Rites of Passage
Beneath Us the Teachers
“Not only do we no longer have any semblance of male initiation, but also we promote and enable the opposite. We anti-initiate, even in the Church! Thus you can be ordained to priesthood or episcopacy, not with motivations of descent, but for purposes of ascent.” –Richard Rohr
Initiation for young males does not require violence, scarifying or brutality. As Joseph Campbell taught, the journey is an inward journey. Older males, who have themselves initiated to their eldership, assisting the younger generations is a resurgent practice, not just for young men but for young women as well.
“The labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. And where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.” –Joseph Cambell
Dr. Arne Rubinstein, who runs global rites of passage groups, identifies four key components to his workshops that develop healthy rites of passage.
Stories
Challenges
Creation of Vision
Recognizing the unique gifts, talents and genius of themselves and their fellow participants.
The goal is to mainstream these ancient practices and make them available to all the youth coming up today. The truth about rites of passage is that it is one cultural gift that cannot be commoditized. There won’t be “Drive-Thru” rites of passage in the future. They require the men and women who have themselves taken the “Hero’s Journey” to pass on that wisdom to the younger generations.
“When you remove elders from the system the whole system struggles to function in an effective way.” – Arne Rubinstein
Healthy masculinity starts with that inward Hero’s Journey. It involves emotional intelligence and emotional literacy. For boys, this requires spending time with men who have taken their own inward journey. For older men, it means spending time with their elders and sharing their wisdom and stories.
All we are is stories. All history was once inherited from generation to generation by the spoken word.
The stories that the Manosphere are spreading are false stories. They are leaving today’s young men in a cultural void. Inherently, in their souls, these young men know they are being fed mendacious information. This leads to younger men initiating themselves, finding destructive ways to enter manhood and carrying this destructive thinking into the community.
The Manosphere are villains selling young men on the false idea of what the Hero looks like. Immature, uninitiated men, leading uninitiated young men. It is a recipe for disaster.
Although the quote is often misappropriated to Frederick Douglass, it rings true in today’s fast-paced world of ten second sound bites:
“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
We don’t want a world where women are afraid to be who they are because men fell short on their responsibility to initiate and nurture the young men in the tribe. It is our obligation as men who have taken the journey, to pass on our gifts to the youth of today and help build a community of mature masculinity. To: “Recognize the unique gifts, talents and genius of themselves and their fellows.”
“When we stride or stroll across the frozen lake,
We place our feet where they have never been.
We walk upon the unwalked. But we are uneasy.
Who is down there but our old teachers?
Water that once could take no human weight-
We were students then-holds up our feet,
And goes on ahead of us for a mile.
Beneath us the teachers, and around us the stillness”
--Robert Bly