From the Editor: Initiations4thFebruary
It is difficult, in this culture, to imagine an effective initiation, when so much of initiation depends on the life leading up to it. In tribal societies, initiates were only equipped to face the often life threatening conditions associated with initiation because they'd received the totality of childhood in a cohesive village or tribe. They had completed their childhoods as their parents and grandparents before them, with the extended protection of their tribe, which is often described (albeit in languages freed of the verb to be) as a seemless extension of self. They set out to face death with the knowledge that their ceremony had been and will be practiced for millennia. A million years of information isn't such a bad thing to have on your side when you starve, freeze, face the knife, or walk through fire. The purposes initiation serves have been documented in lengths too large for library shelves or tiny closets such as the mind, but suffice it to say, an initiation has gone well when the initiate is so profoundly changed as to be unrecognizable, even to themselves. There can be no going back.
What then, if in your village those who came before you were so lacking in having their basic needs met, needs more fundamental than hamburgers and petrol, that they never graduated infancy, let alone the contrived state of adolescence? How do you welcome future generations, who arrive whether we're prepared or not with the non-negotiable momentum of a river? How do the blind lead the blind? I don't know the answers to these questions, but one only need take stock of the toxic mimics of initiation; gang members, soldiers, frat boys who, so desperately desiring that basic rite, initiate one another only to step out the other side to discover the world just as broken; to know that our guts still yearn for that ancient connection and that the body will produce the stimuli it requires no matter how clunky the parts. That's hope to me. Because beyond the magnetism of the machine lies a hollow and a couple hundred years, behind our belly buttons lies all of human history.
This month's theme is Initiation.
February's theme Right and Wrong, send submissions to submissions@trackersnw.com
Once again we welcome you to write in with personal stories, between 200-400 words, based on our theme. Hope you've all enjoyed the big freeze,
From the editor,
Lisa Wells
