7th Birthday: Something Special!!!

We have been preparing for Elijah’s 7^th birthday for about 5 years. Seriously. Why? Well, several years ago, I read a book by Robert Lewis called “Raising a Modern Day Knight”, and was intrigued by the practical process that he outlines for giving a compelling metaphor for fathers and sons to rally around as a boy grows. Having grown up in close proximity to Robert Lewis (I attended Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, as a young teen, and grew up around the sons of all three teaching pastors, of whom Lewis was one) and seeing first hand the principles outlined, Sami and I decided to put them into practice and see if we couldn’t begin a pathway to helping him grasp the values and objectives that we were going to try to instill in him as he grows up.

If you know me, you know that I’m a huge student of Feudal and martial cultures, so the “Knightly” metaphor translates easily anyway. However, there are a couple of things that serve as “practical” applications that we have begun to engage:

Family Values – Lewis makes the point that each Knightly family had a series of things it honored and wished to be known for throughout the ages. Most often, these values were commemorated in a “coat of arms” (i.e. a picture or piece of heraldry whose components demonstrated or symbolized something significant). Lewis makes the assertion that “you can’t complain that your children don’t value what you value if you never articulate what those things are! You should write them down, talk about them, explain them, and put them somewhere where they will be able to refer to them over time.” Three years ago, we sat down, therefore, and outlined and defined our 10 family values. They are as follows (complete with definitions, of course, and I will talk more about that later): Love, Honor, Faithfulness, Integrity, Humility, Compassion, Courage, Discipline, Industry, and Community. Thus far, Elijah has memorized all 10 Family values and can recite them from memory. We also have regular discussions about “what they mean” and their application to regular life. Whenever we have disciplinary issues, we attempt to “peg” which value has been violated, as well as honor and praise him when he upholds one or more in the course of a given day.

Significant Marking of “Passage” – One of the other things that Lewis talks about is marking three distinct points of “passage” through a boy’s life with ceremony. You see, in Feudal Times in Europe, a young boy would grow up in his mother and father’s home as just “any other little boy” until he was seven years old. At 7, however, a boy who was either qualified or desired (depending on the region and era) to become a knight would be taken from his home to the regional manor or castle in his area. There, he would become a Paige, whose soul duty was to learn in-depth the nature of service. According to most chivalric values, no man could effectively lead who had not learned the value of hard-fought service in the most menial chores and tasks available. As a result, before a boy could learn the martial skill of combat, he had to learn to fight the dirt and grime of pots and pans in the kitchen, or hay and manure in the stables.

Just as a young boy would be taken from his home, given new responsibilities and new privileges at the age of seven, so we wanted to mark Elijah’s 7^th birthday in similar fashion so that he would be able to always have it pegged in his memory as the beginning point of a journey. As a result, we began scheming more than a year ago to take him to Medieval Times in Chicago (actually Schaumberg) to have as much of an in-depth experience as was possible to solidify the experience and have it “fit” to the knightly metaphor. The following several posts are the result of those endeavors.