How do we learn and grow?

Off we go into the new week with so much going on, I wonder where we will be by Friday.

I was recently sent this and thought it a good and thought provoking piece. It is a window opened experience and maybe allows us oldies to think differently and want to draw closer to young people with their questions, doubts and certainties.

Hear these words from Anglican priest and contemplative, Adam Bucko, who is also an activist and a great voice for the poor. He works alongside spiritual leaders across different religious traditions and mentors young people, helping them discover a spiritual life for the 21st century and live in the service of compassion and justice. In the quotation, he is reflecting on what he sees as a spiritual awakening in younger generations. How does this make us feel?

"For younger people, many of us, it’s very clear we see God as present in all of the traditions. . . . Not only do they believe that there is one underlying reality at the foundation of all major world religions but they are also convinced that different traditions and their unique approaches to God complement each other. . . .

But it’s also important to say, a lot of young people don’t actually identify with a tradition any more. . . . Many of our churches, synagogues and mosques are freaking out when they hear this, thinking that young people are no longer interested in the sacred. But to me it is clear that young people are not necessarily rejecting God, they simply feel that many religious organizations lost touch with reality and are too concerned with money, power, self-preservation, maintaining the status quo, and ‘having right beliefs’. As a result, they tend to view them . . . as organizations that are spiritually bankrupt, that are no longer able to speak to and address some of the big questions of our time. And it takes deep insight and spiritual courage to see that. It is for this reason and many others that I don’t think of the rise of the ‘spiritual but not religious’ among our youth as a sign of spiritual decline but rather a new kind of spiritual awakening. . . .

We have to acknowledge that when people hear about spiritual and not religious people, they often immediately think that these are people who are just shopping around and not really that committed. . . . But when we look at some of the people who come from that group, we realize that actually many of them spend more time [in spiritual practices] than regular churchgoers."

Adam Bucko, “Follow Your Heartbreak,” in Generation Y, Spirituality and Social Change, ed. Justine Afra Huxley (Jessica Kingsley Publishers: 2019), 67‒68.

You might think this all sounds quite radical and certainly different to when we were children. But it also makes sense, why is church not appealing to young people these days? Young people certainly are not without spiritual experiences, feelings, empathy, they are just not wanting to be dictated too. They have a relationship with the Divine as we do, but often find our ways of expressing and showing faith as alien to them. They often know God, but can't see God limited to Church or Synagogue, Mosque or Temple. They do not understand our preoccupation with the past, the "right" way of worshipping or being constantly, in one way or another, dictated too.

This may not ring true for you or for me, except it is where many young people are today and we must acknowledge this, even if we don't understand it. From the earliest days in primary schools children are taught to question and not to expect to be given the answer. They are taught to think and learn for themselves. It is about self discovery and a journey of expectation in life and learning. Children these days are so often not satisfied with the ways we learned about our faith and want to be more active and maybe more radical as well. It is not our way perhaps, but neither are our ways theirs.Who says we are right? A baby learns to walk not because we enable them to do so but because they let go and try for themselves.

Think on this today and what can we learn from it? How can we "hear" what young people want and need, to further their own relationships with Christ? How do we listen and gain from them so that we too grow in our relationship with God in Christ?