If the books are any indication, we, as a society, are worried
about our youth. I mean consider, for a moment, the titles of just some
of the books you can find at the Border's or Barnes and Noble. Today' s
Children: Creating a Future for a Generation in Crisis. Teens in Turmoil:
A path to Change for Parents, Adolescents and their Families.
There appears to be a very real concern that we are losing our
children. We are worried that the generation that comes along after us
will be ill prepared for life in the world. To read some of these books
is to get the impression that every teen is violent, is hooked on drugs, is a
potential alcoholic. That every girl is a potential teen mother out to
wreck our society, that every teen is reckless and at risk. In short,
that our young people are in a kind of moral meltdown.
The books continue: "Talking to your child about a
troubled world." "Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder
Country." Inside this book, a blurb reads, Bill Finnegan, the
author, has immersed himself in the world of the young and the lost. Then
there is "The Romance of Risk: Why Teenagers Do the Things They
Do." Which just as easily could have been subtitled, "Why teens
do things that make grown ups cringe, such as piercing eyelids and stealing
cars."
This year, I will work with students in our Rites of Passage
Experiences program here at church. They are seventh and eighth
graders. And we are designing a special couple of years for them.
They take up big questions throughout a two year time period. At the end
of that, the eighth graders write a personal belief statement, called a
credo. I have been in other such coming of age programs in other
settings. Sometimes the students feel intimidated by dealing with religious
questions. So I and Alice Traylor, Chris Fawcett and K.C.
Peterschmidt will work them throughout this class, walk with them as they
consider big questions, and teach them about our great religious
heritage. Maybe try to demystify some of those concerns about the big
religious questions.
That is an important thing that KC and Alice and Chris are
doing. Adults interacting with our young people, our movement's future.
So, this morning I will spend the first half of our time
together speaking with the adults about youth and why engagement in their lives
is an important function in the church. The second part of my sermon, I
will share with you a letter that I write to our young people, our junior high
and senior high students about what they should expect as they come of age in
the church.
The First Part then, The importance of adult interaction with
young people.
There are two books that capture what is at stake here.
The first is entitled The Ambitious Generation: America' s Teenagers: Motivated
but Directionless. The thesis is simply that we have burdened this group
with our highest expectations, but have done very little in terms of helping
them to understand how to get from point A to point B. Today, 90 percent of
high school seniors expect to attend college, and 70 percent expect to work in
professional jobs. This is a very different picture than in the 1950s, or
in the 1970s. Today, because of college and graduate school, adolescence is a
very flexible term. The range of ages within adolescence has been
expanded. Within adolescence are decisions that will have significant
consequences in their lives. The earlier we are engaged and the more
intentionally we are engaged in the lives of our youth, so the research suggests,
the better off they will be.
Another book I want to lift up is entitled "A Tribe Apart:
A Journey into the heart of American Adolescence." The author,
Patricia Hersch, spent time at two schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, one of
the country's most affluent counties--consistently in the top three.
Hersch found that adolescents are a tribe apart. In all societies since
the beginning of time, adolescents have learned to become adults by observing,
imitating and interacting with grown-ups around them, she writes: "That,
perhaps, was then. Today, it is startling how little time modern
teenagers spend in the company of adults." One sixteen year old
Fairfax girl said, "You basically have a life of your own." A
sixteen-year-old boy wrote in a journal that he shared with the author,
"The teenager has been classified as a remote being. There is an
unspeakable distance between youth and the grown up world." These
words grabbed me. They should grab us and force us into thinking about
how to close that unspeakable distance.
Let me get away from the books for a moment. I merely
wanted to give you a sense of what books are out there and what the research
shows. I wanted to give you some sense that we are creating a culture
that kids know, instinctively, is kid-unfriendly, serving up to them
standardized tests and a whole host of menu options around consumer
goods. They are consumers and not contributors to the public good, one
person wrote, and they know it. They can see through it.
What can we do as a church to turn this around? I want to
suggest a couple of things that we adults can do in the face of this.
First, we can ask them directly what is going on in their
lives. I will share with you a story told to me by a friend of mine, John
Fisher, who mentored a Coming of Age student a few years back. John has a
neighbor boy about 15 or so, let' s call him Trent. And one week, every
morning on his way out of the neighborhood John saw this boy standing at the
corner. And Trent on Monday had a sports outfit on. And on Tuesday had
summer wear on in the middle of a cold fall. And Wednesday he had on
something that John could only compare to a toga. And John is thinking,
"We've lost another one. This kid is in deep trouble!"
