Tuesday March 26,2024

Discussions

Confirmation Ceremony Reflections

I AM Eden International

I AM EDEN INTERNATIONAL

DavidCampus, Nova Scotia, Canada 

Discussions on Teaching Frameworks | Subject: Confirmation Ceremony Reflections

Confirmation Ceremonies marked a very significant change in the lives of our young people. These Rites of Passage spelled their transition from liberties and latitudes of childhood to the duties and responsibilities of adulthood. The keynote that our ancestors sought to impress upon our young men was Responsibility and Duty. They did not want to sugar coat the child’s expectations of life. Growing up and growing old is hard, difficult, and often painful. Often it can feel like you are being torn apart. That’s life. There is hurt and there is healing but, no matter what, there is always duty.

Rites of Passage for young men could often be cruel and painful. Curiously, females were often spared these gruesome trials as they were sometimes believed to be subject to the “three humiliations of the blood”: the first period, the first child, and menopause. For some of the ancients, Mother Nature herself initiated her daughters but the men of the tribe had to initiate the boys. Hence, the fashion of circumcision, scarring/tattooing, fights, challenges of valour, strength, and wit. Males were expected to prove themselves worthy, which carried with it the implication that – as they currently stood – they were not worthy. To be thought of as worthy they needed to successfully complete the trials. Failure to successfully complete these trials very often carried serious social consequences for the males. Such males were treated with suspicion, categorised as female, and were not allowed to have children. This mistrust was evidenced in the saying ‘the uninitiated man would burn the village done just to warm his feet.’ The men of the village believed these failed candidates were morally weak, and their loyalty and courage were inadequate.

These days we can dispense with the cruel elements of such rituals but I doubt it would be wise to dispense with these rituals altogether. However, in what way could we reframe these ancient rites so as to impress upon our youth the nature of the challenges that lie ahead of them and the attitudes that would be most beneficial in life? I think there should be a variety of trials and challenges. One Challenge should be completely personal and individual. One should be a trial involving a mentor. The Final Trial should be a Group Challenge. The Final Trial should be the “Class” organising the Final Day Party. They should be responsible for everything, using a minimum of adult guidance: the sourcing of the food, the prep and cooking, the serving, the music, the clean up, the logistics, the determining of roles – everything.

The individual trial should be something that challenges the kid close to breaking/physical exhaustion, ideally involving the achieving of some new personal best. This victory should be witnessed by the child’s nearest and dearest, and they should be howling in encouragement to help them get over the line. These challenges might not necessarily be physical in nature, it depends on the child’s specific strengths. There are benefits to helping the child choose the goal, lessons to be learned in acquiring the discipline needed to achieve the goal and so on. However, it should be a genuinely difficult challenge or else it’s pointless.

The Mentor Challenge highlights the generations and that we rely on and need one another. As the Older fades the Younger must take up and complete the challenge. Such challenges reveal symbolise that one day the child will grow old and its fading strength will be compensated by the next generation. The inability of the older to finish the challenge also indicates that most things worth doing cannot be achieved in one lifetime. It symbolises that each generation must give its all, teaching us that ambivalence of the older generation to the welfare of future generations, heaps unasked for hardship on the youth – at the same time stressing to youth that debauchery and decadence squanders the work put in by their elders and impoverishes future generations. There are ways to dramatise this such that the adverse impact of selfishness and laziness are highlighted. This could well be a group activity, even teams competing – with similar crowds howling in encouragement. These crowds are emblematic of our ancestors who made this moment possible and are praying for our success, the unseen divine agencies that are likewise tirelessly toiling away for our prosperity, and our very own loved ones that have worked and sacrificed so that these kids could go out into the world take on responsibility and dare to make the world a better place.

The Final Challenge focuses on responsibility and teamwork. It also creates a special and highly memorable day, and a fitting end to the antecedent challenges. It involves a lot of moving parts. Each iteration will undoubtedly give rise to their own stories and legends. Over time these could get quite involved but that’d be OK.

I feel that this version of the Initiation Rites/Rites of Passage for Adolescents would offer great social and spiritual value.

