are necessary for the healthy growth of individuals and communities. A rite of passage is a set of ritualized activities that marks the transition from one phase of life to another. They typically take place at certain inflection moments in a person’s life – adolescence, mid-life and elderhood – though they can take place whenever a transformation from a lesser state of knowing to a greater state of knowing is required. Journeys has developed programs for all of these phases of life and in all of them a basic assumption is made about the nature of human nature. It says that every human being is born, not as a blank slate to be passively written upon by social forces, but with an innate image, an acorn, an individualized soul image that is an inborn part of our psychic structure. 

This is true for every human being, no exceptions. It is our birthright, given freely to us by the Earth. This ‘soul-spark’, as the poet John Keats calls it, needs nurturing and guidance in order to grow into maturity. Every individual is responsible for doing the ‘soul work’ necessary to overcome limitations imposed on them by the circumstances of their birth or the social conditions that seek to keep them small. At Journeys, it is our job to create the conditions where the soul-spark of each person is welcomed, seen, valued and nurtured. In a world of troubles like ours, it is helpful to know that every person, without exception, has something to contribute to the solutions. We are each called in unique ways to mend the fabric of a torn world by uncovering and enacting our inborn gifts. 

Unfortunately, the social conditions arrayed against our ‘soul spark’ can be quite formidable.  A simple but comprehensive way to understand these forces comes from the Buddhist tradition, which says that all human suffering is caused by three mutually reinforcing poisons:  greed, aggression and delusion. When these human forces are institutionalized, they become forms of consumerism (greed), militarism (aggression), and state and corporate-controlled media (delusion). These institutionalized poisons create a kind of ‘trance’ from which it is very difficult to ‘wake up’. This trance obscures the truth of our soul-spark, making it difficult to cut through the spin and hype of our culture, and preventing us from a clear view of the work we were given to do in service to the healing of our planet. 

At Rite of Passage Journeys, we have found that nature-based soul work in the company of a beloved community is the best way to break the trance of late-stage capitalism, and wake-up to the soul-spark within each of us that yearns to express itself in acts of compassion, beauty and solidarity. For any who have witnessed the return ceremonies of our youth trips, when participants show up tired and dirty but with a new-found clarity in their eyes; or felt the buzz of excitement at the end of one of our adult programs, you know first-hand what it looks like to have awoken from a trance. Of course, life-span rites of passage imply that discerning and fulfilling our soul-spark is not a one-time event, but rather a living, dynamic process that extends across a lifetime, from adolescence to mid-life to elderhood and death. As we awaken from trances within trances, we become more conscious and thus more able to repay the Earth for her gift of life and the soul-spark within.  

What happens when the body undergoing a rite of passage is a collective body, like the American public, or humanity as a whole? Do the same dynamics of a rite of passage described above hold for the collective as well as the individual? The short answer is ‘Yes!’.  Things seem so dire because we are engaged in a global rite of passage for humanity as a whole. The earth cannot support the injustices being visited upon it. We have to move to a sustainable world. A rite of passage is being called for so that the soul-spark of humanity can realize itself. This will require us to wake-up from trance states that are destroying the earth so that we can become a more conscious species, dedicated to the cause of life and celebrating, as only humans can, the wonders of the beloved earth community and the sentient cosmos which gave it birth.  

Further Reading: To explore some of the ideas behind this blog post, enjoy the following:

Anne Baring, The Dream of the Cosmos: A Quest for the Soul (2013)

Thomas Berry, “The Dream of the Earth: Our Way Into the Future,” Chapter 15 in The Dream of the Earth (1988)

Michael Meade, The Genius Myth (2016).  See also  www.mosaicvoices.org

Andrew Harvey and Carolyn Baker, Savage Grace: Living Resiliently in the Dark Night of the Globe (2017).

James Hillman, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling (1997)

Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown, Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide To The Work that Reconnects (2014)

Bill Plotkin, “Inscendence – The Key to the Great Work of Our Time: A Soulcentric View of Thomas Berry’s Work”, in Laszlo and Combs, eds., Thomas Berry, Dreamer of the Earth: The Spiritual Ecology of the Father of Environmentalism, 2011. 

Andres Rodriquez, The Book of the Heart: The Poetics, Letters and Life of John Keats (1993)

Richard Tarnas, “Is The Western Psyche Undergoing a Rite of Passage?” at https://cosmosandpsyche.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/revision-rite-of-passage.pdf

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Echoes of Grief - a recounting of Ritual and Reclamation

By Patti Kwok, participant Grieving Time 2019

On this Saturday afternoon, she enters a remodeled building in the heart of Sunset Hill, a neighborhood of Seattle Washington. In the partial sunlight, the community center is washed in the afternoon shades of fading paper whites and dandelions, cream cheese and buttered popcorn; portions of the building just passed over by the approaching fall evening and its unfolding blanket of gray chill. November’s canopy alters from ivory fleece to rosy Camelian, mandarin blush becomes turmeric gold and her gilded anchor sinks into a vast sea of star-studded navy and indeterminate black — a beautifully arranged marriage of fire and gravity. 

