As I Depart

Every now and then you read something that just makes you pause. I’ll admit: I’m a bit of a bookworm. If I get a few hours to myself, I usually spend it reading. And lately I’ve been reading Democracy Matters by Cornel West. This books makes you think. I’m not saying that it makes you sit down and question the very foundations of your life. But, I am saying that you frequently read a line and find yourself saying “hmmm” out loud while you read. You realize that some things aren’t the way you thought. You realize that you just read something that you totally agree with but could never put your finger on, or rearrange into words to adequately express yourself.

Can I give you an example? Especially after working with college students this summer, and now switch hitting with the junior highers on youth staff this week, a chapter titled “The Necessary Engagement with Youth Culture” kind of stuck out. There are a few times here that I really found myself nodding, then picking up my pen and underlining or writing notes in the margins (again…bookworm). As this summer comes to a close, this gave me a lot to chew on.

Quote: The incessant media bombardment of images (of salacious bodies and mindless violence) on TV and in movies and music convinces many young people that the culture of gratification – a quest for insatiable pleasure, endless titillation, and sexual stimulation – is the only way of being human.
Holy crud! Why do I love this statement? Well, let’s begin with my constant annoyance with the media and TV in general. Let’s also talk a little bit about how I hate that when I don’t spend money for a while, then I start to get kind of twitchy…like I have to spend at least a little bit on something, even if it is a cider I don’t want, or a CD I’m only kind of interested in. It’s like those psychological conditions where a person feels pressure build up until the person hurts him or herself. Why do I feel the NEED to spend money? Can we say “consumer culture”?

Quote: They begin to see that their education has been distorted and sugarcoated and has sidestepped so many uncomfortable truths. This often leads to an ardent disappointment, and even anger, about the failures of our society to consistently uphold the democratic and humanitarian values that can be born in youths in this phase of their life.
Wow. Remember angst? Remember feeling the world was all jaded, and then realized that you, too, were jaded beyond all hope? Maybe we still feel a little like that. I remember feeling that way while I watched as a children’s program (one that I was responsible for) continued to sugar coat the Bible. Do we do that? Do we teach kids a candy coated version? Do we do it to ourselves? Do we lie to ourselves, putting a candy coated Jesus in front of our eyes? I know that at times I do. I know that at times I pretend everything is OK and that at times I’m afraid to challenge kids I’m teaching. How can I prevent this? How can I know when to let them off because they are kids, and when to hit them with the full meaning? Is there ever a time to hold back, or have we simply gotten to where we actually feel bad for facing reality?

Quote: What a horrible irony it is that this poetry and critique (rap and hiphop music) could be co-opted by the consumer preferences of suburban white youths – white youths who long for rebellious energy and exotic amusement in their own hollow bourgeois world.
Let me take just a second to pause and feel the guilt for, at one time, being that young punk of a white kid. I didn’t know what depravity was. I didn’t know what a hard life was. I just didn’t know. But, I went around blasting the music all the same, striking out against some shadow that I called oppression when in fact it was just what West has called it: a hollow bourgeois world. I found anger in that music and foolishly called it my own. It was an outlet, but it was wrong.

Quote: The disaffection of so many youths stems in large part from their perception that the adult community neither understands nor cares about the issues of their lives. … Young people are acutely aware of the hypocrisies of so many adults in the political and business worlds….
If you don’t work with youth, what do you do to interact with them? The fact is, once you leave “youth-hood” you don’t much see people of that age again unless you have and brother or sister in the age group, or unless you eventually have kids and they then reach that age. Is it any wonder that youth feel they aren’t wanted or understood? And knowing that youths are so good at spotting hypocrisy, is it any wonder we are scared? Both of these issues need to be reconciled. Our own hypocrisy is something we should face. And today’s youths need us just as much as we needed adults when we were young. Remember the rare adult that cared and/or understood us when we were that age?

I’ll wrap it up with a statement West uses to wrap up his chapter: It is imperative that young people – of all classes and colors – see that the older generation in the academy cares about them, that we take them seriously, and that we want to hear what they have to say.

I am about to leave this place. We are all about to head out into the big blue world. And as we do that, we leave behind this life. We leave behind a life where we interact with people and kids and youth on a day-to-day basis. We will go back to another life soon. As I walk/drive away from Mount Hermon in less than a week, I face a question similar to one that I faced in high school. Back then, I asked myself if I lived two separate lives: my church/Christian life, and the rest of life. Back then it had to do with the basics: attitude, swearing, prayer, etc. Now I think it has become more complex. Now I leave here asking myself a new, but similar, query: do I live two separate lives: one where I interact with all God’s children (including our own children and youth), and one where I only interact with those who are like me? Do I turn off the summer job switch and hide in the bubble of higher education? Do I hide behind hours of work and/or studying and say that I have no time for those outside my circle?

Do I recognize what Randolph Bourne said many years ago: It is not compromise to study to understand the world in which one lives, to seek expression from one’s inner life, to work to harmonize it and make it an integer, nor is it compromise to work in some small sphere for the harmonization of social life and the relations between [people] who work together….

As Christians we are called to work together. All of us. May we continue to do so. May we strive to do a better job with it. May we seek God as we strive, and may we find God not in ourselves, but in and through those God calls us to serve.