Speaker 1: What is up everyone?
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: And here's the message Are you guys ready?
Speaker 1: I hope you said yes, because if not, I'm going anyway.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: It is a remote wild place.
Speaker 1: It's one of the few remaining vast wilderness places in the world today and it's pristine, it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: You have to, at some point let go.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: I can't climate control the outdoors.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: So on the third night of our Boundary Waters trip, we'd made camp and there was a storm coming in that night.
Speaker 1: We knew it because some guy in a canoe, like a couple of hours earlier, gave us a heads up.
Speaker 1: He had a radio and he'd heard the report that a storm was coming through, and so we knew.
Speaker 1: So we made up our tents and the tents we were using were kind of like glorified mosquito net tents.
Speaker 1: We were trying to pack light but we had a tarp that would go over it but it was kind of rigged up.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: The storm was coming in and it was dark and we could hear it coming.
Speaker 1: I love thunderstorms, but this storm came in and it began to rain, and I mean like rain, like proper rain.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: It was the noise of water dripping on my sleeping bag.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: And it was pouring rain.
Speaker 1: And so on one hand, I'm like, well, I don't know, it was to be expected a little bit.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: I'm like I'm not getting up to fix this, I just don't care.
Speaker 1: And so in that moment I'm like you know what?
Speaker 1: I'm just going to have to let go and I'm going to sleep in a wet bag all night.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: I'll get twice as soaked if I get up and try to fix it.
Speaker 1: I'm like my bag will be wet.
Speaker 1: I'll still be warm.
Speaker 1: I'm not a nice bag.
Speaker 1: I just embraced it.
Speaker 1: In the morning I woke up and the sun was coming up and I was indeed soaking wet, but I slept fine.
Speaker 1: I mean, I did okay, but you've got to let go.
Speaker 1: The fourth message is that you are not in control.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: There's weather, there's landslides, there's wildlife.
Speaker 1: All these things are beyond your control.
Speaker 1: If you're a young man and you encounter a bear on your rite of passage, I mean God forbid, but you learn quickly.
Speaker 1: Hey, I cannot defeat this bear, no matter how tough you think you are.
Speaker 1: That bear will probably eat your lunch or worse, if you're not careful.
Speaker 1: And so you learn quickly.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: I mean it comes in handy.
Speaker 1: If there's any way you can practice not getting your own way, embrace it.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: And if you try to control it, you'll make the thing worse.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: And this message flies in the face and it contradicts many of these messages.
Speaker 1: I mean to be in control of our destiny, our health, our career and our finances.
Speaker 1: This seems to be an unquestionable cultural value today, and here's the deal I'm going to tell you.
Speaker 1: On a practical level, it actually is true.
Speaker 1: You can control many things in your life.
Speaker 1: You can control the thermostat in your home and have it be perpetually 70 degrees in there if you wanted to.
Speaker 1: You can control what you want for breakfast or what outfit you wear every day.
Speaker 1: That's stuff you can't control.
Speaker 1: But on a bigger level, it's just not true On a grander scale.
Speaker 1: We're not in control of nature.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: You're not a puppet.
Speaker 1: So take control.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: Here's the great defeat.
Speaker 1: I love it, the necessary recognition that you are not really running the show, and any attempt to run the show will ruin it.
Speaker 1: And so, hey, young man, young woman, at some point you've got to let go and give up control.
Speaker 1: And so understanding this from as early age as possible will help them be more flexible, actually stronger, when they get older.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: The divine nature, wildlife, all these things are beyond your control.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: So, friends, may you see and understand deeply today that you indeed are not in control, and in fact this is good news.
Speaker 1: All right, peace, love you guys.
Speaker 1: Hey, if you enjoy this show, I'd love to have you share it with some friends.
Speaker 1: 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.