Events pile up outside us, and we respond inwardly in ways that leave us changed. Not all transitions affect us deeply, of course, but some endings do close entire chapters in our lives, and some beginnings open new ones. It is almost as though we did privately and according to our own schedule what tribal groups once did publicly according to a prescribed timetable: go through the process of passage between one life phase and the next in a pattern of death and rebirth.