Entering the upstairs doorway off the newly remodeled deck, she feels a sense of divinity, trusting the light and its tempting pull of embracing angles; it is a house of belonging. The floors are a beautiful oak, creaking sweetly in places like an old wooden bridge, a horse’s weathered saddle, the atrium of a 19th century hotel, or the slant of a well-worn hallway. Within her first breath, the familiar sorrow rushes back like the unsettled salt of ocean, dry prairie, an acre of soil she can never properly tend. She walks the perimeter of chairs containing a reservoir of grief seen in the dark forest pools of another’s eyes, that arrested posture, the smell of secret longings, a place for uncovered grief to finally rest; tremors of hesitation break the sound barrier of forgotten depths where ritual matters. 

Several people kindly acknowledge one another: a man who lost his wife months ago, a recent suicide, a coveted red Swiss army knife from a brother who died long ago, many stories palpable although not quite felt or heard. Artifacts brought from home — photographs, statues, a small metal bicycle, stones carefully chosen from a basket — objects placed on the altar as a life remembered, an earth deeply loved. She fiercely protects her own burden as the ritual has not yet begun. An older man tells her she must download the new app Finding Fred — inviting Fred Rogers back for the wounded adult, the familiar voice of a revolutionary, a spiritual herald and his radical knowing donned underneath a red cable-knit sweater. Invited into beginning ritual, she enters the depth of love beyond fear. 

We know that we have left death and come over into life; we know it because we love others  (1 John 3:14)

Sitting in a circle of sharing, reality comes flooding back — she, too, will lose everything she’s ever loved; but she knows love cannot be kept in the grave. The ritual begins in sacred drumming, depicting the communal heartbeat of longing, that bridge to a forgotten sense of belonging, the primal rhythm of memory and mother, earth and harvests, prosperity and lasting riches. In chorus of evocation, enacted by each of the three facilitators, they bow in all directions. We are guided by ethereal emotional chants and borrowed lyrics from the gods. We enter the untamed world of muse and her many indifferent seasons. The dance of Kairos and her timeless redemption enters the temple, and she engages with the depths of a forgotten freedom. 

Nature’s mandala is constructed from the center out in green willowy fern, a circumference of soft brocade pillows, shooting stars of candlelight illuminate the protected center of grief, surrounded by three other circles — one of nurturing, protecting, and a familiar village on the perimeter where torment is resurrected and levity and mirth take shape in redeeming shadows, where the painted Bacchae take to the hills of wilderness, dancing more freely. Immersed in candlelight and the sacred movement of ritual, she sings the chorus of soul allowing grief to make evident the forgotten joy after loss. From aching heart to open heart, she falls into a devotional trance that reclaims her deeper meaning towards the lost art of being.   

Thirty minutes into the wild frenzy of scattered emotion, falling like leaves and stars, they have broken through oppressive shadows, beyond the sound barrier of Cronos, into a new dawn of time and place. She is pulled towards the altar of radiance, surrendering to a large silky cushion, sacrificing a known way of being — remembering that we are all children of the earth’s dreaming, now pulled into the center of our own belonging, once rootless now tethered — no longer afraid of the invisible, what seemed impossible to know. Wailing and the lonely scream of hunger opens the sentinel gates of psychic numbing — lose and wild weeds tumble into the turbulent matrix of sweat and tears, the lightning strikes, the rains flood, lungs fill with the alchemy of fresh air, ghosts with painted faces masked in red and black wander in the haze of afterlife, building bridges between the visible, the imaginary, the intangibles; ritual leaves nothing in the dark — flames become a galaxy of stars, shorebirds sing towards a rising dawn, the withered sedge returns along jagged shores. Silver tones of fish from the river’s edge are kissed alive by the cycles of sun and moon and the tilting gravity of a re-discovered soul. We must taste the death of our nature. 

Her stony brick of a wounded heart softens into clay, malleable through the curves of time, pulsing with force through the great dams and arteries of grief. Bodies lie in the fertile soil like cocoons hanging from emerald chains of forest, wings form in the shadows of fallen stars, the center circle of sharing becomes a sculpted topiary of broken emotion, tangled threads of red rage unravel secrets left buried far too long. We are like borrowed dust, but something new has been written in the ashes of our lives; like the caterpillar — we were too small to live. New wings carry the intelligence of stars. We leave death and come over into life.   

