A rich emptiness - a bit philosophical- 4th sunday of advent

"Who do you think you are?" God wanted to know when King David proposed to build God a house. David was put in his place. When we try to build  space to contain God in our lives we too should be put in our place because you can't fit God into a neat little box. If you think you can then you have managed to produce an idol and not a home for the living God.

It is becoming clear to me that emptiness is the sacred space within which we encounter the elusive mystery of God. Each human life is spun around an empty space which draws a person deeper into questions and into the adventure of meaning. We may try to fill this space with activity, piety and plans but the emptiness is always there challenging us to step into the unknown and let God be God. In the end faith is an acceptance of this rich mystery of emptiness that sits snugly at the centre of our lives. It was that kind of faith that allowed Mary to say "let it be done" and her emptiness was filled with a presence that gave meaning to her life.

Our own emptiness is a space where we can only wait for the rain to come or for the wind to change. Because it is empty space everything is possible again; new connections can be made, things can be discarded and everything shrinks into proportion within that empty horizon. And so emptiness becomes creative. At its own pace, in ways old and new, emptiness transforms, re-imagines and re-energises life.

We should not be surprised that emptiness is so fertile because that is the way our universe has been created- out of nothing and emptiness. It is the trademark of a creative God that creation comes from nothing and our attempts at creation are simply moving the pieces around. Emptiness is the material God uses to create. Most of our universe is empty, even solid seeming objects like wood and rocks are formed of lattices that hold empty spaces together. Our bodies too are full of space between the spinning particles that make up our bones and flesh. This emptiness is the sacred space in which we live and move and have our being.

So why do we seem to run from emptiness and why does our human nature seem to abhor this vacuum in our lives? As religious people we often want to fill the emptiness with words and fill our emptiness with our own vocational projects.Others try to keep busy and not think about it at all. Yet emptiness is the place where we are face to face with God. It is the space where nothingness itself becomes the richest space in which to be. It is that desire for nothingness that lay at the heart of St Therese's spirituality of littleness. Jesus constantly recognised as valuable what others saw as nothing- rejected stones, children and marginalised people.

So our challenge this advent might be to stop filling our minds with whatever is useful and entertaining and simply sit in emptiness and let God re-spin the meaning of our lives around the emptiness of a stable and a cradle. Then, if we can say our own fiat from within that emptiness we may find ourselves able to look at all of life's mysterious emptiness and call it Father.

Fear based headlines

Thinking beyond headlines.

“What is the world coming to!” My Dad said as he flung the paper back on the bar.“ Half the kids in the country are below median score at maths, immigrants were taking over the country and we’ll all be under water by 2030!” I pointed out that this was the same paper that had branded all youth as scum and all MPs as cheats, both of which he knew were untrue because he knows me and he also knows the local MP as a personal friend.

It was an unusual pleasure to catch my Dad out in a moment when he wasn’t thinking for himself. Even for him, a sharply intelligent man, the culture of disappointment is hard to resist as it is pedalled in the media: Nothing is as good as it used to be, no one can be trusted, awful things are happening everywhere and more often than before. In fact human nature is much the same: we are less violent than twenty years ago, we are healthier in general than my Dad’s age group and likely to live longer than previous generations. Volunteering is on the increase, giving to charity is at the same level and the promised collapse of the family unit made a decade ago by the same newspaper has just not happened.

The media however have discovered that they can provoke a fear response in people through misleading headlines. The emotional response to supposed disasters creates an angry and pessimistic attitude that can suffocate the joy and spirit in people like my Dad. Clear thinking and common sense are the only antidote that is needed to such addiction to despair. The headline that tells us that 20% of primary school children are illiterate really means that there is an 80% pass rate in an English test across the country. Not bad. The picture of violence at a street demonstration may cover 60% of a page in a newspaper but it probably represents less than 1% of all those involved. Clear thinking and common sense like this can break the spell of pessimism and sadness cast upon us all by newspapers.

Optimism on the other hand usually brings out the best in people and sets free the energy to face and to change the real problems life presents every day. Clear thinking helps us to see the positive and to build upon it. Logic  allows us to reach deep into the reservoirs of faith in people to find the life that can withstand the arid sadness of our culture of disappointment.

So I was delighted to catch my Dad being hoodwinked by a headline. I was smiling as I pointed out that a median score was the middle score in a set of exam results so 50% would usually be above it and 50% below. It was my Dad who needed to brush up on his maths!

Reflection

Lord, give me a mind that thinks

And an eye for the logic that spots manipulation.

Help me to protect my joy and enthusiasm

From the culture of disappointment in which we all live.

Help me instead to recognise real problems

And with the energy of hope and faith in people

To make a difference to those around me

And to build a better world.

Teach me to trust people

To count my blessings and encourage goodness

And to allow hope to triumph over despair

In my own heart.

Give me the wisdom to see the mirages

Created by an overheating consumer society

And help me to challenge and change

This daily culture of disappointment.

adolescents- salt in adult wounds

Adults and adolescence

Dean was having a talk with his Dad about his difficulties with work experience. It began to get out of hand. His Dad had worked in the same place for twenty years and pointed out that boring routine was just part of life. Eventually Dean exploded “you don’t have twenty years of work experience anyway- you've had one year of work experience twenty times- I want to do better than that!” After that sentence Dean and his Dad said more hurtful things to each other and then went in different directions to lick their wounds. At times in their conversation it would have been difficult to tell the difference between the adolescent and the adult.

