RITE OF PASSAGE

Life is described in just three words: ‘a ceremony or event marking an important stage in someone’s life, especially birth, the transition from childhood to adulthood, marriage, and death’.  

This description brings to mind quite often experiences that are often joyful or memorable, although sometimes not but we know that it is the passage through life that has been the norm for decades and in some ways can be expected. Not all experiences are easy or happy but accepted and worked through until an end is found. There are other experiences that are planned and looked forward to as a ‘rite of passage’ into the next phase of life as we have known it.

Baptisms, school concerts, school camps, graduations, loss of friends, muck-up days, school formals, funerals, I could go on. These are seen as ‘rites of passage’ through our different stages. Being able to gather with family and friends to welcome formally into the world a new face or even to say goodbye together, to go to your child’s first school concert and shed a proud tear as the young pink-cheeked faces sings their little hearts out. To send off a child on its first school camp so can you can worry until they get back whilst they have fun getting dirty, sweaty, eat at midnight whilst giggling with friends is, funnily enough, still under the banner of those three little words. Then there’s homework and exams and graduation, all done with classes, groups, family and friends. The shopping for that formal dress that is just going to push the boundaries of the school rules and parents’ acceptance, the choosing of the rebel partner to said formal, the person that parents/guardians love to hate but, “it’s only one night”. To be with loved ones as they pass onto the next world. RITES

2020 our rites have been sadly denied. It is the year that new-borns bond with a set of eyes and a mask. Their milestones are celebrated in lockdown and through the aid of technology so the doting family can share.

School camps are put off until ‘next year’, children are chatting with friends over the internet not in the playgrounds. Formals and all the dress-ups will have to wait.  Funerals are lonely events.

I wonder how this denial will affect our young people. Will they have ‘missed out’ Will they understand their importance?

Other words can be used though to describe this small phrase i.e. baptism of fire, rude introduction, test of courage or ordeal.

For our peacemakers, leaders, politicians, financiers I honestly think the second description is in full force.  The world in a Pandemic is a sad world.

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