Encountering Grief

excerpt of a guided meditation from Joan Halifax

Bring attention to the breath, let the breath sweep your mind, notice if deep or shallow

Recall for a moment a loss or losses that have really touched you, or the anticipation of loss

Offer some simple phrases:

~ May I be open to the pain of grief

~ Notice whatever comes up, not rejecting it, not clinging to it

~ May I find the inner resources to really be present for my sorrow

~ May I accept my sadness, knowing I am not my sadness

~ May I and all beings learn from and transform sorrow

~ May I be open to the peace and joy that grief eventually brings

~Joan Halifax

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Creating ‘The Beloved Earth Community’ At Rite of Passage Journeys

By Randy Morris, PhD

An experience that is common to participants at Journeys is the strong sense of solidarity that is created while on a wilderness trip or experiential weekend. What heads out as a group of strangers often returns to base camp with deep friendships that seem more intense than much longer relationships back home. The same phenomenon often occurs in large weekend events that involve ritual and soul work. An energetic field is constellated and participants report tremendous connection and compassion as a result of engaging in deep and sometimes difficult emotional work as a group. The very word ‘compassion’ means a ‘suffering’ (-passio) ‘with’ (com-). This feeling of connection is a hallmark of healthy cultures. The fact that it is so rare is an indication of our broken society, in which online friends can seem closer and ‘more real’ than in-person friends. 

In listening to Journeys participants dialogue with each other about their sacred experiences in nature, both in the moment and in reunions years later, I am struck by the way the normal course of time dissolves. As the story unfolds, the participant’s ‘soul work’, consisting of shared moments of overwhelming feeling and intense insight, seems to be happening again in the moment of telling. This is made possible by ‘deep listening’ in the presence of a true ‘soul friend’, one who ‘listens their way’ into the heart of the other, sees their inner light, and wants to support the radiance that is trying to grow there. 

The mythologist Michael Meade says that an old term for the human soul is ‘the light hidden in darkness’. (1) There is no greater blessing than to have one’s inner light seen and witnessed. In the Jewish tradition of friendship, Meade says, the ‘angel of friendship’ is constellated when the spark of life in one person meets the spark in the other. Their lights are conjoined, which adds more light to the collective light of humanity. In these dark times, the light of creation wants to grow, but it can only do so through the light of the souls who are alive today. The work of Journeys is to provide conditions where these kinds of soul relationships can thrive.  

To what end? Is there an aspirational goal to the work of Rite of Passage Journeys? Perhaps the best articulation of the overall purpose of our work comes from the cosmological vision of Martin Luther King, Jr. King is best known for his work on behalf of social justice. But what is often overlooked is the ecological and cosmological origins of his vision of the Beloved Community. King wrote, “As nations and individuals, we are interdependent. It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. What affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality.” (2) 

This is a worldview that was far ahead of its time and it contains just the healing balm we need for our fractured world. As articulated by Drew Dellinger, whose doctoral dissertation was entitled, “The Mountaintop Vision: Martin Luther King’s Cosmology of Connection,” King’s cosmological vision has the capacity to unite the quest for ecological sustainability with the quest for social justice. (3) If social justice is human love made visible, then ecological justice is cosmic love made visible. The Beloved Earth Community is a vision of a world made whole through a cosmology of justice in which interdependence and compassion are woven into the fabric of the cosmos itself. 

The universe, in King’s view, has a moral dimension, and it is “on the side of justice.” (4) In this sense, Justice is a dimension of the cosmic life force itself. In its embrace, everything belongs. Everything co-arises together and is dependent on everything else, whether human or more-than-human. It’s not ‘The Beloved Human Community’ but ‘The Beloved Earth Community. We are all in this together. This is not a simplistic version of everyone just getting along with each other, but an all-inclusive and radical vision in which the inner light of the human soul, the subjectivity of rocks and trees and the bright light of the sun each have their rightful place, their ecos, their home, in a universe that yearns for justice. When all are in ‘right relation’ with each other, the desire of the universe for justice will be fulfilled. In a world made dark by greed, ignorance and violence, this is a startling vision of hope and guidance for the future. (5) By encouraging deep soul work in order to enhance a sustainable earth-human relationship, Rite of Passage Journeys is striving to do its part to foster the Beloved Earth Community.  

Endnotes:

1.  Taken from Michael Meade’s excellent podcast on “Angels of Friendship”, Living Myth Podcast #101, at www.mosaicvoices.org.

2.  From Martin Luther King, Jr., “A Christmas Sermon on Peace,” in James Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., (New York: Harper Collins), 1986, p. 254.

3.  Drew Dellinger, “Dr. King’s Interconnected World”, New York Times Op-Ed, Dec. 22, 2017.  For more of Dr. King on cosmological justice, see Drew Dellinger’s website at www.drewdellinger.org.  

4.  This is a common refrain in King’s work.  A concise statement of it can be found in King’s essay on “The Power of Non-Violence” in A Testament of Hope, pp. 13-14.

5.  For more on developing ‘right relationship’ with those with whom you disagree, see King’s sermon, “Loving Your Enemies” in Strength To Love, (Philadelphia:  Fortress Press), 1963.

