 | ||
| Burning Man theme, 2011 |
Rites of Passage
The theme for this year’s Burning Man is rites of passage. That theme provides an opening for me to talk about the Unitarian church where I teach Sunday school. As society has become less traditional and more individualistic, rites of passage have fallen by the wayside. Ironically, Unitarians are so nontraditional that we have circled all the way back to doing some pretty decent rites of passage.
Communal rituals in general and rites of passage in particular used to be a big deal. Adolescent males had their flesh gashed or penises sliced. People endured punishing ordeals or lonely vision quests. Greeks went to Eleusis to have their minds blown in secret mysteries, which apparently involved drinking a psychedelic concoction. Today our rites of passage are attenuated. We still have personal milestones, such as getting your driver license or graduating from school, but rites have lost most of their power. A Bar/Bat Mitzvah or a confirmation ceremony carries less weight in the community at large than does reaching your legal drinking age. As Nietzsche said about modern marriage, rites of passage have lost their meaning and are as good as abolished. Elders have ceded initiation rites over to frat boys, who haze their initiates in a crude approximation of the rites that once inducted boys into manhood.
The Lutheran church I grew up in had two rites of passage, both anemic: first communion and confirmation. In ancient times, these rites accompanied the life-changing event of adult baptism, marking your initiation into the body of church. Often, your ties to family were severed at the same time. But when I experienced them, these same rites lacked any sort of gravitas and even lacked any real supernatural weight. Given my experience growing up, you can imagine my surprise when my Unitarian church turned out to deal seriously with a young person’s rites of passage.
Communal rituals in general and rites of passage in particular used to be a big deal. Adolescent males had their flesh gashed or penises sliced. People endured punishing ordeals or lonely vision quests. Greeks went to Eleusis to have their minds blown in secret mysteries, which apparently involved drinking a psychedelic concoction. Today our rites of passage are attenuated. We still have personal milestones, such as getting your driver license or graduating from school, but rites have lost most of their power. A Bar/Bat Mitzvah or a confirmation ceremony carries less weight in the community at large than does reaching your legal drinking age. As Nietzsche said about modern marriage, rites of passage have lost their meaning and are as good as abolished. Elders have ceded initiation rites over to frat boys, who haze their initiates in a crude approximation of the rites that once inducted boys into manhood.
The Lutheran church I grew up in had two rites of passage, both anemic: first communion and confirmation. In ancient times, these rites accompanied the life-changing event of adult baptism, marking your initiation into the body of church. Often, your ties to family were severed at the same time. But when I experienced them, these same rites lacked any sort of gravitas and even lacked any real supernatural weight. Given my experience growing up, you can imagine my surprise when my Unitarian church turned out to deal seriously with a young person’s rites of passage.
The first stage of passage from child to youth is a world class sex ed program for middle schoolers. Unlike the dry, tentative programs you find in public schools, the Unitarian sex ed program deals forthrightly with feelings, desires, social roles, and personal issues, not just anatomy and condoms. A male and a female teacher run the class together, and a promise of mutual confidence among the students encourages open discussions. The visual aids are remarkably frank, and a broad range of sexual expression is portrayed as within the pale.
The second stage is a full-on coming-of-age program. The goal is to help the kids develop their own beliefs and ideals, rather than inculcating in them any particular set of official tenets. Each child is paired with a same-sex adult from the congregation, someone with whom the child can develop a personal relationship and have confidential discussions. The program also engages in group bonding events, such as a ropes course. The program culminates in a weekend retreat. The kids leave on Friday as children and return to their parents on Sunday as youth. We don’t pretend that they’re adults and instead acknowledge “youthdom” as a distinct stage of growing up. On the retreat, the kids participate in imaginative rituals, designed to have psychological effects rather than supernatural ones. The most arduous trial that these kids face is sitting alone in the woods for six hours without any electronic devices or other distractions. It might not be as severe as the mutilating ordeals of adolescents in many other cultures, but let me assure you that the prospect of this “vision quest” strikes fear into the hearts of these multitasking kids.
As modern people, we no longer have the option of participating in the rites of passage that our ancestors passed down to us through the generations. As the poet Wallace Stevens repeatedly alluded to, we’re in a brave new world where we have no choice but to find our own way. I’m lucky to have found a congregation where the elders take the challenge of growing up seriously.
Now we Unitarians might not be much for proselytizing, but if you know some nontraditional parents with grade-school or middle-school kids, consider forwarding this link to them.
PS: This post was originally written based on my daughter's experience with these classes. Since then, I've served as a coming-of-age mentor myself and have now seen the program from the inside. It’s pretty remarkable. —JT, 2015
Other Posts about Rituals
Burning Things with Meaning, 2021 https://jonathan-tweet.blogspot.com/2021/07/burning-things-with-meaning.html
Dance Church Seattle, 2017 https://jonathan-tweet.blogspot.com/2017/09/dance-church-seattle.html
Table Grace for Nonbelievers, 2016 https://jonathan-tweet.blogspot.com/2016/07/table-grace-for-nonbelievers.html
Land of Nice Atheists, 2014 https://jonathan-tweet.blogspot.com/2014/10/land-of-nice-atheists.html
Reading about Religion, 2014 https://jonathan-tweet.blogspot.com/2014/08/reading-about-religion.html
Christmas Unitarian-Style, 2013 https://jonathan-tweet.blogspot.com/2013/12/christmas-unitarian-style.html
Welcome Ceremony at Burning Man, 2013 https://jonathan-tweet.blogspot.com/2013/09/welcome-ceremony-at-burning-man.html
Burning Man Temple, 2013 https://jonathan-tweet.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-burning-man-temple.html
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.