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Here's my second blog post regarding initiation...newest entries are first, but scroll down to read the first one (Initiation & Rites of Passage) if you haven't yet.
A few years ago, I applied for some public funding for a program based on rite of passage principles. The funder told me that they were looking for more "youth development" programs that would have young people leading young people in various ways. They didn't understand our emphasis on "guiding," or creating challenges and opportunities for youth within a ceremonial format, led by initiated adults. This kind of elder mentoring, common in traditional societies, seems rare in our own.
In our work at Rites of Passage, we hold a meeting called an "Elders' Council" after everyone returns from the Vision Quest solo. The purpose of this meeting, in which the guides take on the role of elders, is to listen to the stories, reflect their power and meaning, and confirm the changes that have taken place. Without this meeting, people might return home without fully recognizing what's taken place, and with no elders to welcome them back, it could just seem like a dream.
We recently spent time with the Mohawk community and learned more about their ways of initiation. I was deeply touched by the living presence of a tradition of elders providing love and support to young people on their path to adulthood. This tender bond between generations is something that isn't easily found in Western cultures today. When the young Mohawk men fasted, the "uncles" stayed awake all night by the fire, keeping watch for them, praying for them. And out at their solo sites, the young men were sending out their own prayers, asking to be made worthy, to be strong, to love their people, to make it through the long night. At the feast after their return, they were asked take their food last, after the guests, children, and women, as a symbol of the new status they were taking on, one that called for sacrifice in service of the whole community.
And where are the elders in our contemporary society? Who will help initiate the young men and women? What do you think?
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Initiation and Rites of Passage |
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I'm starting to blog about Initiation and Rites of Passage...this is the first entry.
To begin, a brief working definition of a rite of passage: a ceremony to mark or celebrate a change in life status. Rites of passage can encompass the whole life cycle, from birth to death. Rites of passage generally can be described as having 3 stages, which we call Severance, Threshold and Return, and which suggest the psycho-spiritual idea of dying to one's old life, stepping into the unknown, and returning to take on a new life.
And the term initiation: A rite of passage ceremony marking the entrance into a particular status or place within a culture, for example, from youth to adulthood. Initiation rites often involve a test or ordeal that must be mastered.
In indigenous and traditional societies, rites of passage help young people to prepare to take their place as adults and mark a closing of the status of "child." It's my view (one supported by Michael Meade, Steven Foster and others) that the lack of meaningful rites of passage leaves young people in our culture in a kind of limbo of extended childhood. Because of an innate need to go to the edge, young people will find other ways, often dangerous, of trying to initiate themselves. Drugs, alcohol, risky sexual behavior, driving too fast may all be efforts at self-initiation. The attraction to gangs also fits here, with the appearance of community and belonging, but really just youth initiating youth without any of the wisdom of traditional cultures.
Just to say a bit about our programs: our most important program is structured as a Vision Quest with a 3 or 4 day solo. There are three things the "initiate" goes without: people (you're alone during the solo), food (most people fast), and shelter (you just have a tarp). Contact with nature, so important in traditional cultures, has a central place in our work. It's actually impossible for me to envision a meaningful rite of passage that doesn't involve time spent in the natural world, bringing the initiate face to face with his/her existence as a soul with other beings on our shared Earth. With this idea, we enter the terrain of deep ecology, that which links human nature to the rest of Creation, and initiation into adulthood suggests becoming a caretaker of more than just the human community.
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A look back: Alison DeLong interviews Mike Bodkin |
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"You might wanna come where there's nothing." It was this daring invitation spoken by Stephen Foster to Mike Bodkin that changed the course of Mike's life and career forever. Stephen Foster-- the vision quest guide who was also known as a long haired radical ex-professor-- challenged Mike to take his love for mountain backpacking to a new place and experience a new ceremony. "It intrigued me," remembers Mike.
That spring of 1980 he completed his first vision quest. Not only was he hooked on the desert, but he was more importantly sold on a profound way of working with people. Now full time Director of Rites of Passage Inc. (ROP), Mike Bodkin sat with me to reflect on the past 27 years as a vision quest guide and as a leader of one of the first non-profit organizations offering earth-based initiation programs.
A couple of years prior, Mike received his family therapy license. He had always envisioned somehow practicing therapy within nature and wilderness. After his first quest, he was beginning to see how. Since 1986 Mike has been directing ROP, after inheriting the program from the "Grandparents" of modern vision questing-Stephen Foster and Meredith Little, when they left to start their own training program (now the School of Lost Borders).
Questing in the 80's was very different than today's quest. The ceremony has evolved with our changing world. No longer limited to serving a local North Bay population, ROP now has a global outreach, thanks to the internet. Participants from Australia, Europe, and Asia fly into Las Vegas and drive to a campground in the desert for their orientation. In contrast Mike recalled the original program starting in Santa Rosa with a potluck dinner and a preparatory class just before the entire group would drive to Death Valley in a passenger van named Burrito. "Burrito was part of the night journey. (We'd) throw the packs on top of the van... it was this kind of Safari like energy".