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Mentoring Youth & Remembering Stan

By Chris Laliberte

Stan Crow founded Rite of Passage Journeys and directed it for almost four decades before he passed in 2009. I started my time here at Journeys in 2018, though was lucky enough to have encountered Stan “in the wild” twice during the formative years I was mentoring youth in the wilderness. At the time, I was working at Wilderness Awareness School in Duvall, Washington, had been intensively mentoring teenagers for five or six years, and was just stepping into the role of teaching adults about mentoring youth. Stan attended the Art of Mentoring at WAS as an honored guest, asked to participate fully and sit in one of the new Elder Chairs that was just beginning to appear at their programs. This workshop happened to be the first one where I stepped onto the stage to join in presentation and facilitation — including sharing poetry, along with some of my own that I’d written in the crucible of my work with youth. Happily, Stan was in the small break-out group I led.

I received several mentor blessings from Stan that week, as we cavorted through the woods, played games in the meadow, spoke in circle, and gathered in the Great Hall at Camp Don Bosco in Carnation, Washington. One I still vividly remember, was watching my small group perform their end-of-the-week skit, and turning bright red as Stan donned a rag mop on his head (my long flowing hair), paged through a phone book (my big binder of poems and songs), and held forth in caricature of me, espousing on lofty topics while muttering too quietly and speaking too fast.

 I also remember sharing one of my poems,“Growing Up,” during culminating ceremonies. The next morning, in discussing the experience, Stan told the group that the point in the ceremony when I shared my poem had struck him: "That is what I'd been looking for, what's been missing here at the Art of Mentoring until now." 

 I remembered this moment again just a few weeks ago, while co-facilitating Journeys’ Crucible of Youth workshop with Darcy Ottey of Youth Passageways. Darcy, who knew and worked with Stan for many years at Journeys, brought much of Stan’s wisdom and insight into working with adolescents (as well as her own experience!). One of the Big Points of the workshop is that you can’t really be an effective, supportive mentor of adolescents unless you have consciously integrated your own adolescent experience. The poem I’d shared at the Art of Mentoring popped into my mind, and I realized that it captured an amazing intersection of the trajectories of Rite of Passage Journeys, Wilderness Awareness School, and my own personal journey of mentoring youth. 

Growing Up

By Chris Laliberte

I remember when I grew up.

I can recall seeing myself seeing myself:

I saw a body

grown into the shape of a man.

But it was a robot, a big machine

being driven by this little child

 a scared, panicked little child

totally unprepared for this.

With no idea of what to do to keep hold of

The One Who Loved Him,

the little child desperately flailed at the controls,

trying anything, anything—

the body lashed out blindly,

struck in all directions with

Word and Tongue and Tear,

flailing madly in a futile effort to keep hold of    

someone who was never there.

It wasn't quite then.

When I grew up, was when

I reached out to that

desperate, crying child

lifting it out of the chest of that

diabolic human chassis

and held it in my own arms

and said "Hey—I love you."

Right then, that little one looked up,

stopped struggling and smiled a little.

Then, as if it was what he'd been waiting for,

the child lay back, closed his eyes,

and died.

What Can I Teach You?

By Chris Laliberte

 What can I teach you

that you'll have any need for?

Facts and information melt sideways

and slide off

under the heat of the flame you carry

without knowing.

What you need me to teach you,

you already know.

It is what will bring you through that fire,

then through the darkness of your grave descent.

What can I teach you of yourself?

How do I ask the questions

that will slip between the bars of your

perception and twist them like grass

to unveil a glimpse?

What can I teach you,

that you might find yourself on hands and knees.

following vole trails to a nest,

or distracted by a meadowlark's song,

look up to see behind the clouds

a new radiance--

shapes without substance,

speaking to you--

voice without words,

in colors you've heard somewhere before:

 In a flower, find the sun

In a pebble, find the moon

How can I,

how can anyone,

teach you this?

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Reclaiming Ritual: A Personal Experience

By Tamara Walker

A few weeks ago, I casually offered to write a piece for Rite of Passage Journey’s new website. As I considered ritual as a possible topic, I heard Trickster whisper, “Write it quick! Don’t think too much and the words will write themselves.” Ritual means a great deal to me, but, after a few aborted attempts, I’m discovering how hard it is to explain why, and that words that matter don’t seem to write themselves.

The first task in my writing seems to be overcoming the heroic in me. Practicing as a veterinary surgeon for many years, I discovered the importance of trying, especially when I was most afraid of failing. In surgery, trying meant I had to push aside doubt and fear and move boldly regardless of how I felt. However, expressing something that I feel in my body requires a different attitude, and if I write from my old heroic place of resigned courage, my words fall out generic and lifeless. I discover I must slow down, listen, and open to the same feelings I buried as a surgeon and so carefully pretended weren’t there. 

