#147 - Life is Hard {Reflections Re-Release}

Life is hard. We usually try to soften that truth, especially for kids, but what if naming it is one of the most loving things a community can do? Pastor Ryan explores the ancient idea of rites of passage and why so many cultures intentionally guided young people through a real transition into adulthood, not just a birthday or a legal milestone, but a communal experience that forms character and clarifies identity.

We unpack what a rite of passage actually is, why it often involves being sent out from the safety of the group, and what’s lost when modern Western life offers few meaningful rituals beyond “figure it out yourself.” Ryan shares why that absence can lead to self initiation, and why the church can play a healing role by rebuilding age-appropriate rituals that combine blessing, challenge, and a clear welcome back into the community.

Then we focus on the first core message found across many initiation traditions: life is hard. We talk about pain, suffering, disappointment, and discomfort, not as things to glorify, but as realities that can shape spiritual maturity if we stop numbing them long enough to learn from them. The episode closes with practical questions you can carry into your week: what might your struggle be trying to tell you, and how could it grow you into a more loving, awake adult?

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Transcript

Why This Episode Is Rerun

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Hey everyone, Olivia here. As you probably know, Pastor Ryan is on sabbatical this summer. So until he gets back, we will be re-releasing some of the most listened to episodes from the Reflections podcast. Today's episode originally aired in April of 2024. The title really says it all Life is Hard. Not exactly the kind of encouragement you put on a coffee mug, but I think there's something important in it. Enjoy.

Welcome To Reflections Podcast

SPEAKER_00 0:48

What is up, everybody? My name is Ryan Braille, and welcome to our Reflections Podcast. I'm here at Central, this wonderful church community in the greatest city in Minnesota, Elk River, the confluence of the Elk and the Mississippi. It's a great place. Hey, today I wanted to talk with you guys. Actually, I've got a five-part series in my brain, and I think it'll be five parts. We'll see. But uh,

What A Rite Of Passage Means

SPEAKER_00 1:12

I want to talk with you about rites of passage and the five predominant messages that are kind of baked into almost all rites of passages across time and across geography and space and history. And um, but several years ago, I was at a youth conference in Minneapolis area, and this crew came out from Fuller. They were a part of the Fuller Theological Family and Youth Ministry Department, and they did like a conference on youth ministry. It was back when I was doing youth ministry, and it was awesome. And one of the guys, I forget his name, he mentioned in an off-handed way how in the Western world we we have this absence of rituals or rites of passage. And it caught my attention because, like, what is he talking about? And so I went up to him afterwards and we chatted for like a long time, and I just picked his brain. I love the things he was saying. I mean, a rite of passage, in case you don't know how you're like, what is Ryan talking about? Uh, it's this thing that's been prevalent in tribal cultures for a long, long time. It's this ritual or event, usually in the life of a young person, that kind of marks a significant life change or milestone in the life of a young person, um, or even not just young people, but it's sort of all throughout life. It could be any kind of milestone. And it's when you create an event or a ritual, an experience around that. It could be childbirth, could be puberty, marriage, death. There are all kinds of rites of passage. It's a ritual that marks a passing of the time. That's why it's called the rite of passage. And in the Western world, whereas in most places around the world and throughout history, these cultures have a time and a place when, specifically when kids are around the age of around 12, 13, maybe even a bit earlier than that, they have this thing where they take the kid usually out of the community, uh, into the oftentimes into wild places or places where they're alone or these kinds of things, and then they uh then they come back after a certain amount of time, and then they they're told, hey, you're no longer a young person, uh, you're now an adult. And they come back into the community, so the community absorbs them back into this larger system, and they begin to then behave and function in ways that are are are empirically different. So they no longer behave like a kid, they're given tasks to perform that only adults can perform. And they're that's like, hey, you're no longer that, you're now this. It's this beautiful marking of time. And so kids get, and then while they're out there, by and large, there are these five messages that these young people get in order to come back and have sort of this wisdom and insight of what it means to be a full, flourishing adult. They're not quite there yet, but they're on their way to becoming a full, flourishing adult. And it was incredible because I'm like, I, yeah, this is glaringly absent from the Western world and in America. I, for example, never had any kind of rite of passage as a young boy. I mean, I think I got my driver's license and that was celebrated by

When Culture Stops Initiating Kids

SPEAKER_00 3:58

I went and drove around. Or when you turn 21, we have this cultural one where people go out and they go to the bar and they get drunk. And these are not like really meaningful or or or like rooted rites of passages. They're not, it isn't like it's a great thing to go out and get drunk with your buddies when you're 21. It's not like you don't like get any kind of profound messaging from that. Um, so like they're but they're absent from the Western world, and it's a problem. So Joseph Campbell was once asked, what happens when there's no rites of passages in our cultures? And his answer was, well, we get the news of the day, youngsters not knowing how to act in a civilized manner because they're self-re, because what you're left with is a self-rendered initiation. In other words, what he's saying is that kids who become adults without a gl without a communal rite of passage grow up without knowing how to behave as adults because no one's taught them. They often will initiate themselves. So again, you have things like, let's go out and get drunk at the bars, which you know it doesn't really help them uh assimilate into adulthood. And so you have this like self-initiation which young people take on, and it's not their fault. It's I would say it's the community's fault. We've let these things go, and I would argue we need to bring them back and uh and try to like find a way to um to recreate them for our youth today. So if