The road through adolescence is often potholed with such destructive exchanges. It is made more difficult because an adult may well be feeling much of the same anger and confusion as the adolescent. In fact, adolescents and their parents may be struggling on the same road but heading in the opposite direction: Whereas adolescents are heading excitedly into the freedom of early adulthood, their parents are leaving it behind with varying levels of reluctance and success. The emotional turbulence of adolescence is closely mirrored in the adult middle years. Whilst the adolescent looks forward to life with increasing zest the parents are often looking backwards and wondering how to use their dwindling energies better. Parents and adolescents are in the same confusing place on the road, but travelling in different directions. One is heading towards young adult life, the other is slipping inevitably, and perhaps angrily, away from it. When psychologists look at adolescence they suggest at least three areas of change that signal the move from childhood to adolescence. Older adults are not immune from any of them

The first area is change in the body itself, an adolescent becomes overwhelmed and absorbed by the way their body is developing and how it looks to others. Fashion, make up, hairstyles and appropriate muscle development can seem vital to an adolescent in claiming their own identity and sexuality. But just as the adolescent gazes into the bathroom mirror for hours, their mother or father may well be surveying a less welcome set of bodily changes in their own wardrobe mirror. The fight to stay fit may still be won- but at a greater cost. The lines around the eyes and mouth need a more cunning camouflage and it is increasingly difficult to hide the image of their own ageing parents emerging from the wardrobe mirror. The body of an adolescent and the body of a parent are saying different things but the effect is the similar- confusion and change. For the adult, the adolescent focus on the body can only tend to emphasise their own loss of youth, providing much emotional fuel for a holy war.

A second area of change is in relationships. Adolescent development depends to some extent upon identifying with a group and distancing themselves from dependence on their parents. Letting go of dependence may be gentle or turbulent but engaging in new relationships will be both frightening and exciting. Friendships, gossip, betrayals, first love and group loyalty energise and exhaust the adolescent at the same time. But the adult’s relationships are not stable either. Perhaps a parent has broken up with their partner or their best friend has divorced in a way that questions their own key relationships. If all else is well an adult in their forties will be increasingly aware of changing relationship with their own parents: their health, dependency, talk of wills and the need for care. Just when they are being challenged to let go of responsibility for their children, the adult is also asked to sensitively absorb more responsibility for their own parents as they move to the end of their lives. Such reflection may leave even the mature parent in an emotional storm not too different from that of their adolescent child. The difference between the emotional storms is that the adolescent’s is focussed on the optimistic buoyancy of new beginnings whilst the adult storm will focus on re-negotiating established relationships and letting go as they move into older adulthood themselves.

The third area of focus for adolescence is the future. So much teenage time is spent dreaming and planning that they might seem to have left the present moment, and the planet, entirely. For the parent of an adolescent the future looks a little more down to earth. The time they thought they had seems to have evaporated. It is half time in their working life. For the adult it becomes important to re-value the time they have and they may resent the abandon with which their children treat time. Adult choices may well need to change in order to achieve some of the dreams they abandoned before the family arrived. Parents may feel the need to change their life style just at the time when their adolescent children need them to be most consistent. In fact, as the adolescent breaks away from parents, the parents too may quietly need to detach themselves from the adolescents in order to move forward on their own journey.

Don Bosco[i] was aware that working with adolescents would often be very confusing.  The challenge of walking with adolescents was for him a path to maturity and holiness for adults on their own spiritual journey. Parents, teachers, youth-workers and catechists all face the challenge on a regular basis. The Salesian charism offers each of them a style of working based on the good shepherd who guides and protects and seeks out what is lost. But Don Bosco also offers in the preventive system a way for the adult to grow spiritually. Through the experience of working with the adolescents their relationship with the good shepherd is tested and deepened. Working with adolescents invites confusion and Challenge. It opens up the valley of shadow of death hidden in each person where the Lord alone is the shepherd, guiding the concerned parent, teacher or youth worker to deeper awareness and greener pastures.

As the adult parent or teacher or youth worker begins to see the traces of age mark their own body they can become vulnerable and uncertain about themselves. In order to deal with the ingratitude and inconsistency of adolescents they need the deeper reassurance of a good shepherd from within themselves. The affirmation the teacher and parent need must come from a more intimate sense that they are known by name and accepted as they are by an inner wisdom. By giving time to this gentle acceptance the parent and educator can move deeper into relationship with an inner good shepherd and find the calm sense of an inner presence that lies at the heart of the preventive system. The adolescent of course, can easily shatter this new intimacy and calmness but that too, is part of the journey. Those moments of conflict may even lead the adult toward jealousy of their own children, resentment of the teenager’s open future or just sadness about the adult’s own lost youth. Or maybe, recognising the presence of the good shepherd in those darker feelings about work with adolescents, the parent or educator may find a gentler acceptance that their own journey has moved on. The good shepherd can then transform the tensions of the adolescent-adult relationship into a rich source of growth and a tailor made challenge to maturity and faith.

