Every culture has its rites of passage, rituals reminding people of the structure of society, transitions when responsibilities are given and accepted. In martial cultures these tests, both physical and spiritual, are designed to segregate the weak from the strong. In that uncertainty lies the strength those tested will discover as they lay the foundations of community and prepare its members for the unscripted ordeals this life may bring.
At fourteen, I was honored by my peers to enter a society known as the Order of the Arrow. No fraternity in a collegiate sense, more a brotherhood of service. Those tapped had first to endure an initiation, a ritual known as The Ordeal.
It begins in silence and darkness, a circle of fire catching when a single flaming arrow finds its mark as the stillness is broken by a lone, piercing cry. Sworn to silence, we initiates gather our scant belongings, a bedroll and a knife, and return to darkness for a mile-long march that ends in isolation as we each pass the night alone beneath the stars.
The night is cold, half a decade below freezing. But the stars, sparkling pinpoints tinged from red to blue, spatter the satin fabric of the night, forming familiar patterns to an eye trained to connect the dots, a menacing bull, a hunter, defenseless sisters seeking his protection.
By morning my breath escapes in clouds. Frost encases my bedroll. As the day ages, the icy vapor turns moist. Trees drip dew frozen motionless mere moments before.
With the pale dawn comes my first test, a paper cup of water, two matches and an egg, a warm meal should I demonstrate my skill. Some choose to forego this challenge, satisfied with raw nutrition. I lay my kindling carefully, strike it with a single match and eventually am rewarded with a hot, hard-boiled breakfast to see me through the morning. There is an allegory in the paper, which only burns where no water backs it to quench the flames.
Together, we work the weekend in silence. The tasks set to us are physical and demanding: breaking, hauling and laying sod; repairing and roofing shelters; clearing roads; blazing trails. Our goal is to improve what others need, to leave better than we found, a motto of a sort. The work warms us where the day doesn't quite. At the end of two day's labor we return to a fire where we are released as initiates and welcomed in as brothers.
The lodge meets at the cardinal points each year, gatherings called Spring Conclave, Summer Service, Fall Fellowship, Winter Ordeal. The next winter we induct new brothers as we peer behind the curtain at the scenes that gave us such wonder the year before, reliving our experience as through a second sight.
I still cherish the patches, markers reminding me of a time I was tested and flourished. That was many years before the vision quest and the fasting and the scars to help remember other whos and whens.
Her experience is different, her selection not an honor but a trial bound in numbers, one in eight and one of three. Her days are filled with ritual: pre-dawn risings, demanding tests and the readings of vital signs. And waiting, always waiting, at each stage waiting, often hurrying to wait.
Her isolation is served one hour at a time, alone between 3 to 4 a.m. Silence is sworn by the few who increase their distance day by day until they shrink and fade, the shadow of their memories dispelled by the light of those who confront their fears and remain by her side as she confronts her own.
Her first task is to reconcile uncertainty with expectation, an unknown future with what she thought would be. Her labor comes in the wounding, the healing, the wounding again without complete recovery, some wounds leaving scars that will never heal. Fatigue sets in as she never quite regains her energy between yet is forced to shoulder her burden and continue as if on a marathon trail whose markers, if not whose destination, remain in sight.
She travels in the company of sisters, some known, some strangers, some physical, some virtual but no less real. Some labor beside her as fellow initiates, others instruct beyond the veil as I know she will once this phase of her journey is complete, a destination of a sort. Some simply bear witness, gifting her a daily dose of encouragement and caring, tokens she treasures more each passing day.
Our hero, like the phoenix, must perish in order to be reborn and rise victorious in the final battle. Only in that symbolic transformation is she equipped to defeat the enemy who stands before her. That is the cycle, the pattern of the wheel as it turns a circle, never twice touching the same point as it rolls along the road. Her journey, like the wheel, moves on as she surmounts one ordeal to be confronted by another, each begetting the strength to overcome the next.
A veteran is merely a blooded warrior who has survived her first battle and maintained the ability to fight. She enters the siege a veteran, the survivor she has always been. She will exit fully fledged in her lodge, ready to pass her wisdom to the new genesis of initiates inexorably chosen to repeat her ordeal year after year.
© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III