The kind of embodied ritual I’m trying to invoke is like difficult writing that says something real and conveys meaning beyond literal words. Good ritual, like good writing, is ruined by a grin-and-bear-it attitude and requires you to show up with everything you’ve got. It could be with a group of friends or strangers, or might simply be alone. Ritual is a delicate candle flickering or a drumming, thrumming explosion of sound. It’s most perfect place is exactly where you are: a beautiful cathedral, an old cracked basement, beside a laughing brook, or in the empty lot across the street. If you can stop long enough and resist the world of running and getting, to notice the texture of small things, you may find your way to that imaginal place where deeper conversation begins.

To try to further explain this kind of ritual, I turn to etymology. The word ritual is associated with religion, from the Latin, relegere, meaning: to pay close attention to what is numinous (Corbett, 2013). Numinous was originally described by Rudolf Otto (1958) in his work, The Idea of the Holy, as a creature-feeling that couldn’t be strictly defined or taught but only evoked (p.7). Numinous also describes the feeling ritual can evoke in my body when I manage to connect to something much greater than myself. Numinous and holy aren’t common descriptions for ritual in our dominant culture, so I also looked ritual up in the APA Dictionary of Psychology. Although I wasn’t surprised,  the definition used hard words like compulsion and rigidity. I felt more like drowning than dancing with the dictionary’s description of a sacred ritual pouring water on the ground to make rain as a misguided, manipulative, and imitative attempt to use symbolism to control natural forces for human ends (p. 802). A ritual may symbolically bridge earth and heaven through a vessel of water, but limiting its meaning to cause and effect this way reveals more about the blindness and confusion around ritual than what it actually might be. How did ritual become the source of such dead definitions? Such derogatory words attempt to put ritual in a box saying, “Here lies the irrational. Do not open.” Sometimes it’s easier to define something by what it’s not, and in loaded words like manipulative and imitative, and by comparing ritual to an obsessive-compulsive disorder, our cultural fear of the unknown becomes hidden in our desire for its containment. 

However, just because something is intangible doesn’t mean we can contain it. In The Art of Inquiry: A Depth Psychological Perspective, depth psychologists Joseph Coppin and Elizabeth Nelson (2005) describe ritual differently as an honoring of what is invisible and intangible. Depth psychology investigates what happens beneath the surface, and is more interested in what we don’t know and what we’re missing than what we believe we can control. To me, in giving these missing things a name, the “invisibles and the intangibles,” we start making them real and a relationship with them possible. When we speak of immaterial things that nevertheless have weight and meaning, other difficult, lost words like fate and soul also appear. Our materialistic culture teaches us the world is dead and to value only what it can do for us when we use it and sell it. We incorrectly think invisible and intangible means only the signal we don’t understand in our TV, Bluetooth, and iPhones. But, an older vision of a living, breathing world of enchanted beings with their own inherent value also exists. This world has been called the anima mundi, the soul of the world. Ritual teaches us again what we once knew: to listen to the whispering of our bodies, the way the wind talks when it gently lifts our hair, or the mysteries and the stories the river can tell. 

Last summer I found an empty stretch of sandy beach and walked a meditative walk in the shape of an infinity symbol. I dreamed a few weeks earlier that I was this symbol, and in response, a friend recommended a meditation she called “Walking the lemniscate.” As the waves lapped on shore and I slowly paced the figure-eight in the deep soft sand, the connections between my body, the wind, the birds, and the earth sang. I felt I was a being that belonged. These are slow things whose greatest gifts are hidden in the experience itself: learning how to write words that matter, or finding one’s way into personally meaningful ritual beyond just going through the motions. For me, ritual is the juice of life, where human beings go to drink the creative energies of the cosmos and be reminded why we’re here, that we aren’t alone,  and what the world might be asking of us.

REFERENCES

American Psychological Association (2007). APA Dictionary of Psychology. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association

Coppin, J. & Nelson, E. (2005). The art of inquiry: A depth psychological perspective (2nd ed). Putnam, CT: Spring Publications.

Corbett, L. (2013). Jung's approach to spirituality and religion. In K. Pargament (Ed.), APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality (Vol. 2, pp. 147-167). Washington, D.C.: APA Press.

Jung C.G. (1969). Psychology and religion. (R.F.C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Series Eds.), The collected works of C.G. Jung (Vol. 11, pp. 5-105). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published in 1937)

Otto, R. (1958). The idea of the holy. New York: NY: Oxford University Press

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What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

This was the first Journeys blog article, originally published on Friday, January 22, 2010

Growing up is hard to do.

Adolescence can be a rocky adventure (sometimes even a mis-adventure) not confined just to our teen years. Many of us, myself included – an upper 20-something, are still trying to figure out exactly what adulthood looks like. A life stage that is obtainable but ever elusive. When I look to the media and even societal expectations I am filled with ideas of adulthood being responsibilities that I must fulfill one by one, as if on a checklist to growing up.

