Thank you so much, Mark and Lisa. AMEN, Amen to all you have said. By a miraculous confluence of circumstances I have been blessed with 5 midwife assisted births and 4 of them at home. I was in a place where I knew that the surrender required was a spiritual rite and not in any way medical. It is just as you have described. I remember telling my husband and the midwives that for a short time I felt that I was more of an animal than a human... operating from a deep instinctive need to birth and losing all the concerns that normal human life holds. I also prayed a prayer of surrender to God throughout the challenging moments. And I also remarked that if someone had been by my side saying, "are you sure you don't need an epidural or a C section?" I would have grabbed at the chance for relief. So we have to intentionally surround ourselves with the right people and not everyone can manage that. Many women who understand what is at stake don't have a husband who gets it. He wants to be a hero and make the pain go away, or he perceives the medical establishment as safe and so insists on it. It is important for men and husbands to write and think about this matter for that reason at least.
Another thing that I wonder about is how so many mothers that I meet are preoccupied with worry about how much and how long their babies sleep and the feeding schedule thing. I think that after a proper initiation we have a sort of inner strength, trust, and flow that helps us work these things out and lacking that initiatory passage we aren't entering into motherhood with all the resources we need. It's easy to imagine how this would ricochet down through the generations. As you say, it is not one individuals fault that they are in this broken system, and it is no credit to me personally that I was gifted with natural birth; but knowing what I know I am sad that this has been such a rare thing.
Thank you Clara for sharing your experience - and I'm so grateful that you and your family were also in a position to experience these gifts! Your sense of how easily the presence or absence of this type of initiation can ricochet down the generations is insightful.
That's also an interesting insight about the role of the husband in either supporting this process or interfering in it based on his own relationship with surrender/letting go. Our spiritual and emotional lives are so intertwined, for weal and for woe!
This was fascinating and enlightening. How do you reconcile a lack of men’s rites of initiation with the Church’s current rites of baptism, chrismation, and communion which for many Orthodox Christians occur as babies, before an egoic transformation may occur? Is a “new sacrament” the solution? Should we appropriate another tradition’s rite? Looking back on my life, I’m not sure if I ever experienced a rite of initiation into manhood as you describe, however I can see small moments in which I trusted in God and not my own rationality. Thanks for an excellent article.
Excellent question! I don't have any obvious solution in mind at the level of liturgical practice for each Christian tradition. When I read accounts of the earliest generations of Christians (pre-Constantine) it seems like the adult baptism of converts held this ritual role in the church community. There's explicit language of death and rebirth in baptism, coupled with very rigorous preparation, and the real possibility of martyrdom once baptized. It feels like it was holding this kind of major 'rite of passage'/initiation space in the life of the early church.
I do appreciate the theology and practice of bestowing the sacraments on infants, and welcoming them fully into the community of the church. As is typical with Catholic practice, I was baptized as an infant, but wasn't confirmed (the parallel of chrismation for the Orthodox) until much later. For me, I was 18. My own experience was that the rite took place at an appropriate time for me - though there's wasn't the corresponding rigor to enter into a felt sense of egoic transformation. But from that experience I've wondered/hoped that in Catholicism at least, the sacrament of confirmation could be held within the context of a more dynamic and full rite of initiation for teens. I believe it would be an enormous gift to the young adults who went through the sacramental initiation in this way.
I'm not sure what that might mean for Orthodox practice - or for other churches that don't have a rite that's already in place (in some form) around the traditional age of initiation. I suppose the sacrament of marriage or the vows of taking up monastic life might also be seen/employed in this type of context....
And yes, there are definitely smaller moments when we can trust in God beyond ourselves - while these are less 'spectacular' they are no less important!
Thank you so much, Mark and Lisa. AMEN, Amen to all you have said. By a miraculous confluence of circumstances I have been blessed with 5 midwife assisted births and 4 of them at home. I was in a place where I knew that the surrender required was a spiritual rite and not in any way medical. It is just as you have described. I remember telling my husband and the midwives that for a short time I felt that I was more of an animal than a human... operating from a deep instinctive need to birth and losing all the concerns that normal human life holds. I also prayed a prayer of surrender to God throughout the challenging moments. And I also remarked that if someone had been by my side saying, "are you sure you don't need an epidural or a C section?" I would have grabbed at the chance for relief. So we have to intentionally surround ourselves with the right people and not everyone can manage that. Many women who understand what is at stake don't have a husband who gets it. He wants to be a hero and make the pain go away, or he perceives the medical establishment as safe and so insists on it. It is important for men and husbands to write and think about this matter for that reason at least.
Another thing that I wonder about is how so many mothers that I meet are preoccupied with worry about how much and how long their babies sleep and the feeding schedule thing. I think that after a proper initiation we have a sort of inner strength, trust, and flow that helps us work these things out and lacking that initiatory passage we aren't entering into motherhood with all the resources we need. It's easy to imagine how this would ricochet down through the generations. As you say, it is not one individuals fault that they are in this broken system, and it is no credit to me personally that I was gifted with natural birth; but knowing what I know I am sad that this has been such a rare thing.
Clara
Thank you Clara for sharing your experience - and I'm so grateful that you and your family were also in a position to experience these gifts! Your sense of how easily the presence or absence of this type of initiation can ricochet down the generations is insightful.
That's also an interesting insight about the role of the husband in either supporting this process or interfering in it based on his own relationship with surrender/letting go. Our spiritual and emotional lives are so intertwined, for weal and for woe!
This was fascinating and enlightening. How do you reconcile a lack of men’s rites of initiation with the Church’s current rites of baptism, chrismation, and communion which for many Orthodox Christians occur as babies, before an egoic transformation may occur? Is a “new sacrament” the solution? Should we appropriate another tradition’s rite? Looking back on my life, I’m not sure if I ever experienced a rite of initiation into manhood as you describe, however I can see small moments in which I trusted in God and not my own rationality. Thanks for an excellent article.
Excellent question! I don't have any obvious solution in mind at the level of liturgical practice for each Christian tradition. When I read accounts of the earliest generations of Christians (pre-Constantine) it seems like the adult baptism of converts held this ritual role in the church community. There's explicit language of death and rebirth in baptism, coupled with very rigorous preparation, and the real possibility of martyrdom once baptized. It feels like it was holding this kind of major 'rite of passage'/initiation space in the life of the early church.
I do appreciate the theology and practice of bestowing the sacraments on infants, and welcoming them fully into the community of the church. As is typical with Catholic practice, I was baptized as an infant, but wasn't confirmed (the parallel of chrismation for the Orthodox) until much later. For me, I was 18. My own experience was that the rite took place at an appropriate time for me - though there's wasn't the corresponding rigor to enter into a felt sense of egoic transformation. But from that experience I've wondered/hoped that in Catholicism at least, the sacrament of confirmation could be held within the context of a more dynamic and full rite of initiation for teens. I believe it would be an enormous gift to the young adults who went through the sacramental initiation in this way.
I'm not sure what that might mean for Orthodox practice - or for other churches that don't have a rite that's already in place (in some form) around the traditional age of initiation. I suppose the sacrament of marriage or the vows of taking up monastic life might also be seen/employed in this type of context....
And yes, there are definitely smaller moments when we can trust in God beyond ourselves - while these are less 'spectacular' they are no less important!
This is a terrific piece. Came across your work recently and am glad to have found it. Thanks for writing.