The Journey: Personal Transformation in the Wilderness

The Journey is a Rite of passage program based upon a spiritual model about the inevitable journey that all humans go through in a lifetime. The Journey is about transformation on a mental and spiritual level. It explores the spiritual peaks or ‘points of transformation’ in life. The Journey also clarifies when and why we experience crisis’ in our life and more importantly, alternative approaches to transforming and understanding these dilemmas through a Christian theology of grace, forgiveness and love. As each stage is experienced and understood, we develop a growing wisdom and intelligence that serves as the
foundation for living an enriched life as a child of God. Out of the ashes we will rise…

Humanity is in a constant search to discover a truth that can explain the nature of our existence. How did we get here? Why am I having these experiences? Where are we going? What is it all for? Who am I? We evaluate our life today in much the same way as humanity evaluated the world hundreds of years ago. We strive to answer these central truths and questions. One way to do that is to separate oneself from society (severance), enter into a challenge (threshold), and finally enter back into society as a transformed child of God with a deeper sense of self, self worth and identity (reincorporation).

We live in a contemporary culture. Our technological advancements have given us a quality of life unimaginable just 100 years ago, but simultaneously we have separated ourselves from the same enriching life that our technology was originally meant to enhance. Today we live in more comfort, yet we suffer through personal experiences that dis-empower our lives. We continue to be confused about sexuality, relationships, parenting, and growing old. We struggle to gain clarity about a purpose for our living. Values such as honesty and integrity are compromised for security. We wage battles with others and ourselves in a desperate attempt to cover up these uncertainties about life.

We need to reexamine an earlier model for living that was based on tribal rites of passage where a person is met with a challenge, a task to accomplish to create a threshold to distinguish between what was and what will be. A boy turning into a man. A girl stepping into womanhood. A change from one career to another. Crossing from being a non-parent to parenthood. There are many thresholds that we step across throughout our lives, The Journey is a way in which we pay homage and respect to our Creator and to ourselves.