One of the greatest spiritual gifts adolescents offer to older people is their ability to rub salt into adult compromises with life. Their young and sometimes innocent questions remind us older people of how much is wrong with the world we are handing on to them. They ruthlessly remind us that it is already later in life than we think and how we play out the second half of life will be different from the first. Adolescents remind us that there is no standing still on the journey, no resting on adult laurels but rather a change in pace and depth of life. The adolescent awakens an urgent call in the adult to a deeper spiritual journey. Disturbing, confusing and idealistic the adolescents stands, like John the Baptist, inviting us to prepare a new way in what may appear to be the wilderness of our middle years. With the presence of the good shepherd and the wisdom of Don Bosco both adolescent and adult find richness in sharing that journey, even if they are travelling in different directions.

---

[i] A saint and educator who established a way of working and a spirituality for parents and teachers in the second half of the 19^th centur

A salesian way of living

A new publication

This rule of life attempts to capture the Salesian spirituality of the ordinary. It is not meant to be clever and it requires little prior knowledge to appreciate. The energy of Salesian spirituality comes from mindfulness of a loving father within each person. This awareness gives hope, deepens meaning and lends resilience to relationships. This rule of life is intended to strengthen the awareness of a loving father so that, as Don Bosco reminded us “…people should not only be loved but they should know that they are loved.”

An extract.....

The only proper responses to this presence

liv£1.81ing within you and in those around you

are gratitude and loving kindness.

Gratitude opens you up to receive a family spirit

moving in all people and in creation.

Loving kindness becomes the outward sign

of the respect for this sacred presence

living at the heart of all people;

it breaks through the isolation of all individuals

and builds community.

Download  here £1.81
Buy it here         £6.00

One Review……

A Salesian Way of Life is a real treasure. The best 43 pages for the least handful of pence you are likely to spend for a while. We know that a 'Rule of Life' is common to religious communities, with roots going back to Benedict and other 'Greats'. But a 'Rule' might still be off-putting for some today, so it was an inspired little touch to come out with A Salesian Way of Life, and as the author, Fr David O'Malley, suggests the book is an invitation to 'be Salesian' whoever you are, whatever gender, faith background

The hidden work of parents and teachers

I remember taking care of some disadvantaged children on a summer holiday when I saw one of them on a fragile some fifteen feet above the ground. He was unaware of his danger. I remember speaking to him very calmly and patiently asking him to move to safety but inside I was full of a kind of terror that he would be hurt. My stomach was churning, heartbeat raised- all the signs of high stress. Yet none of that came through in my voice. Somehow I was acting a professional role and masking my inner stress.

We expect professional control in teachers and we find it in parents who may be seething inside at the arrogance or selfishness of their children but refuse to be provoked. This is wonderful self discipline. It saves situations and keeps all those involved calm and focussed through challenges. It enshrines the power of reason and talk to solve problems and teaches how to manage poor behaviour. Because it is not a gut reaction it allows respect to be maintained and the relationship preserved- it keeps things safe. But it costs.
The cost is psychological because the parent or the teacher has to split off strong emotion from the context. This inner work needs to be done consciously and reflected on later and perhaps talked about with others. The tension, anger, or disappointment needs to be earthed and the effort to control ones inner world recognised.Then the bridge between the professional/parental role and the inner world of the teacher or parent can be strengthened.
There is a hidden heroism about this work and it needs to be celebrated by parental support and strong school relationships. This is our work as educators and parents: not to share information but to build character and resilience in young people so that they can help to build a civilisation of love in the years to come.

Watch this video for a quick 1 minute description of this topic

The east and west of spiritual experiences among young adults

Alone in a quiet chapel in Eastern Europe, a young woman is making a retreat.  Without warning she suddenly feels that she is being hugged from behind with a great tenderness. She did not move an inch because she knew that no one else was in the chapel. She had been hugged by God, she told me.

On a hillside in a Mediterranean country a lorry is out of control, sliding down a narrow coastal road. It turns over and slides to a halt inches from a family car parked at a view point on the cliff edge. Watching from the back seat of the car is a fourteen year old boy who looks up at the huge juggernaut in shock. As he looks he is overcome with a sense of God’s goodness and protection for him and his family. Despite the shock he feels a great peace and safety. God’s hand has moved in his life.

It is the evening before his Granddad’s funeral and a young Belgian sits thinking about life and death. Suddenly he is overwhelmed by a feeling that everything is one and that somehow everything is God. It came with a huge sense of being loved and a strong sense of peace.

These stories emerged easily from a series of short conversations during a Salesian Youth event in Brussels called Eurizon. There were fourteen European national groups involved. All of those interviewed were able to recount an experience that brought them close to a presence or a power in their lives that was different from their normal sense of awareness.

The young people all spoke excellent English but they still found that words failed them in this area of experience. “I felt huge as a person, as if I filled the whole world, but very small and vulnerable too” one young person reported. Another person said simply “I felt like I was part of everything” None of the young people felt they had expressed themselves clearly enough because as one said “the experience was too big for words.”

Interestingly, few of the young people had ever spoken about these experiences to anyone else. It was too intense and personal according to some, too vague or strange according to others. When they were shared it was more likely to be with a friend rather than a family member. The experiences all happened alone, even if others were around, and were recognised as intended only for the individual concerned.

