Jumping Mouse and the story of authentic leadership…. By Tom Anderson In his book, Seven Arrows (New York: Random House, 1972), author Hyemeyohsts Storm tells a remarkable story about an ordinary little mouse that spends his days doing ordinary mouse things: examining and collecting, gathering seeds and nuts and storing them away for the…
Dana Carman Brings Visionary Leadership to ROP Imagine a world where CEOs, Directors and our nation’s President all make decisions that honor our interdependence with the earth and that allow for personal growth and business production to be mutually beneficial. Our complex and high speed world is demanding that today’s leaders develop more than…
Rites of Passage & Community By Mike Bodkin, ROP Director Life is rooted in a matrix of community relationships, communities of both the living and non-living (minerals, water, soil, sun) creating a complex network that supports our human existence along with that of all life. Everything is dependent on the health of our planet–for water,…
Bringing Gifts from the Mountain By Munro Suckafoose In October of 2008, two men from the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne in upstate New York came to a Rites of Passage Men’s Quest led by Mike Bodkin and me. Their names are Vince and Kevin. They are leaders in their community, part of a council of…
Voice from Down Under: Opening to a New Vision Rites of Passage honors the wisdom that each participant shares. Aussie participant Vicki Dean shares her insights in her story below. (On their last trip to Australia, guides Mike and Renee led a training on the four shields followed by a quest. We are excited…
Bears by Tom Anderson According to a new CNN poll, seventy-three percent of Americans said that they were somewhat or very scared about the way things were going in the United States, even though they also said that things were going fine for themselves personally. Think about that for a moment: Seventy-three percent of…
Parents at the Threshold By Alison DeLong My son’s first birthday was a joyous event this month. Deserving equal celebration, my husband and I toasted our glasses, in a humble honoring, for surviving our first year as parents. Stunned by the quick passage of time, I remembered last year’s pregnancy culminating in the monumentally…
Youth Quest: Dreaming this World into Being by Steven Encinas Coming down off the mountain, a fire of passion and personal power radiated from their eyes and smiles. This brilliance was met by the morning sun that was simultaneously rising from the East. Both sources of light danced together in the magic of dawn,…
Youth and Elders A few years ago, I applied for some public funding for a program based on rite of passage principles. The funder told me that they were looking for more “youth development” programs that would have young people leading young people in various ways. They didn’t understand our emphasis on “guiding,” or creating…
Initiation and Rites of Passage To begin, a brief working definition of a rite of passage: a ceremony to mark or celebrate a change in life status. Rites of passage can encompass the whole life cycle, from birth to death. Rites of passage generally can be described as having 3 stages, which we call Severance, Threshold…