|
Third, a result of overprotection and the spiritual/physical gap is a real
denial of sexuality. After a modern upbringing which I hoped to improve on
with my own children, I found it a real struggle to say to my twelve year
old daughter, "Look, these changes will come to you. You must consider the
responsibility they bring, and you have no control over when the changes
come. I will support you in your efforts to ease into your woman's shape,
but I can no longer control what happens to you. This is the beginning of
claiming your own power." We are both scared and excited about the whole
thing ... and for many it is easier to assume that a "child" of nine or ten
would be burdened by such a talk. Yet they refuse to connect
this lack of loving education with the alarming number of
pre-teen pregnancies. In addition, the demand for higher and higher
education, and the desire for a career, combined with modern birth control
methods, makes it easy for many of us to deny the connections between sex
and reproduction.
Puberty rites signaled a tribe's acknowledgement that one its young women
or young men had reached the age of responsibility, fertility, and
community productivity, and these rites made an indelible impression on the
participant. Puberty rites, which took a variety of forms and have been
well documented and analyzed, were an attempt to mold and educate the youngster, and
prepare them for their new role in life.
Some rites involved what we call mutilation: scarring, piercing of body
parts, and tattooing, all endured in silence. Others revolved around
endurance: beating, rigorous fasting, trials of pain, and seclusion, one
tribe sequestered their young women for a full year. This seclusion allowed
the young women to remove themselves from daily chores and contemplate
their new status. In addition, there were rites surrounding the
imposition and subsequent removal of taboos, such as single sex mysteries,
specific dietary laws, even specific speech restrictions. These things
provided a structure for young people to work within. For example, as a
child, you can talk to all males, but when you become a maiden, there
exists a whole set of guidelines that ease you into the areas of courtship
and mating by designating what conduct is appropriate and safe. Common to
all types of rites is the use of ritual paint, special clothing, a new
name, and specific instructions from the elders about sacred law, daily
life and tribal legends. Honor, loyalty, respect, and how these might be
maintained or breached were shared with you. You were initiated into adult
privilege.
Today, at least in Western cultures, we have no such clearly defined
threshold, and our "rites" are randomly scattered throughout the mid-teen
years. Getting your driver's license, entering college, turning legal age,
traveling across America or to Europe are all social rites. But the entrance
to this most turbulent period of our lives is vague, and veiled in
folktales and low expectations. To further complicate matters, the period
of adolescence has probably doubled in length since Hall first identified
it, our children mature younger and younger and take longer and longer to
prepare for fully engaged membership in the adult sphere. Perhaps we need
to look at ways to redefine the doorway so that the circle of adolescence
is complete.
Adulthood. We give the appearance of having left adolescence
behind, but that is a myth. Efforts to integrate the experiences of
those years through analysis - personal and professional - occupy vast amounts
of time and energy. Shared descriptions of events from that period, most
often in single-sex settings, are as vivid as if they had happened recently. Perhaps
adolescence is a universal shamanic experience -
failing apart, reshaping, agony, ecstasy, coming out new.
With few exceptions, most adult Pagans come from other more established,
belief systems and quite often had the appropriate religious ceremonies in
early adolescence. In retrospect, however, it is clear that our Christian
confirmations or Jewish Bar and Bat Mitzvahs were not entirely
fulfilling. This is one place where the gap between what is happening to us
physically and what is taking place spiritually is evident. There is a
longing among us to have that time marked in ways we would describe now
with Pagan definition. Ritual baths, special cords and robes, new names,
vision quests are all thought of as ways to mark this passage. More
importantly, however, we wish there had been a deeper connection with one
or both parents. Given our general age group, we again see the connection
to the Post War era. Our parents' generation was perhaps the first to raise
children facing the prospect of a "carefree" teenagehood. The economy
was less depressed and middle-class life became the norm. The luxury of
a teenagehood must have seemed an alien and confusing thing to our parents,
and their confusion is part of the emotional baggage we struggle to shed.
Our longing for deeper connections are selfish, both because of our own
needs, and also because of a desire to do better by our own young.
Some people had the good fortune to have "rituals" happen to them. One man
related an experience that was unique for him, and classic as a rite of
passage. This two-fold experience happened during his sixteenth summer, and
began with an intense merging with the oneness of the physical universe as
he stood alone on a mountainside after an arduous climb. This was followed
by acceptance into a group of men via a casually tossed beer, thrown to the
city boy after a long, hot day of ranch work with the crew. As I listened
to this story, I was struck by the power of that mountainside connection
and tasted the sweetness of acceptance and empowerment in that beer.