Graduate and go to College…

Become a Strongly Independent Person…

Land a Certain Job…

Own a Home…

Fall in Love and Raise a Family…

And the whole time… Be responsible. Whew!

Paradoxically this is the confused list that is given to us by our youth participants at Journeys – just throw in a couple more relevant teen year passages like “Get my Driver’s License,” “Purchase Alcohol,” "Vote in a Presidential Election," and “Have a Sexual Relationship” and you have the whole list.

Granted, seemingly, these items DO provide us with some level of adult-like accountability – at least externally or to the world around us. But something seems to be missing from the list.

So the question emerges, What does it really mean to come into adulthood?

My hope, and a consistent motivation at Journeys, is that true adults are those who know their unique purpose or intent in this time and in this place. An adult knows of their contribution and is on the road to offering their true self to the world. But boy is that confusing! And who will help us figure it out!?

Purpose, alone, is a big discovery task and something that we begin asking ourselves fairly early. This is sometimes masked by the common question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

At Journeys, we ask our youth participants, “Where are you going?” and “How are you going to get there?” sometimes followed up by, “Who are you going to take with you?” For a 12-year-old these are big questions but inevitably the youth has answers. The answers sometimes change over time, as we get closer and closer to knowing who we really are, but asking the question itself is a step along the path.

So here I am today, opening up a new blog page to capture these questions and the experiences that our friends, staff and participants have to offer in hopes that someday we’ll have it all figured out. If nothing else, this is a place for us to share our process of coming of age, no matter what stage we’re at.

This is an experiment in creating and building our community. And I’ll probably need a lot of help along the way. If, at any time, you are sparked by a thought or a memory please do share it with me (or “us” as we begin to gather here). I look forward to hearing from the Journeys’ community and I extend this village to anyone who is reading this post. Each of us has a part of the story to share and I feel honored to be in charge of capturing the pieces.

All the best on your Journey,

Emily Pease

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Is Your Child Ready for a Coming of Age Experience?

When is it the right time for your child to have a coming of age initiation? We often get calls and emails from parents asking us if their child is too young or too old for a Coming of Age to be meaningful. We don’t claim to always have the answer to these questions but there are several things that we suggest you look for when considering this momentous rite of passage for your child…

Bill Plotkin, in his book “Nature and the Human Soul,” describes a “center of gravity” shift as a person moves from childhood into adolescence. In childhood, the center of gravity is the family, parents and home. In adolescence, the center of gravity is the social life, with the attention most focused on peers, society and sexuality. The move from childhood to adolescence is a long, gradual shift --- like the swing of a pendulum --- as this center of focus moves off of the family and onto the peers. So, ideally you would like to catch your child when this pendulum swing is in full gear --- as his or her interest is beginning to be absorbed by peers and friends, pop culture and perhaps a new curiosity about romance and sexuality. A classic marker for this moment is when your child will no longer allow you to drop him off at school, but would prefer to walk the last few blocks rather than endure the mortification of his schoolmates seeing that he actually has parents!

Often this shift of gravity is accompanied by the physical and emotional changes of puberty --- body changes and increasing emotional intensity --- but not always. Boys in particular may hit physical puberty a bit earlier than they experience the shift into psychological and spiritual adolescence. Girls often hit this shift earlier than boys, and we find that girls are ready for our trips at 12 or 13, with 14 often being too late. By that age, many girls have claimed their independence to such an extent that parents are not able to convince them to go on a trip, or indeed to do anything that begins as the parent's idea! Boys are sometimes ready at 12, and usually ready at 13 or 14, for our Coming of Age trip.  A 15-year old may be perfectly ready or may consider him or herself too old to honor the shift out of childhood. However, even a 15- or 16-year old who has not had a Coming of Age experience facilitated for him or her will still have a deep inner need for this rite of passage and will be greatly benefited by having it, even if a tad late.

The prime task of a person entering adolescence, in our culture, is to establish his or her independence from parents or guardians. Quite understandably, this is not always done gracefully. Teenage girls will often push hard against parents, particularly mothers, and may begin to argue about everything. They may also explode with emotion (anger, tears) telling you all about everything that is wrong. Teenage boys, however, tend to withdraw and may suddenly feel awkward about touching or hugging parents or refuse to tell you much at all about their lives. The beginnings of these sorts of power struggles, blow-ups or withdrawals are also excellent markers to watch for.

Many parents understand that a Coming of Age experience is something that families and communities must provide for their young people --- it will almost never occur to a child that she or he needs one. However, some parents struggle with getting “buy-in” from their children. If you are not able to simply say: “This is an experience you need to have, and it is my responsibility to provide it for you.  Here you go,” then how can you convince your child to get on board?

