"How do we become seasoned adults, a true human being? This is not a given. Traditionally this was the work of culture. Through the long labors of multiple initiations, individuals were gradually crafted into persons of substance and gravity. The process yielded someone more attuned to responsibilities than rights, more aware of multiple entanglements than entitlements. They were initiated into a vast sea of intimacies; with the village, star clusters and gnarled old oaks, the pool of ancestors and the scented earth."