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Aden

John

Friday April 5, 2024

Discussions

Communion Ceremony Reflections

I AM Eden International           I AM EDEN INTERNATIONAL

DavidCampus, Nova Scotia, Canada 

Discussions on Teaching Frameworks | Subject:

Communion Ceremony Reflections

The First Holy Communion is a special and memorable day in all our lives. There’s the great spectacle, everyone is dressed in their best, the children are the centre of all the attention, there’s a festive atmosphere, and – of course – there’s a few bob to be made on the day. That is the material side of it but as a ceremony, as a ritual – it symbolises the start of the greatest relationship that the individual child will ever have: their personal relationship with God. This is what we endeavour to bring to the centre of the child’s awareness – the child is now personally in communion with the Great Father. Through this relationship the Father will guide his child out of the dizzying illusions of childhood into the divine liberty of the clear light of full spiritual maturity.

The ritual of Communion proclaims to the world and the Cosmos that the God of Eternity has found another child of time and the child now embarks on the great adventure of finding God. In the child’s personal experience they discovered for themselves that there is a difference between right and wrong, good and evil, fairness and unfairness – they have achieved moral consciousness. They are finally of age where they can stand as a witness in a Court of Law, because they know there is a difference right and wrong, they are capable of moral reasoning – of figuring out what they ought and ought not to do.

Play teaches children the importance of rules, law, and obedience. Without rules there can be no game. Games teach us about fairness, about playing by the rules. Games also teach us that we invent games, we make up the rules, and that often it is only after we have played the games for a while that we discover that the rules were not fair and so have to be changed so that more people can enjoy playing the game. Rules allow us to play. Reason allows us to understand how, while moral reasoning enables us to understand why – to discern ends from means.

Consequently, an excellent way of celebrating Communion Day would be to spend the day playing games – especially ones for the whole family. You could have the kids playing with one another, dads playing with one another and so on for mothers. Being able to play well with others is an essential life skill. It helps us understand concepts such as fairness, how to make agreements, what commitment means, how to establish goals, that team mates have different abilities, strengths, and weaknesses and that some are more blessed in one department that others are. All the while, highlighting the importance of honesty, integrity, loyalty, and conscientiousness.

Through this lens we see that TRADITION is the rules we have developed so far. We can see that things like CONSTITUTIONS were put in place to level the societal playing field, and as part of an attempt place definite limits on the plans of those who would cheat their way through life if they could. Through this lens we see that tradition is important, even vital, and that it cannot be safely abandoned without risking total societal collapse. Likewise can we see that tradition needs to be critiqued to ensure that society is not burdened with antiquated rules that benefit a minority at the unfair disenfranchisement of an honest majority.

We can see how changing things like a constitution, which is essentially the articulation of the Social Contract, must be done very carefully, clearly, and slowly. Otherwise social cohesion can unravel, and a virtually endless list of social ills could be unleashed upon society. Hence, the necessity for conservativism when it comes to social innovation. Innovation might be good, but it might also have unappreciated negative consequences. Youth is always full of new ideas and can be frustrated by the conservative spirit of their elders but traditions teachings us that many ideas are not as new as children might like to think. Moreover, that they have been tried and led only to disaster and tragedy. However, by using this framework we might be able to foster a sense of respect for tradition, while noting that tradition needs to be critiqued – all the while understanding that innovation, in and of itself, is not always a good thing.

Communion is a two way street. The child engages with their community to learn about the rules of life, and with whom it is going to play the game of life. The Community prospers as it protects the interests and enables the child reach its potential. The individual prospers as bestows its life for the enhancement and enrichment of the whole and in all this there is COMMUNION with the Father, as he endeavours to guide the child through the game of life – illuminating its way through the ideals it nurtures in its heart, showing the child the way to live its best life and providing glimpses of better worlds, more noble futures. The Father nurtures in the soul an appreciation of what could be – what you could be as an individual, what you can do to make the world a better place, even as your soul feasts on the abundance of blessings that surround you.

The Community has a moral obligation to welcome and assist the child in learning the rules of life, how to play by them, how to win and lose with grace. The child has a moral obligation to bestow its best self on the world and cosmos.

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