Often one of the exciting “hooks” of a Coming of Age experience for a young person is the allure of new privileges. On our trips we talk a lot about new freedoms and new responsibilities, and how one really can’t have freedom without stepping up to the accompanying responsibility. At the end of our programs, parents and youth sit down together to negotiate a new family agreement, including new freedoms the youth is ready for. It is certainly reasonable for a parent to say, “You are growing up and becoming a teenager. I need to know that you understand what this means and that you are conscious about this step. This Coming of Age trip will help you do that. When you return from this adventure, I will know that you are ready for new freedoms, like [travelling around town on the bus on your own, new cell phone, having friends over when I’m not here, etc].”

Some young people are facing a lot of questions at this time of life --- wondering about sexuality and gender identity, what it means to become a young man or woman, how to navigate peer dynamics at school or how to deal with issues with friends, teachers and parents. These children might be relieved to hear: “Most people your age struggle with questions about life. This Coming of Age trip offers you a chance to explore some of these issues with a mentor who can help you sort thing out. You will be with a group of peers who are also struggling with these issues and you can all explore life’s big questions together and learn from each other.”  

Some young people feel apprehension about the upcoming change in their lives and may be concerned that they will grow apart from you as they become teens. Such kids may be helped by hearing, “Things are going to change a lot for you and for us as a family as you become a teenager. This is all healthy and necessary. But I would like for us to continue to be close through these changes. One of the best ways for us to do this is for you to go on this Coming of Age trip. It will help you step into this new phase of life and it will help us, as a family, step into this new phase together.”

And of course, some children will just need to understand that this trip will be FUN!  It will be a great adventure and an opportunity for them to challenge themselves in a really positive way. They will do things that most people have never done --- like completing a 24-hour solo on the beach? Embarking on an 8-day backpacking trip though a beautiful valley (with wild animal sightings!)? Climbing rope ladders up sand cliffs and plunging into ice-cold mountain streams? They will definitely come back with stories to tell!!

- Amanda Ayling, Journeys Program Director, 2010 - 2015

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An Amazing Summer

Elder Fred, 1935-2010

Originally published on September 6, 2010

It has been an amazing summer! In my wheelchair, I have been able to go outside almost every day. I have watched our landscape attain its intended beauty through the hard work of our adult children and grandchildren. Trips to the community gardens have provided sheer delight. Sitting under the new gazebo I have watched the garden unfold, realizing an earlier vision. Although I can no longer dig, plant, weed or harvest, the ongoing dialogue with my fellow Biogaians (Songaia gardeners) keeps me in the loop of the landscape and garden plans and activities.

It has been an amazing summer! Visits from colleagues, family and friends continue to provide stimulation and enrichment to my daily life. Total dependency on others for basic needs has increased. Most recently, community or family members “serve” me my meals as I can no longer use my arms and hands. Body work, hugs and other forms of touch are ever more significant, forming deeper relationships with those I encounter.

It has been an amazing summer! I look forward to each new day with its greater challenges of total dependency along with the new insights that come. I am hungry to learn something new. Due to my immobility, I find myself watching many nature documentaries with their captivating insight into the intricacies of the web of life. I realize that I am an integral part of this very web. Truly, we live in a sacred universe.

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Earth as Teacher

When I was 15, I fell head-over-heels in love with the natural world. Learning about and being in nature became an obsession, one that led me to drop out of high school so that I could spend all of my time outdoors. Being able to escape to the oak woodland-covered hills of central California when I was a teenager helped me cope with this challenging time of life. While I was wandering through the woods, friends were also dropping out of school but they were getting addicted to drugs, and even committing suicide. I found a great deal of healing for myself through time spent alone in the natural world.

It was from these experiences that I came to work with other people in the wilderness. I strongly believe that in our modern world there is something sick within all of us. It longs for a connection with nature. A modern rite of passage experience is powerful in part because it connects the participant with nature and provides an atmosphere conducive to recognizing relationship between their environment and themselves. However, in a world increasingly dominated by the fast paced and flashy, nature often appears boring. How do we -- educators, guides, and mentors, create the opportunities for young people to discover these connections?

One answer to this question can be found in a wide variety of books written on nature activities and environmental education. There are many activities designed to engage students and teach them about the importance of the natural world and their connection to it through fun games and initiatives (problem solving activities). Many of these activities are fun and useful, but to me they have often seemed contrived and lacking of a sense of authenticity. This may come from my initiation into nature. I didn't learn about the meaning of a food web from a game where everyone pretends to be a different plant or animal and holds onto a long piece of rope next to the thing that they eat or are eaten by. I went into the woods without food and foraged for my meals. This is not to say that games and initiatives are not a valuable tools for teaching. They can be engaging and fun, especially for younger audiences. But their game-like quality is also limiting. How seriously is someone going to take a game, anyway?

A deeper learning comes from direct experience of the natural world. You can be sure that I understood the relationship between my life and the lives of other parts of the environment after feeding myself from things I gathered in the wild. But I also learned a great deal more than that. I learned empathy, awareness, ingenuity, and self-reliance from that same experience. I learned to appreciate the gifts given to me by other living beings, including the gifts from the people who had provided for me for many years.