Sat on a cliff top in Malta a young adult is overcome by the beauty of the view. She is overcome too by a sense of peace and calm that seems to come from inside and soak into her from the outside as well. It is an experience that she goes back to when she feels low in spirit or in confidence. The girl hugged by God in the chapel finds that the memory of that experience sustains her through hard times and gives her an inner strength, a sense of partnership with God. The boy involved in the lorry accident above is strengthened in his trust in God and he finds it easier to do the right thing when under pressure.

All of these young people recognise the sacred nature of these experiences that have so much in common with each other. But there were also some differences in the way that different nationalities spoke about such moments in their lives.

Young adults from Eastern Europe were quicker to name such experiences as religious, as from God. Those from Western Europe were sometimes reluctant to put any religious label on their increased awareness. For the eastern Europeans it seems that these experiences confirm their formal religious faith and for western Europeans the experience seems to challenge formal faith.

For eastern Europeans there was a strong sense of duty emerging from the experience. They came away with a sense of obligation to do the right thing and to live morally and peacefully alongside others. For western Europeans the moral and social sense was almost entirely absent, to be replaced by an intense personal feeling. They were less likely than eastern Europeans to connect their experience to church or an external moral code.

For eastern European youth, church seems to be offering a strong setting for interpreting these experiences in a religious language. The church is seen as a trusted friend, a sustainer of people in time of war and oppression and a stable focus when government and politics are in chaos. In the west the church is seen as well meaning but out of touch with reality for young adults. Therefore the young person may prefer to hang on to the vague personal nature of the experience and is far less likely to share it with others. It becomes a privatised experience.

For all these young people the experiences have been life changing. For one Belgian it leads her to appreciate nature and to keep searching it for a sense of the sacred. For another eastern European, the experience has strengthened his conscience to do the right thing and admit his faults more often. For another western European youth, his sense of empathy has increased alongside a respect for nature and the environment. For another it is the challenge of coping with an illness through the energy of dream where she is embraced by a figure of Mary the mother of Jesus. For another it is the ability to work hard for exams with a sense of purpose and energy that were not there before the experience happened.

These life-changing experiences are scattered through young lives in a way that should reassure that they are never far from the presence of God. What they make of them depends very much on how the young people feel about their church and culture. I will leave one of the young voices to have the final word:

“I felt hugged from behind. It was so real, a real presence, that I had to look behind me to check. There was no one there. I felt so strong, so filled with life. I was connected to everything and everyone. Whatever happens to me, I know I can live from this experience for many years.”

In praise of head teachers

In praise of head teachers

The difficulty in appointing head teachers in schools is easy to understand. The role involves the balancing of complex pressures in a constantly changing educational setting. It demands resilience and a range of skills that few of us possess. They are a group of people who, in my long experience, are courageous, committed and are likely to be motivated much more by faith than by ambition. In common with many bishops they stand at the meeting point between the Gospel and the local secular world, between religion and a practical atheism. They also bridge the gap between home and school, between the almost industrial mentality of some educational policy and the self sacrifice of staff. They hold together different generations of teachers by maintaining an ethos and tradition that reaches back to former pupils and out into the wider community. They are people that can be stretched at times beyond their limits.

Yet the figure of the head teacher is often portrayed as a manager of target-based learning and someone who is only as good as the latest set of exam results. This mechanistic and almost industrial model of the role as arranging inputs (learning) and outputs (exam results) is a narrow and demeaning view of the head teachers role as the spiritual leader of a catholic learning community. The head teacher is undoubtedly responsible for learning and results but the quality of the learning will depend not just on what happens with the curriculum but also upon the relationships that make up the community. The exam results will only catch part of the learning that happens in the classroom and school community. Much of the richness bequeathed to pupils in a catholic school will only emerge in later life, in family living, parenting, commitment to citizenship and to church. The narrow culture of measurement and the repressive, almost medieval, practice of “blame and shame” leave our head teachers at risk of going over to the “dark side” and adopting narrow mechanical and superficial ways of working and thinking or simply burning themselves out with the loneliness and responsibility involved in holding so many pressures in balance.

As a catholic community we need to recognise and value the amazing men and women who lead our catholic schools in this country. They lead a church community within diocesan structures that are more difficult to maintain. Few people in our church community appreciate all the pressures under which they labour and we need to be aware of some of the issues with which they manage each day:

·       They need to continually improve results in order to avoid slipping down the written and unwritten competitive league tables that might lead to bad publicity, falling roles, amalgamations and even closure.

·       Head teachers have to respond clearly and quickly to new educational initiatives that can seem to come from outside the local community.

·       The head teacher has to provide ongoing and relevant training for all staff and be skilled in advertising, selecting and recruiting suitable staff as well as dealing with grievances and terminating employment in a just and Gospel-based way.

·       The demands of the local deanery for more effective religious education that will bring older pupils back to practice are a further complex and legitimate challenge to which a head teacher must respond.

·       Issues of health and safety, relationship education, budgeting and policy management are a regular and time-consuming focus for every head teacher.

·       In addition the head teacher is asked to maintain the spirit and ethos of the school so that each pupil and member of staff has the experience, whatever their faith background, of a gospel-based community where spirit and activity are integrated in each person.

