Rites of Passage; They Pop Up Everywhere

First published: August 23, 2003

I have a lot going on lately; some professional stuff about my career, some financial things I should sit down and figure out.  My oldest child is moving away to begin college next week.  My youngest starts middle school the week after.  There are several things I should be doing towards world peace and justice, plus, I can't remember if we gave the cats their flea medicine this month.  That last thing won't be trivial if we forgot.

I decided I needed to get organized.  I made a list of things to do and people to call. 

 The list was so daunting I stuffed it in my sock drawer and went to the kitchen for another cup of coffee.  Then I wandered outside with the coffee.  I told myself I'd sweep the sidewalk a few minutes to clear my mind.

Five astoundingly filthy and sweaty hours later, I had a tidy and newly designed compost pile area.  I'd dragged our decaying picnic table to the side yard where it can take up new life as an outside work table.  I cleaned, weeded, shoveled, and most amazing of all, I spent hours snapping dead branches out of old pine trees.  My arms looked as if I'd been in hand-to-hand combat with Barbed Wire Man, but the 6' by 6' pile of dead, dry pine detritus showed just who was boss around here. 

I guess.

How does this happen?  How do we organize and prioritize our lives, then suddenly find ourselves up to our eyeballs in the last thing we needed to do?  The pines have been growing for decades with no help from me.  I've personally lived next to them for eight years, and until yesterday, felt no burning need to address their scragginess.

Why do we sometimes find such passion for chores that are essentially, well, not essential?

 Why?

Because my first child is moving out, my pipsqueak has become a certifiable middle schooler, and the shape of my life is changing.  Like so many of us, I need more rites of passage than our culture offers.  Baptism and confirmation, wedding and funeral aren't enough for all the places we go, the changes we make, the paths we choose, the trails life drags us down. 

Mothers about to have babies are famous for the singular burst of energy they get a few days before they give birth.  I was nine months pregnant with my second child when I suddenly became convinced the front porch floor needed to be painted.  Not a mean trick for a person who couldn't even bend over to tie her shoes.  I've never looked at a walrus the same since.

But that's when I began to get a clue.  If a good-enough ceremony doesn't exist for the ways in which our lives change, then our spirits create their own goofy and powerful rituals of transition. 

I don't think this is just about commemorating the past or celebrating the next stage of life.  Rites of passage are more than nice clothes and lovely parties. 

Rites of passage are where we let go, for a period of time, our ordinary ways of thinking and acting.  New ideas sneak into our brains; new skills trip our trite routines.  We use unfamiliar muscles battling worthy foes like cutthroat branches, unsightly compost heaps (are there any other kind?) and worn porch floors.  What we are doing, of course, is making physical and psychic space for the next thing. 

Some Native American cultures were wise enough to build rites of passage into young peoples' lives.  The youth leaves the community on a vision quest.  They search for, expect, and wait for the dream or totem that will ring true in them.  After that strong moment, the young person has a new way to organize their life.  They've internalized in image and word the direction they are going; leadership, spirituality, art, humor, hunting, defending. 

By suspending everything they knew for a few empty and powerful days, he or she has been given back a way to live in community.

The thing is - this wrestling, visioning, and regrouping keeps going all our lives.  Our children grow, our spouses change, leave us, or pass away.  Our jobs end, we retire, or we need more money to make our life work.  Our teenager goes off the deep end, a loved one becomes seriously ill, or the dog that raised us dies.

We get up in the morning and make our list of things to do that day.  Then somehow, inexplicably, we find ourselves in an improbable tango with scratchy trees. 

So be it.   It isn't easy to do all the things life expects of us.  Sometimes we need interludes of wandering or wrestling before we'll have enough clarity, courage, and humor for whatever comes next.