In the summers they would drive through Yosemite over the Sierras. "We'd watch the sunrise over Mono Lake. You'd always feel in the morning that you hadn't just been traveling, but that you had changed worlds-shifted frames. You'd done the night soul journey. That feeling of being in another world would come up really strong."
Despite the end of the group night journey, the sense of community in today's quest is much stronger than before. Mike says, "There has been a change in focus from being an individual on the quest to being a community." Even though the participants may be strangers on day one, specific activities such as cooking meals together and talking and listening in council offer a strong container for questing together with one's "village".
Mike claims the most significant change in the program format evolved in the 90's out of a crucial need to prepare participants better for their return home. Initial programs would have people get in the van and driving home the night after coming off their solo. "Questers would take turns sitting in the front of the van to talk to their guides about their experience and their return", Mike remembers. By adding 2.5 days of incorporation at the end of the program, participants now sit in council and tell their story to the whole group in addition to hearing reflections, insights and mirroring from their guides. These extra incorporation days not only prepare people for their return but they continue to build the community container that can add support for the challenging return and post quest depression experienced by many participants.
Another aspect that has shifted to a community focus is the process of clarifying a quester's intention before setting out on their solo. These preparatory "medicine talks" used to be done one-on-one with the guide. Mike reflected, "If vision questing is a kind of pregnancy and you birth yourself, there are a few people who stay in the first trimester. They never quite get to their fullness. And when we finally switched to doing all those talks... collectively (in council) our (incomplete birthing) rate dropped to almost immeasurable...from 25% to less than 1%." Since this shift, he has witnessed hundreds of councils where those participants who aren't "ripe" can sit and listen in council to other people's stories. After hours of these stories of life experience, the unripe ones find the courage, empathy or mirror that helps them clarify what they are questing for.
One delicate matter in the history of Rites of Passage is the evolution in the relationship with the native community. Many native teachers have deeply influenced the work and served as supporters and friends to ROP. Mike reflected that initially, "there was an optimism that this work was going to lead to some kind of a pan cultural expression that was connected to both this land and to native people here and to our own experience. Things got more difficult later on with the resentment and the sense of bitterness that was understandable."
Challenged by the criticism of taking another cultures' traditional ways, ROP and other vision quest organizations began to clarify their language and intent. "Not wanting to diminish the wisdom we've gained from our native teachers, we learned more about how to find our own way". This clarity and differentiation was affirmed on a recent men's quest when two native elders received scholarships to join the group. They showed great respect for their experience as well as for the program and guides that facilitated their experience. The highest compliment came when they expressed their interest in sharing the practice of council with their young men back home to prepare them for their initiation rites.
On the physical plane, ROP has increased its focus on preparing participants for the wilderness and fasting. With liability high, it seems that ROP and most organizations are looking at risk management and taking less chances by covering gear lists, first aid, natural history, weather, permits and park regulations.
Mike also finds that the participants are more grounded and less "airy- fairy". "In the old days people were looking for enlightenment...People are more aware now... that a vision quest is a rite of passage. There is awareness that this kind of process serves people in life transitions".
Along with the evolution of the participant, the guides have changed too. Mike boasts, "I have a wonderful staff that has skills that we didn't see back then." Staff with experience in wilderness medicine and outward bound instructors and trainers, demonstrate a new diversified community of leaders. Guides are also bringing programs to their own special interest groups. Besides adult, youth, women's and men's quests, there are now quests for Jewish participants, couples, business leaders, middle school youth and an interest in developing a program for intentional communities. Mike sees this trend in diversity as a direction for the future. "There's been a lot more of a sense of how (ROP) fits into a community pattern. I think that's really a big growing edge for us".
Another area of growth mentioned by Mike: "I would like Rites of Passage to become known better as a local Sonoma County organization. That's a challenge." He explains that in the past the doors haven't been open to this work, but with a growing number of local staff and long-time cultivated relationships with local high schools, that is changing. "It's going to take time and it is happening," assures Mike.
With perseverance and a little bit of luck Mike and his staff will have more Sonoma County residents responding to the call, "You might wanna come where there's nothing".
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On September 5, 2007, I flew to Seoul, where I met my co-guide Linda Sartor to begin two weeks of guiding a Vision Quest and providing staff training for a newly opened forest retreat center located in the countryside. It was an exciting opportunity, and one that largely led us into the new and unknown (much like a quest). While Linda has lived and worked in Asia, currently in Sri Lanka (from where she traveled to meet up in Seoul), this was my first visit to this part of the world. And while we've worked with participants from many countries, including China and Japan, this would be our first real contact with the culture of Korea.
As the journey unfolded, I sent a series of emails home to record my impressions of the land, the people and our work. We found the Korean people to be consistently generous, kind, thoughtful, and devoted to family, and the program itself was a clear success. At the end of our stay, we were interviewed for South Korean television, with hopes expressed that this work could help the country with its high incidence of work-related stress and adolescent suicide. We felt that it definitely could, and the staff we'd worked with were planning on applying the training in their work with youth and adults, and making changes in own lives to reflect the insights they'd gained.
