Doorways to the Sacred: Upheaval, Rites of Passage, and Birth

by Mark Kutolowski

This sunrise photo was taken from our deck within minutes of Luke’s birth

You can listen to the audio version of this blog on our podcast page.

---

“I don’t think I’m ready for this.” Lisa’s voice was calm and matter of fact. The sky outside our small yurt was growing lighter in anticipation of dawn and Lisa had been in intense labor for a little over an hour. Her words came in the few short minutes between contractions.

“Good,” I thought to myself. “The baby’s coming soon!”

I don’t know how long it was from that exchange to when our son Luke was born. What is time, anyway, when you’re completely immersed in the sacred? It might have been a few minutes, perhaps as many as fifteen or twenty. All I remember is that it wasn’t long and that Lisa’s acknowledgement of the immensity of the immanent birth was my signal that the baby was about to come. It had been the same way when our daughter Anna was born – just a few feet away from the spot where Luke came into the world. At Anna’s birth, Lisa cried out ‘I can’t do it!’ to which I and the two women friends who were there assisting all shouted back ‘You’re doing it!’ just a few minutes before Anna was born.

At both births, these cries weren’t a sign of weakness in Lisa. Quite the contrary, I’ve never seen her so strong and powerful in the seven years of our life together as when she’s giving birth. Yet both times there was a distinct moment when the power of the event was too much for her ordinary ego and psyche to handle. Her body and the life surging through her were doing something beyond her ability to control. The only way through was to surrender to the mystery and the power of the birth. Both times she surrendered, and Anna and Luke came to us shortly thereafter.

I’ve spent my entire adult life loving God, trying to follow God despite my own selfishness and inner resistance, and seeking to support others to enter into deeper relationship with God. There is a paradox within this calling. I’ve become utterly convinced that God is already with us. God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. Every moment, every place, and every fiber of our being are filled with the glory of God. In blessed moments, I’ve had this reality revealed to me with radiant clarity. Yet, most of the time, we live at a considerable psychic distance from ourselves, from God, and from life. The great mystery is that while God is already fully present to us, we are rarely present to ourselves. We suffer in this absence. Many of us become fully stuck in our separate, egoic self-identities. We either deny the existence of God entirely or live as ‘practical atheists’ where we profess faith in God but don’t allow that faith to penetrate very deeply into our psyche or our way of life. Even for those of us seeking God, the excruciating, uncomfortable reality is that we experience God as absence as often (or more often!) than we experience God as presence.

I’m wary of any trite or simplistic explanations for this painful paradox. Yet, I feel I can say with great confidence that the blockage is not with God. Neither is the blockage with reality outside of ourselves. The ‘block’ that prevents us from abiding in the felt presence of God in whom we ‘live, move and have our being’ lies within our human psyche. There’s something in our consciousness – call it the ego, the false self, the separate self, the ‘old Adam’, the human condition, our fallen nature, or original sin – that blurs our vision and muddies our perception of spiritual reality.

How do we get unstuck?

Tragedy and the Demands of the Gospel

One of the problems with the human condition is that anything we ‘do’ in our attempt to become free is inevitably undertaken by the same self-centered part of ourselves that is the impediment to freedom! This is one of the reasons why self-directed spirituality is so rarely fruitful. When our egoic self remains in the driver’s seat, we inevitably end up turning spirituality into a sort of self-improvement project rather than the much greater labor of surrendering to God. I see this all the time among my fellow Christians when we are content to become ‘good people,’ but keep the full demands of the Gospel safely out of mind. The transformation Christ calls us to is much greater than this. It’s no surprise that Jesus used the language of both death and birth – the two most significant thresholds of this life – to describe how to enter into life in God:

Amen, Amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (Jn 12:24)

Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it. (Mk 8:35)

Amen, Amen, I say to you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above…. No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and spirit…. Do not be amazed that I told you ‘you must be born from above.’ (Jn 3:3,5,7)

In my years of supporting others in their walk with Christ, I’m struck by how often a major loss, tragedy, or failure is the catalyst for opening to deeper life in God. It’s the addicts who have truly hit rock bottom that discover God sustaining them at the deepest level of their being. Divorce, the death of a loved one, or a major accident can all become the gateway to a deeper union with God precisely because they shake us out of our stable, limited psychological experience of life. When we lose our sense of security and identity in the world, a window of opportunity opens to find true security and identity in God.

