WEBVTT 00:00:15.013 --> 00:00:15.714 What is up everyone? 00:00:15.714 --> 00:00:35.569 My name is Ryan Braley and I'm here in studio with Mike Lauer and we are in episode number four of our five-part series on messages that young men and women receive predominantly in these rites of passages that are ancient, that are global and sort of embedded in all of these rites of passage across culture and across time. 00:00:35.569 --> 00:00:45.649 You find these five messages that kind of keep coming up, and so we want to just sort of unpack them quickly, one at a time, and this week we're on message number four. 00:00:45.649 --> 00:00:47.704 And here's the message Are you guys ready? 00:00:47.704 --> 00:00:51.052 I hope you said yes, because if not, I'm going anyway. 00:00:51.841 --> 00:01:09.001 Number four message is you are not in control, you're not and I'm not in control, and embedded in this message, then, is an invitation to let go of trying to control everything, which we love to do. 00:01:09.001 --> 00:01:22.743 If you're like me, I love to be in control, but I have to be invited and then heed the invitation to let go of trying to control, and one of the best ways that I found to do this is to go out in nature and spend some time in nature. 00:01:22.743 --> 00:01:29.805 I was in the Boundary Waters a couple of summers ago and when camping out there, and if you've ever been in the Boundary Waters, of course you'd know, even if you haven't been. 00:01:29.805 --> 00:01:33.155 It is a remote wild place. 00:01:33.155 --> 00:01:39.850 It's one of the few remaining vast wilderness places in the world today and it's pristine, it's beautiful. 00:01:39.850 --> 00:01:57.370 But out there you will encounter all kinds of wild things and you have to whenever you go on trips like this or if you go to the Boundary Waters or if you go camping or anything similar and any wild, desert, wilderness, jungle, forest type of place, mountain camp, whatever. 00:01:57.370 --> 00:02:00.716 You have to, at some point let go. 00:02:00.716 --> 00:02:01.477 You know what I mean. 00:02:01.477 --> 00:02:20.437 There has to be this moment, like hopefully earlier than later, where you just embrace the fact and the idea that I am going to be uncomfortable, I'm going to be out of control, I'll be out of my element, there's going to be dirt and heat and sweat and rain and, you know, sleeping on the ground, not on a mattress. 00:02:20.437 --> 00:02:22.282 I can't climate control the outdoors. 00:02:22.282 --> 00:02:32.001 So you have to have this moment where, during that week or at some point, you let go of trying to control and just sort of embrace whatever it is to come. 00:02:32.603 --> 00:02:38.401 So on the third night of our Boundary Waters trip, we'd made camp and there was a storm coming in that night. 00:02:38.401 --> 00:02:42.420 We knew it because some guy in a canoe, like a couple of hours earlier, gave us a heads up. 00:02:42.420 --> 00:02:47.151 He had a radio and he'd heard the report that a storm was coming through, and so we knew. 00:02:47.151 --> 00:02:52.408 So we made up our tents and the tents we were using were kind of like glorified mosquito net tents. 00:02:52.408 --> 00:02:55.983 We were trying to pack light but we had a tarp that would go over it but it was kind of rigged up. 00:02:55.983 --> 00:03:01.830 It wasn't like a proper tent, you know, and uh, and so we rigged up our tent as best we could and we laid down. 00:03:01.830 --> 00:03:05.156 The storm was coming in and it was dark and we could hear it coming. 00:03:05.460 --> 00:03:11.382 I love thunderstorms, but this storm came in and it began to rain, and I mean like rain, like proper rain. 00:03:11.382 --> 00:03:18.688 It was raining so hard and suddenly I heard this noise, like the noise of defeat when you're in the boundary waters in your tent. 00:03:18.688 --> 00:03:22.788 It was the noise of water dripping on my sleeping bag. 00:03:22.788 --> 00:03:35.941 How we had rigged the tent was, you know, we did the best we could, but there was water that was sort of finding its way down our rope that was holding up our tarp into the tent, down the middle of it, right onto my bag and I was like you've got to be kidding me. 00:03:35.941 --> 00:03:37.122 And it was pouring rain. 00:03:37.122 --> 00:03:41.127 And so on one hand, I'm like, well, I don't know, it was to be expected a little bit. 00:03:41.127 --> 00:03:52.151 On the other hand, I'm like, hey, there should not be rain in the tent, but it was coming in and I thought, hey, I was so tired, I was exhausted from rowing all day and canoeing and doing all the things. 00:03:52.151 --> 00:03:56.263 I'm like I'm not getting up to fix this, I just don't care. 00:03:56.263 --> 00:03:57.423 And so in that moment I'm like you know what? 00:03:57.423 --> 00:04:02.616 I'm just going to have to let go and I'm going to sleep in a wet bag all night. 00:04:02.616 --> 00:04:07.795 Of course, I wouldn't have wanted to do that, I cared, but I was also like I just don't care, I cannot fix this. 00:04:07.795 --> 00:04:10.993 I'll get twice as soaked if I get up and try to fix it. 00:04:10.993 --> 00:04:12.508 I'm like my bag will be wet. 00:04:12.508 --> 00:04:13.611 I'll still be warm. 00:04:13.611 --> 00:04:14.314 I'm not a nice bag. 00:04:14.314 --> 00:04:16.387 I just embraced it. 00:04:16.387 --> 00:04:23.178 In the morning I woke up and the sun was coming up and I was indeed soaking wet, but I slept fine. 00:04:23.178 --> 00:04:25.026 I mean, I did okay, but you've got to let go. 00:04:25.408 --> 00:04:28.295 The fourth message is that you are not in control. 00:04:28.295 --> 00:04:44.677 This is often why these rites of passage were done in nature so that the young man or the young woman could realize, in this moment, in your surroundings, there is something greater than and more powerful than you, out here, nature itself, and that the young man or woman is not in control of the natural world. 