--Mike Bodkin, Executive Director
What follows is the first email I sent home, beginning on our first morning in Seoul:
Up at 5:30--couldn't sleep more, despite having been up until essentially 5 am California time. But slept enough in that wonderful room in Seoul. Our driver showed up at 7 sharp as planned, but with a translator, Jonque (he tells us to call him "John Q" as in "John Q public"). Linda and I hadn't tried to eat breakfast, figured they'd have it with us, but they were surprised when I said we'd like to eat. Something simple...so they take us to the dining room of the fanciest hotel around, and buy us a ridiculous breakfast of oj, coffee, lox, bagels, scrambled eggs, Korean style foods (its a buffet and the buffet area is enormous), fresh baked goods, potatoes like we make them but without the garlic, greek olives, grapes, melon, and a lot of stuff I didn't even try to eat. Whew.
Then a longish drive to Soop Chae Won. Soop means "forest". And a long day here, meeting the executive director of Soop Chae Won, then later the E.D. of the Korea Forest Foundation. Him in an immaculate dark suit, me in my Galen Rowell t shirt. Bows,handshakes. I say "my name is Mike", he says "my name is Lee," I say "how do you do Lee," someone else says "Lee is his last name" so I was inadvertently rude, I correct "how do you do, Mr. Lee?" But all is forgiven in smiles and cups of delicious green tea, served ceremonially in a way, not formally like in Japan though.
Much talk, descriptions, etc.--then off to give a 5 minute speech to 200 teenagers, which we worked on for about an hour so my translator could get it right. He didn't understand "rite of passage" among other concepts, at least at first. I read my English, he read his Korean...I could have said anything really.
High points of day:
 1--"Its time to sign the contract" I'm told, and ushered into the executive office...where there's a big banner, in Korean and English, that says (in Korean) Soop Chae Won, and in English "Rites of Passage" and it's a sign of our relationship now...then they have us seated (I have a name sign that says "Mike Bodkin, Executive Director, Rites of Passage")and Mr. Lee has his sign, and we formally sign two contracts, like two heads of state signing a treaty. Everyone applauds, takes pictures, it means we're married...or at least engaged.
2--Then we go out to dinner, to a small provincial Korean restaurant serving very traditional foods. Lots of food--can't name most of it, and most was vegetarian (rare here), but oh my god all the little bowls of stuff and sauces and soups and a hot plate tureen of spicy ginseng-like roots and mushrooms and sticky rice and noodles and miso soup and some sake-like drink we kept toasting each other with and and and....add your favorite Korean dish here. Then I saw a guitar on the wall and asked to sing a song...bad strings, bad action but surprisingly ok intonation, so I first explained and then sang "Brother Warrior" complete with the line about "crying for a vision". I spoke about how we need to give back to the earth now....and everyone applauded and we drank a round, then Mr. Lee rose to sing and sang a marvelous and soulful Korean traditional song in a powerful and moving voice, really a fine voice. More applause, more sake (or whatever it was), then he sang a song of Pavarotti's, whom Mr. Lee said was the finest tenor of our time, more applause etc. More talk of vision and crying and singing and then we left. Came back to a meeting of the questers, our first, which lasted 2 hours and is why I'm quite tired but not entirely unhappy, this will be a challenge nonetheless. I'm feeling equal to it tho.
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Why this work is important to me |
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November, 2006
Let me introduce myself: I’m Mike Bodkin, the Executive Director of Rites of Passage. This is my first attempt at blogging, so forgive me if I stumble a bit. For many years, I worked full-time as a youth and family counselor at a local non-profit, later adding some grant writing to my list of tasks. (I’d try to fund wilderness programs, despite most funders being very doubtful about their value…but that’s another story).
During all this time, I would take most of my vacation time to lead wilderness rites of passage. Why did I do this? This work was where my heart lay, and I was “following my bliss”, to paraphrase Joseph Campbell. I couldn’t not do it. What I saw then, and continue to see now, was the transformative healing power of time spent in the wilderness. Up against a wall that no psychotherapy or workshop or activity seemed able to penetrate, people would come and renew themselves, returning home as if reborn. And—this was really new for me—I would find myself renewed by doing the work of guiding. Actually I shouldn’t have been surprised, since my teachers had been telling me, from my first undertaking of a Vision Quest, that the key to holding on to the power and vision you gained on the solo was to learn how to give it away when you returned. And so I’ve been doing for many years.
Three years ago, I made the momentous decision to quit my job and devote myself full-time to directing Rites of Passage; since then the work has only expanded, deepened and grown in beauty. I invite you to join our growing circle, to become part of this community of initiated men and women, to discover your own heart’s yearning, and to access the support and courage needed to follow it—for the sake of your own spirit, the human world, and the earth
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