There is an approach to each individual and each group that will stimulate growth in their lives, their imagination. Performing Rites-of-Passage ceremonies with young African-American men schooled and living in urban areas presents some problems that stand out against the background of their families, their neighborhoods and schools, and the general American culture.
Usually, schools and organizations seem to focus on young people from broken homes suffering from seemingly insurmountable conditions. One school in the Washington DC area had a visionary for a Vice Principal who felt that school curriculum devoted to spiritual, emotional and intellectual development of the individual would produce a better-equipped graduate. This Vice-Principal asked us to take some of his top students into the initiatory process of Rites-of-Passage work for four months work in our sacred Circle with a powerful array of the sacred tools of ritual, stories, mirrors, ceremony, the Sankofa bird, altars, and dialogue from an African centered approach.
Re-introducing the Circle to initiates returns them to the birthing place and its assurances. Returning to the Circle returns the initiate to the Womb. In this space stories begin a long process of learning, unlearning, trust development, and vulnerability.
One day near the end of our four months together we were re-telling stories about a weekend trip to a former slave plantation. We were having a great time. One of the young boys, I will call Adam, jumped up and put his arms around my shoulders.
“What are you going to do now, Baba Greg?” he asked.
The other boys got quiet and their eyes shifted and changed into alarm. I felt a slight touch on my neck and realized a knife was held to my throat. I relaxed. A long moment passed and Adam withdrew his arm, folded his knife and sat down smiling. I gathered the group energy and redirected it. The session couldn’t have ended sooner for some of the boys. They peppered me with questions about the incident and my lack of response. I assured them and asked they return the next day on time.
The next day they returned to a room barely illuminated by candles on and around a very powerful Warrior altar encircled by chairs. Contrasting the dark room with white raiment and dark solemn features sat an elder holding his berimbau across from my place south of the altar.
Spirit is fundamental to African core beliefs and structure and from this point the wisdom of African spirituality merged with the insights and maturity levels of the young men present. The ceremony began with a story. My story of the Warrior altar tied all of the teaching stories together shared in the past four months. The telling shifted group focus and ushered the ‘incident’ into the Circle. Adam was in the middle of the circle on a log west of the altar. From this point the boys took over as men in war counsel.
Five minutes passed before the 14 year old remembered what he had done. His peers rejected his initial apology. They were relentless purging, and plunging deep into his inner man, his stories, and his thought process until they broke through to his core and shattered him into pieces. Maybe half of an hour passed before they accepted Adam’s apology to me.
The ceremony broadened itself into the rippling lines of consequences on every level of being, of consciousness, the legal outcome of his actions and the violations to the circle. It was extraordinary. I was in a master class of reconciliation. Adam’s peers, through compassionate stories, lastly, advised him to confide in his parents. I built up what was broken and restored a new Adam to the circle and closed the ceremony.
The timeliness of ceremony faded slowly until someone noticed that two hours had passed. Jarred out of the experience I wrote hall passes for all, dismantled the altar and went to the school office. Upon hearing of the incident the Vice Principal called the police. The responding officer was enraged and not understanding why I took a day to report the incident. The administrator stopped the interrogation and explained that my work required I prepare the boy before turning him over to the authorities.
In the aftermath the boy was never criminally charged because I was never in fear of my life. It was near the end of the year but he was expelled. Months later his family moved down South. That experience is still rippling through those young lives and paradigms. The elder took the experience to UCLA and it has contributed to his reconciliation work with Israeli and Palestinian children.
As the intimate observer I knew it was better to have prepared the young man. Children in the early teenage years change in ways adults either forget or dismiss as invalid. The energy of boys changes into a centrifugal force and girl’s energy changes into a centripetal force of nature and magic. But children are forced into squares by society and religion. Our society forces an insensitive force on our children’s thinking process, creativity, and imaginations. Re-introducing the Circle to an initiate returns them to the birthing place and its assurances. Growth becomes inevitable.
I am a Keeper of Stories who remembers and understands his own childhood. To understand a notion about freedom one must understand its denials. Do we want our children to grow into adults by magic or by work? This is mirror-work. What the boys learn from me comes from my essence. My intent must be clear as water. Love and commitment to the growth of our young people must balance the task. The facilitator must develop his intent long before this work is done!
©2007 Gregory E. Woods
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