00:04:44.677 --> 00:04:47.971 There's weather, there's landslides, there's wildlife. 00:04:47.971 --> 00:04:49.872 All these things are beyond your control. 00:04:49.872 --> 00:04:54.872 If you're a young man and you encounter a bear on your rite of passage, I mean God forbid, but you learn quickly. 00:04:54.872 --> 00:04:59.105 Hey, I cannot defeat this bear, no matter how tough you think you are. 00:04:59.105 --> 00:05:03.029 That bear will probably eat your lunch or worse, if you're not careful. 00:05:03.029 --> 00:05:04.630 And so you learn quickly. 00:05:04.771 --> 00:05:12.137 Out in nature, you just cannot get your own way, and it's actually a great practice to not get your own way, or to practice not getting your own way. 00:05:12.137 --> 00:05:13.759 I mean it comes in handy. 00:05:13.759 --> 00:05:21.425 If there's any way you can practice not getting your own way, embrace it. 00:05:21.425 --> 00:05:26.274 It's good, because it'll come in handy when you get married eventually, or if you have kids, or when your health begins to fail, or even on your deathbed. 00:05:26.274 --> 00:05:39.718 Because all of these marriage, having kids, your health failing which it probably will at some point and even dying these are all major life transitions and moments that reveal that you just are not in control. 00:05:39.718 --> 00:05:42.793 And if you try to control it, you'll make the thing worse. 00:05:47.785 --> 00:05:57.389 Now, this is super hard to receive, because the predominant message in culture, in like many self-help books or spoken out of the mouths of gurus in our culture today, is that you are in control and you need to take control. 00:05:57.389 --> 00:06:01.848 And this message flies in the face and it contradicts many of these messages. 00:06:01.848 --> 00:06:05.115 I mean to be in control of our destiny, our health, our career and our finances. 00:06:05.115 --> 00:06:10.726 This seems to be an unquestionable cultural value today, and here's the deal I'm going to tell you. 00:06:10.726 --> 00:06:13.596 On a practical level, it actually is true. 00:06:13.596 --> 00:06:16.033 You can control many things in your life. 00:06:16.033 --> 00:06:20.807 You can control the thermostat in your home and have it be perpetually 70 degrees in there if you wanted to. 00:06:20.807 --> 00:06:24.310 You can control what you want for breakfast or what outfit you wear every day. 00:06:24.310 --> 00:06:25.591 That's stuff you can't control. 00:06:25.591 --> 00:06:29.995 But on a bigger level, it's just not true On a grander scale. 00:06:29.995 --> 00:06:31.696 We're not in control of nature. 00:06:31.696 --> 00:06:41.343 Our bodies, our souls, our failures, other people's infringement upon our lives All these things teach us as we get older that we are not in control. 00:06:42.545 --> 00:06:47.954 Here's one more twist too Young men, actually, when they're younger, they actually do need to be told hey, take control of your life. 00:06:47.954 --> 00:07:00.067 So, hey, young man or young woman too, it's for both young men and young women hey, work hard in school and get a job, go out there and explore the world, take control, do something, don't just let life happen to you. 00:07:00.067 --> 00:07:00.788 You're not a puppet. 00:07:00.788 --> 00:07:02.254 So take control. 00:07:02.254 --> 00:07:17.956 But in the second half of life so around that middle age, around 40, 45, 50, 55, people need to learn that they're not actually in control and they need to begin to let go and give up control. 00:07:18.064 --> 00:07:26.978 So in many ways we want these young men and women to hear this message and sort of stow it away, because most of them at a young age won't fully grasp it yet, and that's fine. 00:07:26.978 --> 00:07:34.810 We want them on the front end of their life, to really take control and to try to strive and to work hard, build the empire, expand their boundaries and these kind of things. 00:07:34.810 --> 00:07:47.774 But initiation rites they try to at least plant the seed and give them these messages early, even before they're ready to hear them, because it begins to prepare them for what Richard Rohr calls the great defeat in life, which is this. 00:07:47.774 --> 00:07:48.516 Here's the great defeat. 00:07:48.516 --> 00:07:56.379 I love it, the necessary recognition that you are not really running the show, and any attempt to run the show will ruin it. 00:07:56.379 --> 00:08:02.298 And so, hey, young man, young woman, at some point you've got to let go and give up control. 00:08:02.298 --> 00:08:08.471 And so understanding this from as early age as possible will help them be more flexible, actually stronger, when they get older. 00:08:09.024 --> 00:08:16.255 So taking kids camping and out into the wilderness and up in the Boundary Waters is good for them because it reveals hey, dude, there's a bigger force at work here. 00:08:16.255 --> 00:08:20.677 The divine nature, wildlife, all these things are beyond your control. 00:08:20.677 --> 00:08:35.599 And so practice letting go early and let go of our obsession to control all these things, and in doing so it will prepare us, each of us, for the great, ultimate letting go that comes at the end of our life, that we call death. 00:08:35.599 --> 00:08:45.413 So, friends, may you see and understand deeply today that you indeed are not in control, and in fact this is good news. 00:08:45.413 --> 00:08:46.495 All right, peace, love you guys. 00:08:46.495 --> 00:08:55.394 Hey, if you enjoy this show, I'd love to have you share it with some friends. 00:08:55.394 --> 00:09:08.635 And don't forget, you are always welcome to join us in person at Central in Elk River, at 830, which is our liturgical gathering, or at 10 o'clock, our modern gathering, or you can check us out online at clcelkriverorg Peace.