These are just some of the roles that I know keep many head teachers late at work and at times distant from their own families. They take work home and live and breathe a role that begins to need the constant support of their whole family. They see themselves as setting the tone for the whole school, modelling a work ethic for colleagues and absorbing responsibility for tasks that are often difficult to delegate. Many head teachers with whom I have worked know that they are doing a good job and are very close to the limits of their energy for long periods as they balance the secular and spiritual dimensions of their role. What they sometimes lack is the recognition that bonds them supportively with the community in which they serve. The encouragement head teachers need will come only rarely from the inspectorate structure and more often from the local authority. The most important sustained support a head teacher needs must always come from within the school community; from parents, governors, pupils and staff.

Parents need to see beyond performance to the person of the head teacher as a spiritual leader in their community and not simply a service provider for the local authority.  Perhaps parents more than most others will recognise in the head a shared commitment and care for the young especially in the confusion of adolescent lives. Governors need to find time to read between the lines of the meetings they attend and support the head at times of celebration as well as during times of trouble or change. Teachers need to take good news into the head’s office and try to use the middle leaders in school to resolve problems before going to the head teacher. Pupils simply need to say thank you to the head teacher when they can, admit their mistakes honestly and enjoy the spirit of the school.

Saint John Bosco recognised the importance of leadership and offered the image of the Good Shepherd as a model for leaders of church based communities. It is a challenging model for the leader; to seek out the lost, establish safe places, and lay down ones own life at times for what really matters. Head teachers feel that responsibility to live the Good shepherd model at the heart of the school community. However, the Good Shepherd model is for the whole school community not just the leader. We are all called to shepherd the spirit of love, of truth, of justice and compassion in the school community. Therefore the head teacher also needs to feel shepherded through concern for them as a person. The head needs to hear good news as well as difficulties from staff. They need to hear praise and recognition for their role and their informal presence in school and the work they do beyond the school site.

Don Bosco’s believed that praise, recognition and encouragement gave strength to the inner spirit and helped people to remain humble and strong in the service of others. May we find time in our conversations to recognise, praise and encourage those men and women who lead our catholic schools. If they experience the warmth and understanding of their community they can then find even more strength to face the daily challenge to build, on our behalf, a new spiritual community in a secular age

Caught in the froth of measured learning

Many teachers face an impossible set of expectations from society in their educational role. Most teachers are motivated by concern for young people and feel that the focus only on measurable assessed outcomes diminishes their role and does not meet the needs of young people. On the other hand families and society now expect education to instill values especially moral responsibility in young people. But those expectations are not taken it into account when making judgements about schools.
OFSTED the schools inspectorate in England and Wales, have a wonderful evaluation document on spiritual and moral aspects of education. It is inspiring, useful and recognises the broader reach of an holistic education. But it lies on the shelf, gathering dust and is rarely used to evaluate and recognise the softer skills of teachers. In practice it doesn't count.

 Our politicians want teachers to produce measurable results within the term of office of  a government. They seem to be satisfied with a narrow view of education that will use exam progress as a sign of success when many young people  are falling apart inside. Faced with a spectrum of social needs that inhibit learning in some young people in every class a teacher has to assume some of the responsibility of a social worker in order to motivate young people to learn. This work is done individually, vocationally and at great personal cost to teachers. Because it is not recognised and approved it may wither on the vine of the teaching career- yet it is probably the most valuable work that they do.

In dealing consistently, patiently and personally with dis-functional elements in each class at teacher models respect and moral strength not only to the challenging young people but to the whole of the class.They teach young people how to be adults in society. The assessment based curriculum has almost squeezed out this vital aspect of learning to the impoverishment of the whole school community. There is no time for deeper learning and the development of wisdom has been replaced with the froth of information and measured learning.

Teaching: a matter of the heart

Today, all across the world, teachers are performing minor miracles. In every classroom they are engaging with young people in a way that brings them to life and fills out the school curriculum with the hidden curriculum needed to be a balanced human being. They achieve this miracle by dealing with each class and every student with respect, understanding affection and humour. These four aspects of relationships make teachers strong in laying down clear boundaries, warm hearted, empathetic and cheerful.

The students learn lessons modelled by the behaviour of the teacher.  The teacher, dealing patiently with outrageous adolescent behavior teaches a powerful lesson in relationship building. The teacher who is passionate about her subject transmits the energy for learning before content is considered. The teacher who can laugh and remain cheerful under pressure teaches resilience and the teacher who notices pain in the students can teach compassion. Such things are not on the curriculum but without them lives would fall apart and community would be impossible. We are teachers, not instructors because education is a matter of the heart.

respect, understanding affection and humour- the initial letters spell out ruah- the word for spirit in arabic and hebrew scripture- the energy that creates community.

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New Dogmas please!

Our catholic church is a world institution that needs to be wary of change and not simply adopt change for the sake of change. Neither should it accept change in one part of the world and deny it in another. That dilemma has been obvious in a pastoral approach to gender issues in the recent synod in Rome. The church needs a strong and steady leadership that adopts change and adapts to change in a way that preserves the integrity of the Gospel.

