Tim Wright organizes a number of our Gurian Institute Helping Boys Thrive Summits and presents workshops worldwide on gender issues.  He will provide a workshop at our Virtual Summer Training Institute (June 27 – July 1) titled Dynamic Rites of Passage for Boys and Girls:  How to Develop and Use Strategies, Models, and Successful Programs in Your School or Community.   Tim focuses on the boy part of this equation in today’s blog, and tells some of his own story, too.

We hope you’ll join us at our Virtual Summer Training Summit.  If you can register teams of five or more, there is a group discount available.   We will also be certifying new Trainers at this event.  To learn more about the Summer Training and to register, please click https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2020/.   Now, here is Tim’s blog.

The dream of every parent of a boy is to raise him to be a good man. The hope of every teacher of boys is to educate them in the classroom to be life-long learners, thus equipping boys to use their knowledge and insights to help build a better world. The desire of every grandparent of a boy is to invest in the grandson a legacy of wisdom. Faith communities, therapists, coaches, and others shaping the lives of boys do so with the purpose of being a part of raising good dads, husbands, workers, and leaders.

These hopes, dreams, desires, and purposes do not happen by chance, however.  Almost since boys started walking the face of the earth, families, tribes, and cultures have recognized the need to train boys to be good men; to create intentional strategies and experiences that will fill a boy with substance—the substance of goodness, wisdom, strength, compassion, resilience, and purpose.

These intentional strategies and experiences grew into what we now refer to as Rites of Passage.

A Rite of Passage marks a specific movement or transition from one phase of life to the next. What makes a Rite of Passage a Rite of Passage is that it provides training for that person to enable him or her to walk through that transition to the other side.

On December 11, 1974, for example, I ran out of school and jumped into our car. My dad was waiting for me and drove me about an hour to a suburb of Minneapolis. Dad put the car in park and got out. I moved over to the driver’s side and a man with a clipboard climbed into the passenger seat. He told me to drive and to do exactly what he told me to do.

He asked me to stop. To back up. To park on a hill. To parallel park. To speed up. To slow down.

After 45 minutes we pulled back up to the starting point. Clipboard man wrote a quick note, handed it to me and said, “Congratulations! You passed!”

And from that moment on I was no longer a dependent passenger. I had transitioned to an active driver.

But that moment didn’t happen in that one day. It was a year long process of training including a written test, six hours of behind the wheel instruction, six hours of driver safety classroom instruction, and a year of practicing with a responsible adult (my dad) riding with me. That final test was the culmination of an entire process of challenges, learning, and mentoring called a Rite of Passage.

Sadly, Rites of Passage for boys are something of a lost art. We still see vestiges of them in our sports dominated culture as coaches mentor boys in winning and losing. We see it, negatively, in boys binge drinking their first year of college to “prove” their manhood.

Every boy, as he begins the transition from boyhood to manhood, has a primal need to be trained and mentored into his destiny as a man. If he doesn’t get it, he’ll make it up. Because at some point he will need to know he’s a man. He will need someone to tell him he’s a man.

The HEROIC Rite of Passage Program

Over twelve years ago I sent Dr. Michael Gurian an email asking if he might be open to helping me do a better job connecting with the boys in our congregation. I didn’t really expect a busy New York Times Best-Selling Author to respond, but to my surprise he wrote back the very next day! I quickly discovered Michael is passionate about helping our boys and helping anyone who shares that same passion.

After consulting with him for several months he asked me the key question: What do you hope to get out of our time together? What do you think your congregation and the boys in your church need?

By then the answer was clear. While we in the faith community have resources for forging faith in kids, we didn’t really have anything resembling a true Rite of Passage for boys (or girls). We lacked any viable strategy for connecting faith to manhood and manhood to faith as our boys were transitioning out of boyhood.

As a result, Michael and I spent the next few years creating a congregation-based Rite of Passage program for boys using Michael’s outline for manhood based on the word H-E-R-O-I-C: Honorable. Enterprising. Responsible. Original. Intimate. Creative. (See The Purpose of Boys by Michael Gurian.)

Later on we created several iterations of that foundational Rite of Passage for dads and sons in faith-based families and in secular families. (www.WonderofParenting.com)  These Rites of Passage, like the many that have been used throughout human history, feature several common characteristics:

• Think Gandalph and the Fellowship of the Ring surrounding Frodo in The Lord of the Rings. Think Merlin mentoring King Arthur. Think Dumbledore and Harry Potter. Every Rite of Passage is fueled by mentors: men who walk alongside a boy guiding him, correcting him, building resilience in him, cheering him on, and pouring good masculine energy into him.
• The purpose of a Rite of Passage is to challenge a boy to face his fears; to push him to dig deep into his soul for the wisdom to make right decisions; to teach him how to lose when the challenge is too much and how to win when the challenge is overcome. Facing that fear might take on the form of a 24 hour outdoor camping experience or getting up in front of a group of people and making a project presentation.
• Every little boy dreams of being a super hero. His testosterone-filled body yearns to build a better world. His gifts and talents cry out to be used in a way that makes a difference. He grows up wanting to be a good man…a good dad…a good husband…a good employee…a good employer. If a boy is not mentored in a grand purpose for his life he will often shut down, check out, or, in some cases, become overly violent. But raised and mentored with his sacred purpose, a boy lives life with passion and energy. A Rite of Passage begins to nurture purpose in a boy, along with the values and characteristics of good manhood.
• Once the boy has finished his Rite of Passage, he’s celebrated for his accomplishment. A party, a meal, a trip, or the bestowal of a gift, help mark this transition into manhood.

The primal need of every boy is to hear adults he respects look him in the eye and say, “I’m proud of you. I’m proud of the man you are becoming.” Coupled with an intentional Rite of Passage, that boy is well on his way to being a good man.

At the Gurian Virtual Training Institute in late June, I will present a workshop that looks at not only the deep substance of rites of passage, but also the nuts and bolts of how to do it in your home, community, and school.  For more information and to register, please click https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2020/.  Thank you.

–Tim Wright