"This book invites you on a journey. It is a journey that has been made since the beginning of time, by all people everywhere. Yet no one has, or ever will, make the journey quite like you will. The journey cannot be avoided, and no one can make it for you. It is a journey for everyone, yet it may be the most personal experience of your life.
It is the journey an adolescent makes into adulthood."
So begins, The Journey, A Creative Approach to the Necessary Crises of Adolescence, a modern rite of passage that honors the threshold between childhood and adulthood with the dignity and meaning it once possessed. Like all rites of passage, The Journey creates, through carefully selected activities and exercises, the space wherein the magic of self-discovery can happen, then provides the means for that discovery to be transformed into a "gift" to and for the world.
The "direction" of The Journey is inward, to awaken within each adolescent an individual sense of purpose and meaning. The path is divided into five phases, each with its own distinct challenges and opportunities for learning:
- The Call to
Adventure: Leaving the Known for the Unknown
Central Themes and Issues: Separation and Letting Go; Transitioning from Dependence to Independence; Living Life as a Purposeful Quest; Charting One's Journey So Far - Finding Your
Path: Discovering Your Uniqueness
Central Themes and Issues: Independence and Autonomy; Defining Oneself in One's Own Terms; Feeling A Sense of Place and Purpose; Balancing the Need to Fit In with the Yearning to Express One's Uniqueness; Exploring Similarities and Differences (ethnic, gender, familial, age); Uncovering Personal Values and Visions; Honoring Others for Who They Are; Appropriate Risk Taking - The Labyrinth:
Walking The Road of Trials and Obstacles
Central Themes and Issues: The Possibilities and Limits of Personal Power; Testing Oneself; Submitting to the Ordeals of Living; The Nature and Deep Purpose of Suffering; The Value of Failure; Sacrifice; Serving Things Greater than Yourself; Proving; Natural Limitations; Death and How to Live With It & Learn From It - The Wood Between
The Worlds: Sharing Your Gift With Others
Central Themes and Issues: Incorporating New Insights and Strengths into a Cohesive New Sense of Self; How to Handle "Feeling New"; Distilling One's Personal Gifts & Learning How to Offer Them; Expressing the Beauty of the New You - The Ceremony
of Passage: Honoring the Transformation
Central Themes and Issues: How to End One Phase of Life and Begin Another; Changing Status (in families, with peers); Celebration; Honoring Each Other (the parallel passage of parents as their children grow up); Renewal; The Commerce of the Creative Spirit
If these themes sound ominous and serious, our means of engaging them is not. We use every imaginative means at our disposal to help adolescents experience and express their lives creatively. We make masks. We play improvisational games. We make maps of our lives. We imagine ourselves as heroes on our quests and draw and write about what we find along the way. We create sharing circles to deal with the difficult struggles of growing up. What we don't do is judge, analyze or criticize. Ever.
The Journey is roughly 40 hours of experience, broken into the five phases mentioned above. Written in 1987, some 50,000 copies have been sold, for use in 43 states and six foreign countries. Those guiding the program have found myriad uses for The Journey. It has been offered as curriculum in middle and high schools and colleges. As summer camps. As a therapeutic tool in mental health treatment centers. As a "wake up call" to young people in trouble with the law for the first time (first offender programs). As the basis for spiritual growth and development in confirmation classes and religious education.