However, the weight of change has been increasing and the world view of many of the people of this planet is now out of step with the general world view of the church. If we are not careful we will soon create another Galileo situation where our church denies what is obvious and loses its credibility in proclaiming the Gospel.

These are not just intellectual problems- you can see the reluctance to learn in the prayers of the present missal. It is full of prayers that echo an older world view and an approach to salvation that has little to do with the a loving Father and the insights of scriptural study. The prayers also focus on the church rather than the Gospel which leaves the congregation unfed and and unmoved.

The most important dogma's of the church have yet to be written in the light of psychology and the discoveries of science at microscopic and astronomical levels.

“The most telling and profound way of describing the evolution of the universe would undoubtedly be to trace the evolution of love.” 

― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Young adults- the spiritual landscape described

Signposts in the spiritual landscape of young adults.

      1. Erratic idealism

Young adults are trying to make their way in the world and make their mark. They have a long period of choice and exploration before the urge to settle asserts itself. In that period they can become highly motivated, idealistic, self-sacrificing, compassionate and focussed. A few months later they may well be apathetic and focussed almost entirely on consuming entertainment. It is possible to see these swings between apathy and idealism as an exploration of individual strength and resilience and almost a “trying on” of individual values that might guide their future life. Some young adults, needing more black and white simplicity in their search for meaning may well commit themselves to a comprehensive system of values through religion or a political ideology that can scaffold their development into the future and give them a sense of identity. Most are comfortable with muddling along and saving value decisions for later. The focus is clearly on life-style rather than lasting meaning which may be seen as static and stagnating.

2.      Eclectic sampling

Young people have been born into a world that is suspicious of institutions. Large organisations are seen as a threat to individual freedom and as a having hidden agendas. The focal point for young adults is the individual, mu choices, freedom, rights and dignity. Therefore they are unlikely to accept complete answers but will be drawn to construct their own meaning by a DIY process of collecting different elements into a personal package that can grow and change with life. Therefore they will adopt practices from a range of traditions without necessarily importing the beliefs behind them. What they are interested in is the immediate experience rather than the dogma behind the practice. This can be confusing for religious people who may feel that they have engaged with a young person only to find that they are also exploring nature religions at the weekend. Young adults do not experience a division between the secular and sacred, they can sense spirituality in life more easily than previous generations. That means that they do not feel the need for church because they locate the sacred within themselves. The experience of church does not feed their deepest hunger.

3.                The shape of spiritual community

The problem with a DIY spiritual life is that it is a lonely process where motivation can ebb and flow. Many young adults give up and may meet later challenges without the inner resilience that faith can give. However, in order to support young adults now, the community needs to have some clear dimensions if it is to avoid damaging the personal spiritual development of young adults. Here are some of the elements:

a)      Listening should be the primary mode of communicating- valuing the experience and unique history of each young adult.

b)      Avoid lumping people together and suggesting that “we are all on the same journey” because that is not how young adults are likely to experience their life.

c)      Expect inconsistency between what is expressed by young adults and their life-style. The pressures to conform are strong and extended into mid-life. Living consistently across the board is more difficult because young adults can compartmentalise their experience and compromise- as all of can.

d)      Any group gathering around spirituality needs to avoid “gurus” in whatever shape they may come, partly because of the power differential that may lead to manipulation but more because they may undermine the personal autonomy of a young adult in discovering their identity and direction in life.

e)      The general atmosphere has to be one of freedom and the space to have one’s voice heard. Top down talk will not do.

 4.                Belonging in groups

The group is the sacred space for young people. With all its strengths and weaknesses it is the place where values, identity and meaning are forged for the future. This is particularly true for many young women. The flow of SMs, online chat, the falling out and reconciliations become a curriculum for clarifying what is and is not important. This spiritual work goes on constantly through the random events of social life but it becomes more focussed when a cause is espoused. Compassion and anger can be explored and strengthened through justice and service of others. Beneath the practical work values and beliefs are tested and a broad vocational direction is explored. These groups can be related to church but it would not be wise to assume that such young adults are buying into the beliefs of the church- they are simply doing good and testing themselves.

5.                Extended adolescence

We can all revert to adolescence at any age but today adolescence is prolonged for many young adults. The strong desire for autonomy alongside an extended period of financial dependence in western culture make for frustration in living out a longer adolescence. The importance of remaining flexible in a changing world inevitably delays the longer term commitments of adult life. Many decisions need to be deferred and the time of explorations and experimentation extends. For this reason travel, parties, casual sex, video games, changing jobs, extended study and ambivalence about “settling down” highlight this period of uncertainty. The uncertainty comes to an end when a crisis or a choice forces a decision that pushes the young adult out of a self-focussed developmental phase into committed action. The absence of a crisis moment might condemn even mid-life adults to an almost perpetual adolescence.

  

6.                Plurality of culture

Young adults have grown up in a western world where multiple cultures live alongside one another providing a rich source of approaches to meaning within which the Christian approach is just one among many. This richness is expressed in clothing, music and dance most visibly but notions such as re-incarnation, karma, mindfulness, Feng Sui and so on explored and adopted at least for short periods of time. However, where cultural identity is weak some young adults find the variety threatening and can opt for single black and white answers that can lead to rigidity and eventually to prejudice against other expressions of culture. Closed belief systems tend to reinforce this approach and even promote such rigid young adults as examples of faith and commitment. In fact the closed black and white system can become a house of cards that can collapse leaving the young adult feeling betrayed and angry.

