Youth Drum Making Rite of Passage with Dads or Mentors

October 13,14, 2018

Here is an opportunity for a dad or mentor to draw closer to a son or mentored youth and gift them with a safe – yet edgy - initiation experience. Participants will be involved in meaningful rituals, experience time in nature and spend quality time together.  Come build something together.  Gift him with this drum-build experience.  

Participants will experience that individual components of the drum can be intentional metaphors that represent our life experiences.  The wood strips and goat skin are powerful signposts for our psyches to help us realize that discomfort and suffering often accompany new growth and allow for healthy transition in life.   

Rites of passage try to create a safe container in which to experience perhaps a call to a new level of maturity or greater interior integration.  The container allows us to confront and be confronted by obstacles to growth and may allow God to transform us into a new way of seeing and being.  It is our hope that this rite of passage for young teen males will be such an experience – both for the boys and their dads or mentor. 

This rite of passage focuses on young males who are at the beginning of their pubescent experience.  Their bodies are alerting them to the approach of something new and different about themselves.  Their idealism and energy open them to challenges that they may sense are important and meaningful; even if they do not yet have enough life experience to reap the challenges fullest meaning for themselves.  This is where the dads’ or mentor’s presence at the rites and in the boy’s future is important for him to perhaps have a greater understanding of what his journey to manhood means.  It is our hope that this rite of passage will be one of those safe containers where a youth can approach a passage way to liminal space where he can sense a healthy vision of his maleness and future manhood.  And invite him and his dad or mentor to continue the journey together and individually.  

There is an African proverb that says, “If the youth are not initiated, they will burn down the village.”  Witnessing the dysfunction in society, especially in our politics, maybe it is time to once again return to this wisdom practice for the benefit of our young men, as well as for the benefit of society and the world.

            Skyling Camp and Retreat Center - Lodge

Gathering space

Bunk room

Pavilion

In an effort to make our retreats accessible to everyone we offer partial scholarships for up to 1/2 of the event fee.

If you need assistance with registration, please feel free to call our chapter convener,

Jamey Bontrager-Singer at 574-312-4776.