Note that I said we’re given an opportunity to fall into the arms of God in these times of great tragedy. It doesn’t happen automatically. There are many for whom great loss is simply experienced as a diminishment of life. Yet, when the loss is accompanied by a deep surrender, consent, and letting go, transformation can – and often does – occur. I’m uncomfortable with speaking too quickly about universal patterns in the spiritual life, but I’ve seen this pattern occur enough times to say that it’s a near universal pattern. When we trust and let go in the face of great disruption, we grow in spiritual awareness and grow closer to Christ. When we cling to our old self and try to patch ourselves up with our own efforts and psychological strategies, we remain stagnant.

Far more articulate writers than I have commented on this great pattern of the spiritual life. Some call it the mystery of suffering. When we allow our hearts to be broken open, we are given the opportunity to be transformed in God. We share in the cruciform pattern of Jesus’ own life, where self-emptying becomes the doorway to the glory of the resurrection. As far as I can see, for transformation to occur in these circumstances, the following four conditions need to be present:

1. Something happens which overwhelms our sense of self, and we find our ordinary psychological identity and defenses inadequate.

2. We are able to consent to this event, either as it occurs or after the fact. We may be deeply sorrowful that a thing has happened, but we drop our inner resistance to the fact that it happened. We surrender to the new reality. While this is an inner process, the support of others can help us come to this place of consent.

3. Surrender to the event is held by trust in ‘a power greater than ourselves’ (to use the AA term) or, in our Christian understanding, by trust in the presence of God. We know God is with us, even as we are led beyond the limits of our own psyche.

4. Both our surrender and our trust lead to the ability to stay present to a painful unraveling, without grasping to rebuild our old life or psychological identity. Instead, we wait in dark unknowing for a new reality to emerge. In this darkness, we are remade. God gives us a new heart and a new spirit.

It’s beautiful and sacred to accompany others through this process of surrender and transformation. I give thanks every time I’m given the privilege to be present with another soul in these sacred waters, whether in spiritual direction, in friendship, or during a retreat. Yet, if I step back from the graced stories to look at the pattern of spiritual growth I observe in our culture, I’m struck by how often the real growth occurs reactively. Spiritual growth in our culture is frequently in response to tragedy and loss. Perhaps this is simply the paradox of the Gospel, where the poor in spirit possess the Kingdom of Heaven, and those who mourn are blessed (Matthew 5:3-4).

However, while I know it’s not possible to contrive and scheme our way to spiritual growth, I also can’t help but ponder if there’s another way. What would it look like, for example, if we had a church culture that sought to positively support and steward the kind of transformation that often occurs in response to tragedy? Is there a way to proactively support the dissolution of our egoic resistance to God and the subsequent divine reconfiguration of our lives?

Rites of Passage and the Conscious Stewardship of Inner Transformation

About fifteen years ago, I became fascinated by traditional rites of passage in indigenous cultures. I had come across rites of passage years earlier in my anthropology coursework, but the study remained academic. When I began working in wilderness programs with teens in my late 20s and early 30s, I saw the tremendous power and potential of using traditional rites of passage as a template to support the inner growth of modern people. I became convinced that every human soul is still connected to the wild, the mysterious, and the sacred—no matter how highly we’ve been acculturated to modern life. Through these rites of passage, I saw the seed of deeper life awaken in some (there are no guarantees) of the participants. I began to understand these rites as structured ways to support and facilitate the kind of inner death and transformation that normally (in our society, at least) only occurs in unplanned tragedy and significant loss.

Traditional rites of passage have many aspects in common with the unplanned, life-changing upheavals that can become powerful catalysts to spiritual growth. In the traditional rite of passage, the loss is built into the structure of the ritual. The initiate is stripped of their old identity and familiar circumstances. They may have to go naked or wear strange new clothing. They may be left alone in the wilderness for many days. In some traditional Native American rites of passage, the initiate fasts from food AND water for four days. Some Native American tribes in the Southwest include great feats of long-distance running. In some traditional Sub-Saharan African rites of passage, adolescent boys must endure circumcision without crying out in pain. Young Maasai men were traditionally expected to hunt and kill a lion with a spear. Among some Australian Aboriginal peoples, the initiates were expected to survive in the wild alone for months on a ‘walkabout.’ Each of these ordeals is a massive dislocation from the old way of life – the boy ritually ‘dies’ and consents to the unraveling of the old self. He then goes through many trials and tribulations, and through this journey gains access to hitherto unknown inner resources and powers. In many cultures, the newly initiated man is expected to bring back a gift to his people – some spiritual vision or new capacity with which he may bless his community.

