I past the half century mark this past summer as spiritual commander of this vessel. My two boys are all grown up and our life is changing yet again. However, what is the next step? A few events happened this summer that got me thinking about rites of passage to help people move through these different stages of life and be able to communicate with others our roles within our communities.

Ceremonies that mark important transitional periods in a person's life, such as birth, puberty, marriage, having children, and death. Rites of passage usually involve ritual activities and teachings designed to strip individuals of their original roles and prepare them for new roles. - dictonary.com

These ceremonies don't really exist any more with the colonial industrial take over of our lives. Our traditional customs and ceremonies were replaced with processes, procedures, graduation and degrees. But in my heart, these facilitate the machine and completely miss the spirit of the individual to help him / her move through life.

In the martial arts we used a ceremony called 'promotion' to help the student work through the process to becoming a black belt. But a black belt is not an end but a beginning. In martial arts, getting a black belt means you are an adult and you have learned the basics of the art to then start teaching under the guidance of a master instructor. That is when our learning really starts as we learn more by teaching others than we learned by being taught. Depending on the amount of years one trains and teaches, another promotion then signals to the community that one has mastered the art and he / she has earned a spot as elder within the community.

Grandmaster James Lo - 2006

How many of us could have used a few ceremonies in our lives to help us figure out life? We don't have a ceremony to signal to the community that an individual has grown and learned the basics to become an adult. Graduating High school was not nearly adequate enough for the task as most of us are still children due to the woefully inadequate training the public school system offers. Most of us were emotionally and mentally immature when we graduated. But if the elders of the community filled in the gaps with additional training and held a coming of age ceremony, then I know it would have helped me tremendously through my informative years.

As such, I did not become a real adult until I was in my late 30's. A long time to go through life bumping into walls pretending to be an adult but behaving like a child. I got into a lot of trouble as a result and I had no elders to guide me along the way, not that I was willing to listen to them at the time either.

Now that I am an adult and my kids are all grow, I was confronted with the question: now what? That is when I experienced a ceremony that happened to me this spring where a community got together, formed a circle around me, placed their hands on me and asked me to be their elder. It was a deeply emotional and moving experience and helped guide me into the next phase of my life.

It is this event and the opportunity to join the steemit community that prompted me to dump a life time of experiences, knowledge and research so that all those out there can come to terms with what it means to be an independent adult. As I move through the last phases of my life in preparation for the last ceremony I do here (death), it is my duty to share and guide people along their journey. However, in the true spirit of the martial arts and the pacem arts, I refuse to bust down doors and tell people that they are doing it life all wrong.

My good friend Sweetgrass Sitting Bear has taught me much about his culture and for them, they go to their elders to ask questions, look for guidance and share stories. The elders don't rally the troupes as it takes up way too much energy. The elders are there for contemplation, reflection, wisdom and guidance. They are there to ensure that their knowledge is passed down to the next generations so that it lives on forever instead of perishing when the vessel returns to Mother Earth. They bring gifts to their elders out of a show of respect and to acknowledge the value of their wisdom and guidance.

I think we should explore re-instating these rites within our lives. How do we know when a child has acquired the skills to hunt or gather or when the become an adult? How to they even know what an adult is? How do we know who our true spiritual warriors are or our mothers, fathers, elders or teachers? Does a piece of paper on their wall make that determination or does it give them the right to perform a function of the machine so that children in suits can govern the world?

The rite of passage that was performed for me this spring helped me more than any piece of paper ever did because it was given to me out of recognition of my life work. My efforts to work through the levels of TaeKwonDo helped me more than I ever realized at the time as that helped me to be an adult! I became and adult in March 2003 at the age of 36 and I was completely shocked by the invitation to promote to be a black belt. It was one of my most memorable experiences in my life. The state did not grant any privilege or authority onto me, but instead my community recognized my efforts as I had taken on the role, duties and rights associated with being an adult. I proved myself in their eyes and it was a ceremony that my community held to recognize the hard worked that I did. It was not granted to me by some authority, but rather was a recognition from my community. That held far more weight than any piece of paper ever did.

Perhaps it is time that those who study the pacem arts work on a similar rites of passage process so that we can help others as they move through the different stages of life. I will give this more thought, but I welcome feedback, ideas and suggestions so that we can start the ball rolling.

Our first priority, to train people so that they are fully functional, responsible adults so that we can start holding ceremonies for them. That requires independence and self-governance. How is everyone doing in that regard?

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