The Need for Initiation

There has been an area of study that has really fascinated me for the last 3 years or so. I even put it in my Declaration of Major for Manchester College a year ago as one arena of possibility for me to explore at greater depth. As of now that may be the only thing that still remains true to what I want to do. I sense that I will somehow be connected to this for the rest of my life.

The subject matter is that of initiation or rites of passage for youth in our culture. I believe that relates more towards boys than girls at the present age. I began asking myself questions about my own formation and journey into manhood. When did that happen for me? It certainly wasn’t when I got the keys to the car when I was 16. It wasn’t when I was baptized a year earlier at 15. Was it when I lost my virginity at 17? Living on my own at the age of 20? All of these were a resounding NO. When did I become a man? I can testify that my life fits the mold of what Richard Rohr calls being “over-mothered and under-fathered.” I looked back for particular instances where I may have felt like I had just had rites of passage with my own father and kept coming up empty.

I looked around at the present to see if America has any forms of initiation today. I came up with one. The military. Think about it. How often have you heard the expression “Joining the (pick your branch) will make him a man!” That certainly didn’t fly with me because of my strong anti-war/conscientious objection stance. Being in the military doesn’t make you a man.

Since then, I have charted out a life map in which I recall and detail important events in my life and continue to update it today. And I continually return to one event that may have marked my passage into manhood. February 2004, my mother passed away at the age of 47 from complications due to myelodysplasia. I was 23 years old. It seemed to me kind of late in the journey to become a man but remember my earlier statement about being “over-mothered and under-fathered.” I want to avoid the language of me being a “Mama’s boy” since I also had a very close relationship with my father, who still lives today. I was most like my mother and my sister I thought was more like my dad. It was just that my father didn’t do the things for me that you typically think a father shares with his son… I needed to be given boundaries and an identity not just from my mother but my father as well, if not more. I’m not here to lay a guilt trip on my father; I fully recognize what he did teach me.

I can best explain my longings now to be involved in creation and wilderness survival skills as well as my strong desire to do my Vision Quest as a compensation for what I missed out on when I was younger. I am longing to connect with that sense of a healthy masculinity that gets repressed often because of my tendency to revert to the more sensitive guy (which I am more than thankful that my mother instilled that in me).

I also read some books during this time that really helped shape my present understandings of why we need to have a good initiation in our culture today. They are:

Journeymen by Kent Ira Groff
Redeeming Men: Religion and Masculinities
King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
by Robert Moore, Douglas Gillette
The Wild Man’s Journey: Reflections on Male Spirituality by Richard Rohr, Joseph Martos
Adam’s Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation by Richard Rohr

I will continue to post thoughts and reflections on this topic as I am able. Till then check out some of these books and see if there is a sense of longing within yourself as well.