Yesterday we attended a fundraising luau for the Asian Pacific Cultural Center here in Tacoma. I grew up going to luaus. Our family put them on all the time. I have fond memories as a little kid running around while the grownups cooked and decorated the place. Eventually I was expected to help and once I became a young adult I began putting them on myself (with a lot of help of course). If you’ve ever been to a luau, stateside or in Hawaii, then you probably know the highlight of the evening is the floor show, as dancers take the audience on a tour of the pacific islands. You also know that the highlight of the floorshow is the fire knife dance. I grew up wanting to be a fire dancer. When I was old enough, my father taught me how to fire dance. Eventually, I had the opportunity to be in the floorshows at luaus. Over the years I did a lot of dancing – through high school and college. Fire dancing is normally a young man’s, a warrior’s, dance. But in Young Life we never do anything normal – so I’ve been doing the fire dance each summer when I go to camp. I’ve managed to avoid having to act like a warrior at luaus and other events, but Young Life has always found a way to lure me out of my “retirement” to dance one more time.

My youngest son, Keila, has watched me dance the most and has grown up, like me wanting to do the fire dance. He began bugging me at an early age, “come on dad, and show me how to twirl the knives”. If he’s anything, Keila is persistent, and his persistence paid off. I eventually taught him the basics. Well Keila has run with that and over the years has pestered me into teaching him everything I know about the fire knife dance and has now surpassed me in his art. Last summer, at camp, Keila and I tag teamed the fire dance and this past summer it was all Keila. I joined him the last week of camp for a “cameo” appearance but truly this summer I passed the torch to my young warrior.

One of the more bittersweet things we do in parenting is the act of passing the torch. Early on we do it in small ways we don’t mind – we pass on the responsibility for doing the dishes after dinner, we pass on the duties for mowing the lawn. Later we begin passing on more important things in life – picking up their younger siblings after school or just caring for their own future. Whether we “pass the torch” formally or whether it just happens – parenting is a series of real and symbolic passes that we make from us to our children. It’s exciting because it marks the beginning of a new season in our child’s life, but it can be tender as we watch our child grow into a man or a woman. But pass the torch we must if our child is going to become the Godly man or woman that he/she has been created to be.

      Old fat guys shouldn't play with fire!                                  The torch has been passed!

There is a great book out there, “Raising a Modern Day Knight” by Robert Lewis that talks about boys and rites of passage. It gives some background to the concept and then offers some wonderful ideas on how to implement them in your family. The question is, when does a boy become a man? Is it the first time he gets drunk, is it the first time he sleeps with a woman, is it the first time he gets into a fight? What determines manhood and maybe more importantly, who determines manhood? This book gives some great help for parents and especially dads that like me said, “I want to be the one that explains to my son what it means to be a man.” And by the way, there is a new book out titled, “Raising a Modern Day Princess.” We’ll talk more about rites of passage in future blogs, but suffice it to say passing the torch is going to happen – as parents we need to work at directing that process rather than letting that process direct us. If you have sons, beginning talking about the character qualities that you think are important for a young man to possess as he leaves your home. If you have daughters, then write down the character qualities that a young woman should have as she steps into the world of adults. In other words if you want to someday be the one to tell your son or your daughter, you are now a man or you are now a woman, what criteria will you give them for making that declaration. Start today answering the question, what makes my son a man? What makes my daughter a woman (besides the obvious physical changes – see blog “Out of my league”J)? Then begin praying about that day when you will pass the torch on to them.

         With Keila right after performing at the luau