When I spoke with several Pagan young adults about their teenagehood, I
found it interesting that few of their parents, who are also Pagan,
actually say they are raising their children as Pagans, perhaps because of
issues about labeling and limiting exploration. These people, too, had very
typical moments of pain, confusion and loneliness, off set by the joy and
excitement of growing independence. But there was a difference in the
pattern or energy, a kind of empowerment.
"Empowerment" has become a buzzword, but it truly conveys what that
experience evoked. These people have a center, a focus, rooted in nature
and nourished by a broader vision of the universe than the one conceived of
by their peers. It is this empowerment that helped to ground the confusion
and loneliness. This feeling of empowerment partially manifested as a more mature
viewpoint than the peer group offered and often set the youngster apart.
One woman described it as "having an attitude ... some might say a bad
attitude!" At a time when most kids could not be more disenfranchised by
society, any internal strength sticks out like a red flag.
Although generally more mature, often less impressed by the surface
goings-on, these men and women do not believe they were angels, or perfect,
or superior. But the mantle of an inner wisdom and maturity, and the sense
of being part of a whole universe, helped them form a positive attitude
that the community will come to rely on as we grow. It is genuine. It is
responsible. Responsibility is a key word for these young Pagans. The lessons of
connection to Mother Earth, to one's community, friends and family, were
all absorbed. Coming of age meant taking on rights and responsibilities,
and making informed choices. One man feels that a puberty rite when he was
younger would have meant less than the rite he now looks forward to, as he
celebrates his separation from the circle of his family and the shaping of
the circle of his adult life. Informed choices. Knowing there is always
some degree of choice, our young adults realize that they can be and they
can do, if they have the will and the intention. Entering adoles-
cence, taking that first leap off the cliff, means a long terrifying fall
to most. This new generation of Pagan adults understands that there is a
long scary fall, but that in leaping, one can choose to fly.
Empowerment. Responsibility. Choice. Does this translate at all to the
pre-teens with one foot firmly planted in childhood and the other kicking
at the door of adolescence? In some ways, it does not translate at all,
because we are not truly a physical community. Our kids grow up apart from
each other, and often do not see that their cousins, siblings and friends
are following the same patterns they follow. In addition, our community is
largely made up of adult "converts": as yet we have few children to hand
traditions down to.
A few pre-teens talked to me about their ideas of what lies ahead. They
have an abundance of self-confidence, partly in themselves, but more in
their ability to choose and to do. They expressed a deep conviction that
Pagan beliefs feel right to them, and seemed to question why other children
do not have the choices they do. The young women look ahead to their own rites
with uncertainty. The idea of a rite of passage for this particular time in
their lives is a little alien to them, but the attention that comes with a
special rite of their own is exciting. A young man from Maryland describes
his rite as the most powerful experience of his life, and looks forward to
the rites that lie ahead of him. Whether having their own rites will
produce that same enthusiasm for the young women depends on many things.
In providing the context for puberty rites, there is a mandate on us to
establish rituals that include the energy of previous times and tribes, and
that also embrace the realities of our children. Some girls bleed as young
as nine years old. They need to be able to connect with their own power,
while feeling supported in the fact that they are not women in society's terms. Some
girls mature emotionally at a young age, and are desperately in need of the
transformation that a rite would offer - yet their first menstruation may not
come until their mid-teens. Young men fare equally unevenly. The need for
support and acknowledgement may come long before any physical signs of
sexual maturation.
Let us consider three rituals that together manifest the energy of growth
into adulthood. The first might be a ritual, at age nine or ten, which
says, "You are no longer a child. You are a Maiden/Warrior/Youth. and you
begin the path that will take you to adulthood." The second ritual, at a
girl's first menstruation and some obvious sign of physical maturity in boys, would say, "You
have now crossed into young adulthood. You are a young woman/young man now,
and can accept some rights and responsibilities." Finally, we could close
the circle of adolescence with a third ritual - one of separation, which says
"Now you are a man/woman. and though the circle of your life will always
include energy from the one you have shared with your family, it is time to
create your own circle."
Our rites of passage connect us life to life and generation to generation.
By addressing the specific energy of each rite, we recognize the different
steps in the transitions from child to adult as they exist now in our
culture, honor those steps, and in doing so, we keep the energy of the
circle flowing freely.
|