I am not saying that we need to take people into nature and make them eat only what they can find. I'm saying we can use activities in the outdoors from which students learn directly from their interactions in and with nature, not just from games. This might be taking their wristwatch and sending them to wander around aimlessly along a stream until we come and get them at some unspecified time later in the day.

In some ways this seems easy: put them in a natural setting and they will learn something. While you never know exactly what the learning outcomes for any experience are going to be, you can design experiences with particular objectives in mind. Self-awareness, self-reliance, awareness of the environment, team work, and compassion are all things which can be learned through experiences in the natural world. The more "real" the experience, the deeper the learning derived from it can be. A student who really gets lost and can't find her way back to camp for a time will feel in her gut her dependence on her family and society. This experience will probably have a much greater impact than if you just asked her to imagine this experience. Besides creating the appropriate activity, a leader should also be able to frame the experience beforehand and to process it afterwards. This helps prepare participants for the activity and for reflection and analyzing the experience afterwards.

Taking people into the wilderness and creating a safe container for their experiences is often all the leader may need to do. The power of the beauty and rawness of the natural world can be more influential on students than any number of planned activities. I experienced this during the backpacking portion of the Wilderness Quest several years ago. We had just finished a grueling day of climbing up to a camp above tree line. We were all together around the camp stoves as water heated. The sun was setting over the mountains to our west, lighting up the horizon and making the huge glaciers on Glacier Peak and the other mountains surrounding us glow with a pinkish hue. After a few minutes of this, one of the students (someone who usually was more interested in talking about video games or anarchy) out of the blue said, "I had no idea that there was anything like this in the world. This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. " Other students followed with other comments about how this campsite was unbelievable and made them realize just how important wilderness is and how good they felt about being able to make it there. One student mentioned that if they didn't realize that this existed just 50 miles from where they had lived all their lives, there must be an infinite number of other things in the world which were even more beautiful and amazing to be discovered. At the end of the trip, several students brought up this camp and the sunset as one of the highlights of the trip. For the leaders, it had just been a practical spot to camp to keep on schedule for the trip. After doing all sorts of discussions, activities, and telling stories to try to get the students to realize these things, it was just camping in an amazing spot that really opened them up.

As a leader I now try to think of myself as a student, or a follower, of the natural world. Since my passion for the wilderness first blossomed as a teenager, I have studied the natural world and outdoors skills from a wide variety of perspectives and in several different contexts: from living in a bark hut to academic college classes. But of all the things I have read and human teachers I have worked with, none of them have taught me as much as my direct experience - living, working and playing in the wild.

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The Stance of a Mentor

Stan Crow, 1939 - 2009, Director Emeritus, Rite of Passage Journeys

In a recent seminar, someone said, "You have said, several times that a good mentor challenges the mentee to meet various goals, do their best, etc. That sounds combative to me, is that what you mean?"

I had to admit it could sound that way, and, I guess at times it could even look that way, but it certainly isn't my stance.

My basic intent as a mentor is to do whatever is necessary to convince the mentee to live their life as the great human being they are. Now, I'm sure there are those who will respond, "Yea? How do you call some of these young people we deal with "great"? Many of the youth we see are lacking self confidence, have a history of failure, don't trust adults, let alone themselves.

My response was, "Right!, that's what makes being a mentor so darn hard. There is no one guideline. Each situation is different, and you'll find that what works once is seldom a reusable tool. The mentor will find him or herself as challenged as the mentee.

However, I do operate from a basic stance toward the mentee which grows out of my earlier intent statement and a deep seated commitment to how we treat each other. At present, my draft of this stance is:

• I believe that you are a capable human being.

• Let's not waste time while you try to convince me that you are incapable. Rather, let's spend time identifying the challenges you face and how you might overcome them.

• I am not here to fix you, but to help you see the gifts you have and the ones that are within your reach.

• When I challenge you to do something, it will be because I believe you have what it takes to do it, no matter how difficult or scary it is.

• Nervousness and Fear are OK., as long as they don't paralyze you. They are a reminder that you really want to succeed.

• I trust that somewhere within you there is a desire to have others see you as capable.

• I will promise not to set you up for failure, but I will not bail you out either (unless you are physically in danger).

• We all have failures, and they are a part of the Life School. Our task is to learn from them, to turn our failures into ideas for how we will succeed next time.

• I believe that a major part of my task as mentor is to help you reflect on and learn from both your wins and your losses.

• In the long term, what you learn may be more important than whether you completed a task.

• I will not engage in shame or blame and ask that you don't either.

This is not a covenant I make all at once with the mentee, it is rather a series of mini-covenants which get promised along the journey as appropriate. I can envision some situations in which a gift of such a covenant might be profitable, my experience is that once I have identified what I believe my stance is, then, when it is appropriate, it will be available for a conversation with the mentee.

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