7.                Social movements and politics

Movements and political parties are classified under a “suspicious” heading in much the same way as church when considering values and identity. Young adults need to question all authority and expect that these organisations to win their respect and not assume it to exist. Therefore they are slow to join groups or movements and often do not stay for long. There is a strong desire in young adults to change the world but alongside that there is also a desire to find their own way and a powerlessness to make any difference in a complex dynamic world. Therefore young adults worry about globalisation, environment and fair trade but most are unlikely to change their personal choices about spending or travel to ease those global dilemmas. They worry about the gap between their deepest ideals and the power they have to make a difference.

8.                Anxiety and violence

Global terrorism is a constant concern for young adults. The extremism and narrowness of view behind anarchic terrorism confuses the average young adult. The destabilising impact of violence globally and locally casts a fearful shadow over the optimism of young adults and raises suspicion of national groups in a multi-cultural society. The suspicion extends to any organisation that makes meaning claims that threaten individual identity. The ability of such “isms” to suffocate individuality to the point where suicide bombings seem to make sense leaves young people at a loss. How can violence be an answer? What is the best response to it?  Does religion promote narrowness? There are no clear answers for young adults to these questions and their strategy is to avoid all narrow closed systems as a form of self-preservation. The absence of young adults from church is not apathy but a commitment to authenticity.

Conclusion.

The landscape within which young people grow is their sacred ground and we must be careful not to judge. Instead we need to walk with them and listen to them well. It is only when we have assured them of their dignity and freedom and met them with loving kindness that we can hope for the invitation to unwrap our own treasures and offer them new reasons for living and hoping.

Men on radar

The samaritans have just released a twitter app, "radar," to help people to recognise possible signs of depression and even suicide in friends. The app is trying to turn the social network into a safety network especially for young males. Taken over decades the suicide rate seems to be relatively stable the basic numbers seem to be consistent with occasional peaks. What is also stable is the appalling difference between men and women. For every six female suicides there are twenty five male suicides.That seems to indicate an underlying woundedness in men that is either absent in women or being managed better by them.

It is obvious, even from childhood, that boys are more competitive. The culture encourages males to be independent, stoical and to guard their emotions perhaps to the point where they lose touch with their own emotional life and discount that life in others. Later in life that trend has been expressed to me as "women have friends and men have hobbies." It is also true that in traditional  marriages it is usually the woman who organises the social life, holidays, birthdays and other celebrations. It seems that men are somehow retarded women as the softer skills of life are increasingly superseding the more basic physical and defensive gifts of the male. That is something that will not easily change.

Men need to hear the emotional content behind the words

What can change is the attitudes of men towards one another so that they can offer each other some of the support that women share but perhaps in a different way. I am not suggesting that men need to adopt the high level of communication, phone calls, chats and a good cry now and then. I believe there is a male style of communication that does not need the same amount of detail, emotional language or a regular commitment to meet up.But as men we should realise that compassion and listening to one another needs to come before problem solving and getting on with watching the match.

One of the things men can do for each other is to ask open-ended questions that draw out some background so that a meaningful exchange happens. Often the response to some expression of struggle is to  say "sorry about that" and then move on to another topic leaving the other person more isolated than before. What we need to do as men is to extend our range of caring skills whilst being thoroughly masculine. That would mean being ready to listen, finding open-ended phrases that draw out a longer conversation. Men also need to deploy a masculine style of compassion by using short phrases to show they have understood without necessarily showing emotion themselves.

The rugged individual hero is eventually isolated and alone

At the heart of the male challenge to modern life is isolation and as a gender we need to work more at communication as men. Men are probably directed by life to be self-contained but not independent. The current culture idolises independence and male role models seem to be stoical, unemotional and invulnerable. Those myths are undermining male mental health in western culture and need to be debunked. At the same time we need to consciously educate boys to listen to others more effectively to future-proof them from isolation and depression.

Beneath the isolation of male western culture is an even deeper hunger that needs to be fed if men are to be more healthy. The hunger for meaning that gives purpose and direction is the bond that is missing.What can we do about that?

The blind are leading the blind

As parents, teachers and youth workers we are blind guides for young people because we are caught up in the twenty first century trauma of change. We can't keep up with social networking, the changes in jobs, the fluidity of relationships and the emergence of the next"big thing" in the world of media. We as older adults can be overloaded with input, punch-drunk with change and reeling in a world of choices.

Young people, by and large, do not see things that way. They have grown up in a world of change, shifting values, media energy and consumerism. Individualism is their starting point and they have developed a suspicion of easy answers to life's questions. The packaged answers of the major religions are, for many young people, just another commodity on the shelves of the supermarket of meaning: something to browse, try on and discard. They may see religion as a quaint and interesting investment but often discard it because it is seen as something that might also smother their personal spirituality with a bland and impersonal uniformity.