But Thursday, with the pattern repeated, he decided to talk to Trent and ask
him directly what was going on. I guess, maybe hoping for an answer or an
intervention or something. Trent, laughing, said, "No this is what
we' re doing at school this week. It's dress up a different way, every
day Week." John was comforted-and a tad confounded, I imagine-by
this explanation.
John reflected with me about that experience. It is easy,
he said to me, when we see the sometimes bizarre things that teenagers do, to
judge first and never ask later. John was brave enough to ask. The
pressures and influences facing teenagers are so different that it is sometimes
difficult for us adults to imagine. It might be best just to go ahead and
ask. And even when there are not visible signs, like daily bizarre
changes of clothes, there are changes and role-playing that teens embrace and
experience that can be better understood by those adolescents with questions
and gentle guidance by caring and loving adults.
"When you're this age," one high school student said
to me once, "When you're this age, It is harder to communicate. I
wish adults would try to put themselves in my position when they speak to
me. Adults know what it is to be an adult and you know what it is to be
an adolescent, but we only know what it is to be a kid, so we can't put
ourselves in your shoes. We ask that you put yourself in ours." So
as the church, we are called to remember. We are called to remember a
number of things, but in this case, remember what it is to be an adolescent.
We are called to know each person, to respond to people in his or her
particularity and in their need. Quite simply-that is the work of the
church. To walk with, to comfort, to celebrate and to accompany. To meet
folks right where they are. It's that simple. We are talking about
children and teens in this case.
Now, there is a group called the Search Institute that has been
doing a bit of research in this area. I recommend that you go to their web
site. The address is in your order of service. They have forty
developmental assets that children should receive from the people and
institutions in their lives. There are external categories- Support,
Empowerment, Boundaries and expectations, and Constructive Use of Time-and
there are internal categories-commitment to learning, positive values, social
competencies and positive identity. In the back, I have a few copies of
these assets.
Of the forty assets, the average child has about 18. About
two-thirds have 20 or less. 8 percent have 30 or more. Positive and
negative behavior are precisely correlated with the number of assets a child
has. For a child with less than ten assets, there is a 53% chance that
they will have difficulty with alcohol. For a child with 30 or more
assets, the chance is 3%.
So a challenge, then. One of the most important assets for
our young people is a sense that adults are on their side, care about their
opinions, provide guidance and wisdom. So, let me suggest that you
get to know the names-the names and the lives-of five children in the church.
And maybe who they call their parents. This is not especially difficult
if you have children, but even if you don't, consider taking on this
project. We as a church have work to do when it comes to lifting up the
children's religious education program. It is one of my top priorities
this year. Joan and I meet every week in our effort to build a ministry
team dedicated to religious education, consisting of the re committee, the
teachers, and those of us on the staff. There are opportunities to serve.
Serve as mentors to the ROPE group. Talk to KC. Serve on the
religious education committee, talk to Diane Fawcett and Ann Herington.
Provide full funding for our re program. Talk to Joan. Talk to the
kids. Find new ways to connect with our youth, to be there for
them. Become a teacher, or a helper. It is what we promise we will
do when we have child dedications. Let's see if we can't make a new thing
happen. Music is important for our youngsters. Maybe we can get
some adults to share their musical talents for special children's
worship. Maybe we can get some paint for the junior high and senior high
rooms.
There is another thing you can do. On November 10th, Tim
Kasser, of Knox College, will be here to talk about the commercialization of
our children, at the Sunday Forum. Come around. Organize around
this theme. Let us be a place that values families--all families-- and
children--all children--in a fierce way.
One more thing. Kathy Bowman is doing a Wonderful
Wednesday session on new developments in Religious Education. Two
sessions she will do on two essays from a wonderful book entitled Essex
Conversations, written by UU folks who are passionate about new ways of doing
religious education. Come around. Engage these issues.
Energize this place for the sake of our children.
Accompaniment seems like a nice rallying cry in the face of the
seeming abandonment of our adolescence and young people. Accompaniment
says to our youth: We' ll walk along with you. Let us say that to our
children. So that when we do things like bridging ceremonies as they go
off to colleges-colleges that have campus ministry programs for young liberals
as a sign of support and solidarity- those bridging ceremonies will not be
empty promises or broken ritual, but organic and truly meaningful gestures in
which we say to those kids, "We've got your back. We got you
covered. You aren't alone."