I spent a few years studying traditional rites of passage, assisting in wilderness programs that worked with this approach, and personally participating in two rites of passage led by organizations I respect. All the while, I remained rooted in my Christian faith. I began to see deep parallels between the teachings and the Paschal mystery[1] of Jesus, and the template of traditional rites of passage in indigenous societies across the globe. I realized that the most profound ‘rite of passage’ of all was celebrated in the Church every year. Jesus suffers, loses everyone and everything, and dies rejected by humanity, and seemingly rejected by God (“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’ Mk 15:34). He willingly consents to his death and trusts in God even as he is crushed by the weight of his suffering. A period of profound unknowing follows (three days in the tomb), and he is raised into a new, completely transformed body that is immortal and radiates divinity far beyond what was possible prior to his death. The Paschal mystery is the essential rite of passage — the passing over from old life, through willing suffering and death, into new life. It is the great witness and template of the mystery of transformation. It is both a one-time, world-transforming event and an everlasting map and guide to our own inner transformation.

One of the things that troubled me in those years was how, while we Christians regularly celebrate Jesus’ passing over from mortal life through suffering and death into new life, we rarely heed his call to ‘follow me’ through our own journey of inner death and resurrection. We may worship and revere Christ, but we tend to flee at the first sign that we might ourselves be asked to follow in his Way. In response to this, I spent several years facilitating wilderness retreats where participants would attempt to ritually consent to the inner journey of following Jesus through suffering, the cross, the tomb and resurrection. We would fast and pray, spend time in solitude enduring hardships, meditate on the scriptures, and ritually enter into aspects of the

Paschal mystery. I can’t write much more about this process here,[2] but those trips convinced me that the Way of Christ must be lived out with our full being, wholly accompanying Jesus on his passage through the death of the old self, suffering and unknowing, inner crucifixion, and abiding in trust until God transforms us from within. There is no other way than this. Or to use Jesus’ own symbol, there is no other sign that will be given than the sign of Jonah (Mt 12:39). Traditional rites of passage facilitate real inner transformation precisely because there is a real unraveling of the old self and emergence of the new self only emerges on the far side of this ritualized dying. It’s not a spectator sport. Simply remembering Jesus’ death and resurrection is not enough, although it is a necessary starting point. To gain the full fruits of Jesus’ paschal journey, we must follow him through the journey of our own inner death and resurrection. ‘Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat.’ (John 12:24)

Birth as Women’s Rites of Passage

In describing traditional rites of passage, you might notice that all of my specific examples were of the initiation of young men. In many traditional cultures, the complex, highly structured rites of passage were men’s work. Male elders guided the rites and led boys through the rite of passage as a sacred journey to manhood. Indeed, in many tribes I’ve studied, a male was not considered a man until he had completed the rite of passage and it was no guarantee that all males would succeed and be recognized as men. It’s almost as if, in tribal wisdom, there’s a realization that until the small, psychological self is dislocated and the life of the spirit emerges, the boys had not yet become psychological adults.

Interestingly, many traditional cultures do not have similarly elaborate rites of passage for girls to enter into womanhood. At a superficial glance, this can seem imbalanced and unfortunate. It certainly doesn’t fit with the modern sensibility of gender equality. Most of the organizations I know of that are trying to revive and recreate rites of passage for children of the modern world do rites that are for both genders. Yet, with a deeper look, there’s a profound reason why many traditional cultures don’t have the classic ‘rite of passage’ ritual for girls the way they do for boys. Hidden within the intelligence of rites of passage is a recognition that boys need to go through a ritualized, artificially imposed experience of death, surrender, and renewal precisely because male bodies don’t naturally provide a biologically driven ‘rite of passage.’ Men create ritual ordeals of suffering and surrender for boys to become men because if they don’t, they can go years, decades, or a lifetime without having to surrender to sacred powers beyond themselves.

Women, however, are recognized in many tribal cultures as having a natural, embodied process that leads them through this same journey of radical change, letting go, ordeals, dying to self and entering into radically new life. Traditionally, women don’t need complex, artificial ritual in the same way as men do because their bodies can lead them directly into this same great surrender to sacred power beyond themselves. I’m talking, of course, about giving birth.

