POINTSOFVIEW | AT HOME ON EARTH
By Kyle Kramer
Meeting the Challenge of This Moment
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n last month’s column, I explored the idea that, as we contemplate how we might help repair our hurting world, we need to start with the who rather than the what or the how. In other words, we must focus first on the type of people we need to become before we dive too deeply into strategizing about particular problems and their solutions. If we don’t get the who part right, we’ll almost certainly fumble on the what and the how. The world, I wrote, needs people who are visionary, curious, collaborative, courageous, disciplined, and humble. As I’ve contemplated our collective need to become the kind of people who can meet the challenges we face, I’ve realized that the who question does actually entail a how question: How can we become the people the world needs? How can we become our best, truest, most Christlike selves? This becoming is a lifetime’s journey. But a crucially important milestone on that journey is the passage from childhood into young adulthood. How do we help initiate our young people into the new roles, responsibilities, and way of being that adulthood requires? That inflection point has always been a critical moment in any young person’s development. It feels especially important at this moment in history, when our young people face a future filled with monumentally adult challenges like climate change, racial reckonings, and gridlocked politics. At the
16 • May 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org
same time, many of us adults in the room haven’t really been acting like adults, compared to, say, the young climate activist Greta Thunberg. It feels especially important for me personally, as our son just turned 14, and we want to help him find a good path into young adulthood. I’m no child development expert (though I’m married to one), but it seems strange to me that, as important as it is for us to facilitate this passage into adulthood, we Americans don’t seem to invest much time or energy into getting it right. Traditional indigenous cultures, by comparison, have generally had robust, very intentional rituals to bring their young people into adulthood as full members of the tribe. I can’t think of many comparable examples in American culture. Somehow, prom and a driver’s license don’t seem to cut it. Even in our Catholic world, our young people’s preparation to receive the sacrament of Confirmation could be an even deeper and more powerful experience. RITES OF INITIATION
Traditionally, rites of initiation removed initiates from the normal round, isolated them (usually in the wilderness), and subjected them to some sort of ordeal that entailed suffering. Then the elders shared the tribe’s wisdom and invited the initiates to rejoin the tribe as adults, with their egos recentered not simply on themselves but toward service to
ISTOCK IMAGES: TOP: VLAD KARAVAEV; BOTTOM: KIWIS
Kyle is the executive director of the Passionist Earth & Spirit Center, which offers interfaith educational programming in meditation, ecology, and social compassion. He serves as a Catholic climate ambassador for the US Conference of Catholic Bishopssponsored Catholic Climate Covenant and is the author of A Time to Plant: Life Lessons in Work, Prayer, and Dirt (Ave Maria Press, 2010). He speaks across the country on issues of ecology and spirituality. He and his family spent 15 years as organic farmers and homesteaders in Spencer County, Indiana.
TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF KYLE KRAMER; TOP: FAT CAMERA/ISTOCK
Kyle Kramer