Rebuilding Rituals In Church Life

SPEAKER_00 5:12

you come to Central, we kind of have these in part. We have several rites of passages, whether it's third grade, uh Bible reading class that we do, where we try to make that this really great ritual and experience. We have fifth grade, communion, first communion, and these kinds of things. But but anyway, here's the deal. So I I'm doing a a doctorate, I'm doing a doctorate of ministry at Fuller myself now. I'm actually right at the end. I'm writing my thesis. My thesis is on trying to recapture these ancient rites of passages and a theology of ritual, why it's important, and how we can as a church adopt some more, I don't know, modern versions of a rite of passage and why they're important for our young people. And it begins with this community. How can we, how can we make space where the community sends the young person out with our blessing, and out there, wherever out there is, they ex they are exposed to these deep, mysterious truths about the universe, which I'll go through in a minute. And then they come back and they're told, hey, now you're this, uh, you know, you're an adult now, and here's kind of what it's like to be an adult. We help them as their community. Okay, so there are uh researchers have found there are five predominant messages that are present in most of these cultures,

The First Message Life Is Hard

SPEAKER_00 6:20

cultural rites of passage around the globe and throughout time. And I'm gonna give you one each week. Here's the first one. So these young men and women go out of the commun go out of the community, they go into the wild generally, they come back, but while they're out there, one of the embodied truths that they learn while they're out there, uh one of them, the first one, is this life is hard. This is just the way that life is, which is hilarious to me because I'm a parent, I've got four kids, and when when your kids are little, parents do everything they can to make life easy for their children. From putting little like those little bumper pads on the corners of furniture, you know, locking uh uh cupboard doors, sanitizing the pacifier three, four, five times, you know, because it fell on the floor, which are great things. I mean, you keep the kid alive for sure. But as they get older, we do very little to let the kid uh encounter this idea that life is hard. And we think we're doing the kid a favor by making life easy for them, and in some ways we are, of course. I mean, again, don't let the kid die. But in many ways, we're actually not helping the kid by not exposing them to this deep truth that life is hard. Kids need to hear the message that life, hey, listen, life is hard. It just is, it's how it is. Life involves pain and suffering, disappointment, struggle, and general discomfort. Uh now, uh, and the question then is like, okay, that's the truth. So now what? And so there's this great writer, he's a Franciscan priest, he writes this about uh about these rites of passages and this idea that life is hard. He says, hey, listen, all great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. So the first lesson of initiation was to teach the young man, uh, or woman in this case, not to run from pain. And in fact, to not uh not to get rid of any pain until he's first learned its lessons. Because here's the truth. As I mentioned in the Dragon podcast a few weeks ago, or whenever that was, embedded in our pain is often a message that we can learn from. So look, life is hard. That's just how I'm sorry, it just is. That's how it goes. And embedded within this struggle and tension and discomfort or even pain or suffering, there's a lesson that can be learned that can develop us as young men and women, that can deepen our character, our fortitude, our grace, our empathy in the world. And in these initiation ceremonies, we find this universal presence of an emphasis on struggle, physical struggle, emotional, social. When the young man or woman is at the initiate, is out in the wild, they are encountering in an embodied way this idea that, man, life is hard. And unfortunately, our modern obsession and drive to avoid pain or to numb pain or disengage from pain does us a deep disservice because we never understand the value of like looking deep within our pain for what the message might be in there. So I think the question, and I'll end here, but and we'll do the next four in the next following four weeks, I'll unpack them a bit more. But

Listening To Pain Without Numbing

SPEAKER_00 9:16

listen, life is hard. So now what? What might our pain or our struggle or our attention teach us if we listen to it? And anytime this week, when you're whatever you're doing, if you encounter pain or discomfort or sadness, I would encourage you, hey, stay with that emotion or that feeling just for a bit. Now, if you cut your finger off with a buzz saw, don't stay, don't stay with that pain. I don't mean that. But uh obviously other kinds of pain or discomfort. What what might the message be in that? What might it reveal to you? Because at least part of the point of life is to be conscious and to be awake and to be alert, to be present with our feelings, our emotions, and life as it is, not life as we wish it to be. So life is hard. That's the simple fact of life. And now what? What will you do with it? What will you do with your pain? What is your pain or your discomfort trying to tell you? How can it grow you and mature you into a deeper, sort of uh more loving human being and adult in this case? Okay, uh, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Let me know what you think, and then come back next because we unpack number two. But number one is life is hard. All right, bless you, peace. Hey, if you enjoy this show, I'd love to have you share it with some friends. And don't forget, you are always welcome to join us in person at Central in Elk River at 8 30, which is our liturgical gathering, or at 10 o'clock, our modern gathering. Or you can check us out online at clcelkriver.org. Peace.