I’ve been meditating on this aspect of birth the past six weeks since Lisa gave birth to Luke. In both of our children’s births, I was present (along with four women in support at each birth) and witnessed Lisa undergo a radical transformation of consciousness. Of course, her body changed mightily in the nine months leading up to the birth. Yet in the event of the birth, an incredible cascade of forces washed through her body, and her body changed far more in those few hours than in any time of the pregnancy. There was a clear sense that the birth was happening to, and through, her. She had to surrender to mighty forces that were far beyond her conscious control. She moved from the rational mind into a much deeper, wilder part of her being as her body shifted, expanded, and opened the passage for our child to come into the world of light.

In retrospect, I could see all the aspects of both men’s rites of passage and major personal loss and spiritual renewal in each birth. In birth these same elements are present:

•      Forces that overwhelm the psyche and lead to the ‘death’ of the old self

•      The need to consent to this ‘death’ and surrender to both the massive changes that are taking place and to the fact that one is no longer in control

•      Staying present with discomfort and unknowing

•      Staying in the vulnerable place of unknowing until new life emerges (in the case of birth, quite literally)

•      Death of the old life that makes way for a new role and identity (This is true in all births, but especially in a woman’s first birth where the identity of maiden dies and the new role of mother is born.)

It started to make perfect sense to me why in many cultures, women giving birth is seen as the spiritual parallel of men going through the traditional rite of passage. Interestingly, I am not aware of any culture where the act of becoming a father is given the same cultural weight or significance. The mother goes through the rite of passage from within, as the child is born. This is something men simply cannot do in the same way as they become fathers. In the traditional models, both sexes have a way to enter into the sacred journey of dying to self and entering into new life. For men it happens more exteriorly, through sacrificing their bodies to the demands of the rite of passage. For women it happens more interiorly, opening their bodies from within in the act of giving birth.

As I mentioned earlier, I came to see deep parallels in the structure of traditional men’s rites of passage and in the Paschal mystery of the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In a profound way, Jesus’ passion and resurrection is a radical embodiment of the masculine path of transformation—surrender, sacrifice, death, and transformation through and beyond the grave. The language of the early church is often strikingly masculine, even combative in its description of Jesus’ victory over death and sin.

Christ is risen from the dead,

Trampling down death by death,

And upon those in the tombs giving life.

                       -From the Paschal Divine Liturgy of the Byzantine Rite (5th-6th century)

I arise today 
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
of the Creator of creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ's birth with His baptism,
Through the strength of His crucifixion with His burial,
Through the strength of His resurrection with His ascension,
Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.

-From the Lorica prayer of St. Patrick (5th century)

It’s an archetypically masculine image—Christ the strong warrior conquering the forces of darkness by self-surrender and sacrifice. I believe the Paschal mystery is a profound reality and is meant to be followed by all Christians. Both men and women can enter into this mystery—all people have masculine and feminine aspects of their soul. Yet the masculine emphasis of the Paschal mystery is significant. Does this mean Christianity is primarily a masculine path? Are women relegated to connecting to the Gospel story solely through the masculine parts of their souls?

I think it’s possible to come to this conclusion only if we look at Christ’s death and resurrection in isolation from the total story of the Gospel. The Paschal mystery is the climatic conclusion of Jesus’ earthly life. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ is the beginning of the Gospel, and its parallel opposite. If the Paschal mystery is the essential story of God conquering death through the resurrection of Christ, the Incarnation is the essential story of God entering human life through the receptivity, openness, consent and surrender of Mary, who grew the Divine-Human one in her womb and bore him into this world. The Paschal mystery is God’s salvation revealed in the image of a man’s sacrificial death. The Incarnation is God’s salvation revealed in the image of a woman’s giving birth. Just as all Christians are called to enter into Jesus’ Paschal mystery, we’re also called to enter into Mary’s birthing of God. Again, both men and women have both masculine and feminine aspects of our souls. Just as women are called to enter into the Paschal mystery, men are called to enter into the mystery of Mary giving birth to Christ.

Mary’s path to giving birth has many stages, from the ‘fiat’ (or ‘yes’) she gave to the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation, to her time living with Elisabeth, to the perilous journey to Bethlehem, to the birth of Christ. Each step is a step of deeper surrender, radical trust, and openness to God. Mary ‘dies’ to her old life in this journey, in order for Divine Life to come through her. Mary’s role in the Incarnation is a profound, feminine parallel to Christ’s role in the Paschal mystery. Together, they express a whole and reveal the masculine and feminine faces of the journey of transformation in God.

