A contemplation on the need for rites of passage

~

I wake up every morning to the news on the radio,

and today, the local story that pulled me out of my sleep

was this:

Over the past month, there have been two deaths

from heroin overdose, and a potential third recent death

seems also to have been caused by this same substance.

In addition, there have been

42 non-fatal opiate based overdoses

at one hospital in a short period of time,

all of this is leading the police to conclude

that someone out there is selling some pretty nasty stuff,

laced with something that humans should not be ingesting.

The story was a warning, both to the users

and the sellers, who will be tried for murder

when and if they get caught.

So, there I was, struggling into consciousness

and struggling to understand

why so many people

are using this stuff,

so many people 

in a town blighted

with poverty

and unemployment.

And they're young people,

 very young people.

There's another story in this town

that makes me cry

whenever I think about it--

a couple years ago,

someone found a young woman

folded in half, naked,

bloody,

and dead,

in a garbage bag

in a dumpster.

A beautiful young woman who

became increasingly involved in drugs, then

prostitution to support her drugs

when she was in her late teens.

The last person to see her alive

was someone who dropped her off

at a house where she was going to exchange

sex for drugs.

The police declared hers

an accidental death,

and put the file away.

Well, that's bull shit;

nobody

accidentally falls,

naked and bloody,

into a garbage bag, 

in a dumpster.

Nobody.

Somebody did that to her.

But who is to blame?

( gawker.com )

~*~

So back to waking up this morning:

I thought I heard something else in the heroin story,

but it may have been another story

blurring into it:

it said:

this sort of behavior develops in cultures

where they have no initiation rituals,

no rites of passage.

And my mind went to stories of young men

in Papua New Guinea,

or Tanzania,

or somewhere like that,

fearing and anticipating that certain age when they know

they will have to take some mind altering drug

then go out and sit out in the wilderness

with wild animals

for a night or two or more

and wrestle with their own demons

and with nature

before they can return to their family

and home, and be called a man.

Some of them don't survive it,

I imagine.

But those that do

know the power

and the danger

of taking risks;

they are very familiar

with their own

dark side.

Furthermore,

I thought as I lay there in bed,

with these stories blurring in my head:

cultures with rites of passage seem to acknowledge

that at a certain point in every person's life

(generally some time after the hormones start pumping)

that person is bound to be drawn

to risky behavior.

So, we have a choice

as a "society":

we can either let our children

take their risks on their own,

illicitly, and illegally,

and let them kill 

themselves

or other people

in the process;

or

we can ritualize

that behavior,

and make the risk

and the substance

that heightens the

thrill of the risk

a sacrament.

It seems to me that the latter

of those two option

actually ends up empowering

everyone:

the fledgling risk-taker

as well as the adult

who seeks to teach

the fledgling risk-taker

responsibility.

After all, in a culture

that includes such

rites of passage

it is a foregone conclusion

that everyone who has survived

to adulthood, has passed through

the threshold of no return,

and returned, wiser for it.

( bbc )

Our society has departed

so far

from a culture wherein

we acknowledge

the risky threhshold

between childhood and adulthood --

almost as much as we have departed

from acknowledging the threshold

between fertile adulthood and old age,

and between life and death.

Many young people today

get older, with little

awareness or instruction

in the notion of the sacred,

and no ritualized behavior

to guide them on their way,

except, perhaps

the ritual of going to a movie

or a high-school prom.

Those rituals do not recongize

that life's changes include

risks, and potential dangers;

they do not acknowledge

the presence of the dark side

in each of us; if anything

that dark side is treated

as a forbidden, sinful thing.

Rites-of-passage acknowledge

and embrace

that forbidden, shameful, even sinful thing

as a necessary part

of everybody's life.

( tvtropes )

So where am I going with this?

Well, soon enough I will be going off to bed;

I need to sleep fast,

so I can wake up again,

to the dulcet tones

of the highlights of life on earth

in 2011,

but for now, 

I will end this meandering entry with a 

meager thought--

as I mused over this sobering story

some 18 hours ago,

I began to think a thought

I often think --

I feel a bit like humanity is regressing,

back to a wildness that is savage.

I fear for the upcoming generation

especially in the U.S.A.,

because all they value is the superficial,

and (as I say above)

they have no sense of ritual.

Humanity could, potentially,

go through some very dark times.

And if we survive,

we may need to return to the wisdom of the tribal,

a wisdom that is intimately aware

and respectful of

 the earth and the seasons

and the changes of the human body itself,

and perhaps then we will return

to recognizing the dangers implicit

in those threshold ages --

the teen-aged years,

the menopausal years (for both men & women),

and the years of death.

And perhaps once we recognize the dangers

of those times,

we will honor that, by turning those ages

into ritual years, 

and in doing that, too,

we would restore respect to 

all of the ages of men and women.

But for now,

we leave our children

to encounter

their demons alone.