That is not the whole picture however because in the end everyone tires of shopping around. That may emerge as an acceptance of simplistic answers that leave young people vulnerable to fundamentalism in its many forms. Some may just give up and abandon the search for meaning entirely. They become vulnerable to the grave consequences of drifting into compensatory activity in drugs, alcohol, casual sex and in so doing, inviting the darker side of their lives to rob them of well being. In religious language that amounts to losing one's soul.

As a religious-minded parent or teacher I may be deeply concerned about such issues but that concern will not be shared by many young people. They do not see with the same eyes, with the same perspective as older adults. Where we see threat they may see adventure. Where we see naivety they see idealism. Where we see safety they see suffocation. We do not see what they are seeing we may be blinded by our care and by our cultural roots to the emerging world and the real risks young people face.

That is why the only way forward is to walk with young people as fellow travellers into an unknown future. We need to give them a good listening to rather than a good talking to. What they seem to carry is a new set of priorities, a fluidity, and an openness to which we as older adults may be blind. What we have to carry is the religious tradition re-shaped according to a new set of priorities for a new century.

So here is a question to end this blog. If religion is made up of the seven elements below where should our emphasis be if we are to support young adults in their search for meaning?

How would you prioritise this list?   Good luck!

1. Ritual: Forms and orders of ceremonies 
2. Narrative and Mythic: stories  that work on several levels. 
3. Experiential and emotional: dread, awe, mystery, devotion, ecstasy, peace, bliss 
4. Social and Institutional: belief system is shared and attitudes practised by a group. 
5. Ethical and legal: Rules about human behavior
6. Doctrinal and philosophical: systematic formulation of teachings in an intellectual form
7. Material aesthetic: ordinary objects or places that symbolize or manifest the sacred 

Source- Ninian Smart

Life and death in Limerick Milk Market

Limerick Milk Market on a Saturday is a place to be. A lovely mixture of a traditional market space surrounded by small shops but covered by a jauntily angled awning that embraces the old with the new. The buzz, the smells, the chatter and the flow of life swirl around the tented space protecting the traditional market.

So it was a strange to find, at the back of the bar area a message of a quite different type. Wheeled in on a trailer was a display that asked starkly "what do you want to do before you die?" Not only did it ask the question but it also invited replies that could be chalked up on a huge board. The atmosphere around those who were writing was oddly up-beat. There were smiles, suggestions and thoughtfulness stirred into the emotional mix of the crowd at the blackboards.

What would you write? What do you want to do before you die? We only live for 700,000 or so hours- how do you want to spend them? In the rush of life, the pressures and the problems, we can easily lose sight of what is of lasting value. Sometimes just keeping going can take all of our attention and the deeper questions get trodden underfoot as we struggle to keep up with life. Have a glance at what people wrote in the Milk Market and see if it helps you to answer that question for yourself.

As well as the desire to travel, to tell an original joke, meet George Clooney and ride an elephant there are others that catch the eye: I want to slow down, I want to watch my children grow, to flourish as an artist, make others happy, build my own house and engage the world with meaning. Others wanted to kiss Brad Pitt, own a Maserati, swim in the Shannon River and to have their 15 minutes of fame. This range of desires is interesting because nowhere does it include working harder, earning more money but it does include hidden dreams, a fascination with celebrity and a desire to escape the pressures tasks and timetables of life.

Studies have shown that when a person has reached a basic level of income his or her sense of well-being does not improve- they do not increase in  happiness as money increases beyond their basic needs. Yet we are surrounded by a media that keeps telling us the opposite: that owning and earning more leads to greater freedom and happiness- "because we're worth it" as one cosmetic advert describes it. In fact ownership usually leads to anxiety and promotes envy in others. This applies to popularity and power as much as to money as any parent will confirm as they watch their children working out who is in charge and who is the favourite.

Our tendency to compete for possessions both material and relational is the source of unhappiness (perhaps original sin) and what we see on the blackboard is a snapshot of our condition as human beings- wanting to grasp happiness, to choose life, but instead being sidetracked into scoring points and seeking attention in a world that can seem very superficial. 

What sets us free from this endless cycle of earning and owning is a deeper sense of soul. Don Bosco spoke often about saving souls from moral dangers.  In our times consumerism  is actually consuming our souls. It provides the agenda, sets the competition and hands out the prizes making winners and losers of us all. But underneath all this activity and noise is the soul: that unique part of a person that endures. The soul stores a person story, it has the potential to give meaning and shape to life, it is the source of mystery that beats in the pulse and is the place where, in the end, we are most creative and alive. Above all it is the privileged place where we will establish a relationship with God.

So perhaps the question on the board could have asked "how healthy is your soul?" That question has to bring us all to our knees because it is the one thing we need to do if we are to live well. The Catechism reminds us that our first obligation as Christians is the saving of our souls. So are you looking after your soul today, this week, this year?  Are your deepest desires, the intuitions and rhythms of life being heard above the noise of life's slot machine culture? If your deafened soul is not in the driving seat for your life journey someone else is running your life. To re-claim your soul is the purpose of your life and as you pursue that purpose you will find that happiness is a by-product of  that search for your prodigal soul.

But don't wait too long to claim your soul back from this culture- you have 700,000 hours to spend and by the age of  30 you have already used up 37% of your life. Do some soul-searching soon!

PS I should also add that the blackboards were in place to promote a project of the Irish Hospice Foundation. You can visit their site for more background.