Birth and Rites of Passage in a Profane Culture

In the years I was studying men’s rites of passage, I and many of my colleagues would lament the lack of traditional, rigorous, and culturally upheld rites of passage in the modern West. We just don’t have anything like this for our young men. Secular society has no rite of passage into adulthood, and even most churches have no established rite or ritual. Where there are rites to recognize the transition to adulthood, such as the Sacrament of Confirmation in the Catholic Church, in most cases it has been reduced to a series of classes and a relatively simple, undemanding ritual that takes place within an hour. There’s nothing in it to radically challenge the ego, dislocate the psyche, and demand the initiate to enter into the inner process of death and resurrection into the life of the Holy Spirit. With no ritual death of the boy, there is little possibility for an awakening into spiritual manhood.

Where there is no ritual of transformation offered to young adults, we often see the inner urge for initiation manifest in other ways. When we lack elders to guide our initiations, we instead have boys and young men attempting to ‘initiate’ their peers, as in the case with sports hazing, fraternity initiations, and gang initiations. Military ‘boot camp’ offers perhaps the most available, institutionally developed form of pseudo-initiation in our modern world. These initiations, whether formally or informally held, attempt to fill the void left missing by an absence of true rites of passage. However, since they are not held in sacred space, there is no real inner transformation of the initiates. At best, there is an inner shift of the initiate from one egocentric psychic state to another egocentric psychic state. The essence of true initiation is the shift from an ego-centered state of being to a spirit-centered state of being. Lacking access to the sacred, the pseudo-initiations of modern life are not able to affect this shift.

This is the sad state of men’s rites of passage in our culture. But what of the ‘rites of passage’ that are available to women? If birth is the women’s equivalent to the traditional, ritualized male rite of passage, haven’t women retained access to their rite of passage by the good fortune that women are still giving birth?

As Lisa prepared for the birth of our first child, she read lots of birth stories. She talked with many women, and she has continued to talk with women and read birth stories in the years since. Together, we learned a great deal about the realities of modern hospital birth and medical obstetrics, as well as midwifery care, birthing centers, and home birth. In our explorations, we both came to see that birth in the modern world is largely considered a medical event rather than a ritual or a spiritual event. The typical modern birth takes place in the hospital, in the care of medical experts who may be women or men, with the mother hooked up to monitors. Birth is frequently induced by the injection of the synthetic hormone Pitocin. Pain-killing medication is offered to remove physical discomfort. Roughly one in three babies in the United States come into the world not through the vaginal canal, but through surgical removal through cesarean section.[3]

On many levels, birth is most often understood in the contemporary United States as a medical procedure. There is no explicit invitation to understanding birth as a process of inner as well as outer transformation for the mother. There are doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals present to attend to the physical needs of both mother and child. Notably absent, however, are elders or ritual guides appointed to steward the mother through the great inner upheaval and transformations of birth. With no collective understanding of birth as a sacred rite of passage, such people are considered unnecessary. At many hospitals in the recent era of covid restrictions, additional support (beyond a single ally, typically the father) was forbidden from being present at a birth. They were formally deemed ‘nonessential’ to the birth process.

Thus, modern birth typically takes place in a profane environment. Profane literally means ‘outside the temple,’ meaning activity that takes place outside of sacred space or awareness of the sacred. With no recognition of birth as a profoundly spiritual as well as physical transition, it becomes much more difficult for women to undergo the inner movements of the rite of passage, even as their bodies undergo the physical transformation of birthing a child. They are not encouraged to surrender their normal egoic awareness, nor encouraged to embrace the pain, suffering and uncertainty of the process. Neither are they ritually supported to recognize and embrace the death of the maiden and birth of the mother either during birth or in sacred gatherings before or after birth. Indeed, there are many aspects of medicalized birth that seem to directly interfere with the ability of the mother to enter into birth as rite of passage. The presence of medical experts and monitoring is designed to keep the rational mind of mother (and others) assured that we humans are in control of this event. The bright lights and beeping machines tend to keep one more alert and present to the outer world.

