Last evening I attended a special party for one of my grandchildren. It was more than tradition in that my younger daughter and her husband planned it as a transitional event in the life of their son. He recently turned eighteen years of age, would be a high school graduate in a few weeks, and has signed up for a college which is 100 or so miles away. The party included a number of elder adults one might not expect to attend for a man his age. His parents wanted to make it a passage marker, boosting their son further into adult life and responsibility. That might not be an easy thing to do in an era that has divided populations into age segments, and other contexts, that sometimes do not relate to, or communicate, with each other. Such an event might accent the valleys between generations, genders, styles, or other differentials.
At this writing, there is little doubt that parents and society do too little in preparing children: for adult life that is to be marked by proper conduct, productive life activity, responsible citizenship, self-realization with effective management of life relationships, perceptions in life vision, healthy habits, and general faithfulness in wisdom. In the transcendent perceptions there is not only faith in God, but the place of personal joy, service to others, and commitment to becoming a loving person. (It is well to be reminded that studies show that love is the universal factor in all societies.) Out of this orientation, given energy, an individual finds meaning for living. There is opportunity to point the way for the life of a person, to focus on something other than the current fad, or bizarre styles, or celebrity, or electronic devices, or self-gratification. In former eras there were clear rites of passage. Some American Indian tribes recognized passage in the female with the onset of menstruation. Boys were given tools and weapons, and sent one by one into the forest for a full moon. If they survived on their own for a month they were admitted into the tribe as braves. They could return any time and remain boys until they could pass the test. Otherwise they were squaw men. Not all boys were approved to be warriors. Rite of passage today ought to be more than receiving a driver’s license. Something has been lost. What are the results of our nurture? Were we nurtured? If not, are we going to continue to blame our foibles on our parents who missed their duty? It is a personal duty to grow up – even without help from others.
If space permitted I would summarize the excellent book, Human Accomplishment, by Charles Murray. Murray wanted to find out why, among the billions of persons who have lived, there are only 4,002 (by 1950 AD) who achieved the highest positions in the memory of recorded history. One of Murray’s compelling conclusions is that these achievers tended to believe that this was the purpose for which they were put on earth, which also engendered a feeling that God gifted them for the purpose, or at least some transcendent reason was operative even if it was nothing more than commitment to the true, the beautiful and the good. The evidence is strong that accomplishment is related to belief not only in a way to mature life, but in a sense of relationship with something beyond self. The Christian finds that mighty influence and motivation in experience with Jesus Christ. For Christians this is birthright. For Herod it was not. He frittered away any thoughts of immortality for a dance by the daughter of Herodias. In our era there are masses of men and women losing their lives on something so shallow, so unworthy of human life, so debilitating, so unimportant, as to deny them the realization of life achievements for themselves, and for those nearest and dearest to them. Life is worth seizing for better context. Nothing can be better than the will of God for life. By care, effort, faith to application, we gain it. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020