Part II: "My Dungeon Shook" A Letter to the junior and
senior high students here at UC. Earlier this week, I sent you the letter
that writer James Baldwin wrote to his 15 year old nephew, which was published
as My Dungeon Shook in the book, The Fire Next Time. This letter, written
in 1963, comes out of great pain and indeed great wisdom. A man who had
known his nephew from his nephew's birth wrote it. I can' t write a
letter like that to you, because I have been in the Quad Cities for a month and
a half. Some of you I haven't even met yet. In that letter, he
wrote to his nephew a radical and profound line: You were born to be
loved. That is what it comes down to. But let me say a bit more.
Remember that reading I did earlier this morning from Walt
Whitman? Love the animals and the sun and the plants, and all the rest of
the rules for living he committed to paper. I am not going to compete
with him this morning. Instead of rules for living, I want to just tell
you something of what I know. I want to focus on what it means to be an
adolescent in this church. It is my gift to you, for letting me sit with
you occasionally in the next year or so.
I want to say that this transition from childhood to adulthood
will not last forever. I have been remembering back to those days in my
own life. It is kind of awkward. Eventually- and this is the kind
of thing that can be said with varying degrees of impact- you will grow into
some of the unique qualities that make up who you are. Religious
liberalism, as one of you pointed out to me, has great promise in telling you
to celebrate who you are. May it ever be so. Nonetheless, to me,
this time is like an airplane ride I took some years ago. The take off
was a bit shaky. Apparently we needed to go in a direction exactly
opposite of the direction in which we departed. So we found ourselves in
a crazy, leaned over position. I had a sense of being on my side. I
looked down at the strange angle of the ground and there was no sense of
equilibrium in any of that. That is what I think of this time as being
like, for you. I just want to say it won't last forever. You're not
quite taking off-you're no longer a kid-and you're not quite at cruising
altitude and speed-you' re not yet an adult, but you are on your way.
Change will be a constant, but not this crazy angle. And this time of
dis-equilibrium will sure enough come to an end. But mostly, I want to
write to you and talk to you about stuff that I know. I am not a
psychologist. Neither am I an educational or organizational development
person. Rather I am a parish minister. And so I want to speak of
what you should expect, from your church, from me, from your teachers, from
your faith and those who are helping you along in that way.
First, Expect love. Baldwin wrote to his nephew.
Here you were: to be loved. To be loved, at once and forever, to
strengthen you against the loveless world. Expect to find that
love. Be courageous enough to find that love. We want to build with
you, our youth, a world in which your horizons may continually expand and your
spirits soar. That takes love. That takes trust. We have
it. You need to trust that it is out there. Don't expect not to find it.
Expect it. Demand it. And, out there, the world is full of joys and
sorrows, in each life 10,000 of each will come, suggests a Buddhist
saying. There is, underneath it all, our faith claim that a certain grace
is with you all the time, all the time. And we mean that faith
claim. You are not alone in this search. You are free in your
search, but not alone. Joy comes in the morning. It may seem like
dark night, sometimes. You will know despair, sometimes. It may seem like
it just now. But remember, joy comes in the morning. The very time
I thought I was lost, the dungeon shook and my chains fell off. The
church is about-we are about-shaking dungeons. Freeing captives! Expect a
religion that is awe-inspiring, that wakes you, to see things just as they
are. Expect a religion full of wonder and joy. And expect-no,
demand- a religion that celebrates mystery. Religion is uniquely about
the mysterious, about the unknown. Be wary of any system that attempts to
explain it all. Like Whitman, I say to you, trust your experience.
And finally, expect a religion that enables you to see with new eyes and
especially new eyes that provide for you a way of viewing the world from the
underside, from the perspective of those who suffer. You are not James,
Baldwin' s nephew, in that letter. You are not growing up in a ghetto
that was designed for your destruction. But your faith can give you the
strongest sense of solidarity with those who are. Try it. And if it
fails you, try again. Keep after it. You deserve such a liberating
theology. Then you will be a model for all of those adults who ask you
what you're up to. Imagine that!
I started this letter by telling you that I am incapable of
giving you any rule for living. I am afraid that I am going to try
anyway. When the Buddha was dying, his last instruction to members of his
beloved community was "Make of yourself a light." You are in a
denomination, in a church, that says you are already a light. That says that,
in a sense, you start out as a light. So, Let it shine. Let it
shine. Amen
September 22, 2002, Unitarian Church, Davenport, Iowa. Roger Butts