As I mentioned at the start of this essay, Lisa had a point in the birth of both of our children where the intensity of the labor overwhelmed her, and she felt she couldn’t go on. That she surrendered her will and was carried through these moments by a power beyond her was the heart of her experience of birth as rite of passage. Lisa has shared with me that if someone had offered her a way out – any way out – in those ‘I can’t do it’ moments, she would have almost certainly taken them. Instead, both times she was surrounded by people who supported her to move through the fire of the initiatory moment, and in both cases the birth of our children followed shortly. If a medicalized ‘way out’ had been offered her via anesthesia or caesarian section, it’s quite possible she would not have gone through the great surrender at the heart of each birth.

I am in no way suggesting that there is no role for life-saving medical intervention in childbirth. The medicalization of birth is a problem insofar as technology seeks to replace the powerful capacities of women’s bodies, the presence of spiritual friends and elders, and conditions that will support complete openness and total surrender. Medical technology can (and should!) still be available as a resource, but it should not take center stage. I believe that a ‘best of both worlds’ approach would be ideal. In this approach, women would be supported in giving birth in a natural context with abundant spiritual support. A midwife would be present who is trained to recognize the signs of when medical intervention is necessary, and more invasive and powerful medical technologies would be available as soon as they are deemed necessary. The key role of discerning when spiritual support and encouragement is enough, or when medical intervention is necessary, would need to be held by a person who has knowledge and training in both realms. In this way, both the medical and the ritual/spiritual aspects of birth could be honored, with the natural birth process being given primacy and the medical model intervening only when it is truly needed.[4]

I could write more about the issues with medicalizing and de-sacralizing birth, and I am certain there is much more to understand about this issue than I know right now. But from what I’ve read, what we experienced, and the stories I’ve heard, it’s clear to me that for many women, modern birth is experienced as scary and often disempowering, with authority and safety lying in the hands of the medical practitioners and their tools. Instead of learning to trust deeply in her body’s sacred wisdom and power, and in the Divine power that sustains her, a woman in this state will not be able to enter into the sacred rite of passage that birth can be. Even as new life comes through her, it seems that a woman can remain squarely in some iteration of egoic consciousness throughout a birth. The unfortunate result is that the potential power of the birth for the woman’s spirit is constricted.

Just as I do not blame an individual man for not having undergone a traditional rite of initiation, I believe it’s entirely inappropriate to blame any woman for their birth experience—either of their psychic state during birth or of their bodily experience. Nothing I am writing here is meant to blame or shame anyone for anything that they have experienced with the birth of a child. The lack of a sacred container for most modern births is a tragedy none of us have personally created, and we are in a sense orphans, each doing the best we can to navigate a spiritual world with few elders or intact sacred traditions to be found. If, as you read this, you are experiencing sorrow with your own experiences of birth, know that I mourn and weep alongside you.

I’ve come to believe that modern women, as well as modern men, suffer from a lack of access to the transformative power of traditional rites of passage. Even when birth takes place, there is no guarantee that it will take place in a context where psychic and spiritual transformation can occur alongside the birth of the child. In this way, women as well as men are denied a powerful tool of inner transformation and continue to be culturally conditioned to remain in psychological childhood (identifying with ego as self) even while living through biological adulthood.

There are no easy answers for our cultural aridity in these realms. I believe that traditional rites of passage, honoring and holding birth in a sacred context, and honoring life upheavals in a sacred fashion can each become doorways to profound and transformational encounters with God and with our own deep spiritual natures. Without intentional spiritual support, we’re far less likely to experience inner transformation through these events. I think this may be a major reason why we are so stuck, spiritually, in our modern world. I also believe that small communities of people can begin to hold these liminal times (birth, coming of age, and life upheaval) in a sacred manner, even within a wider culture that understands little to nothing about rites of passage and spiritual matters. There are tools available to those seeking spiritual renewal in these realms that can be nurtured and developed in our era. What that work looks like is a rich and complex topic – one that I may explore in future posts.

---

[1] Paschal mystery is the term for Jesus’ willing sacrificial death and resurrection

[2] An important aspect of traditional rites of passage is that you are not to talk about what happens in sacred space outside of sacred space. To do so risks desecrating the memory and its effects in one’s life.

[3] Midwife-supported home births in United States have a C-section rate of about 5%, roughly 1/6th the national average.

[4] Adding to the complexity of medicalized birth in our era is the unfortunate fact that modern lifestyles often decrease the capacity of a woman’s body to give birth naturally. Obesity, diabetes, nutrient deficient diets and sedentary living all increase the likelihood of complications requiring medical intervention during birth.