Lately I've read a couple of books that are making me reconsider how I think about several things. In Engaging the Soul of Youth Culture, author Walt Mueller talks about how teenagers in his country have largely been abandoned by most of the adults in their lives, whether they be parents, teachers, employers, whatever. Often, says Mueller, the adults realize that this gap exists, but just don't know how to go about bridging it. Mueller's answer is simple: Get to know teenagers. Spend time with them, talk about what's important to them, not you. But carrying that out isn't easy.
The leadership of our church is seriously looking at ways we can help people who aren't getting help. Key word: help, not beat them over the head with a Bible. We've got so many people of all ages around us that need help and we can't expect them to come to us. After all, the church as a whole often does a pretty lousy job of actually helping people who need help.
The other night I was talking to some of the guys in our church's men's group. Somebody said, "What do you think's gonna happen the first time somebody brings a drug addict to church? Or takes a homeless person to lunch? We've got people in this church who'll freak!" He's probably right. But nobody's caring for these people. And the church has two choices: we can sit in our pews inside our nice white walls and talk about theology or we can be more Christlike and help people that need help. The book I'm reading now, The Ragamuffin Gospel, talks about this a lot. And it warns that many people in the church will not be on board with this plan.
What does all this have to do with writing? A few weeks ago, our youth minister announced that he'd met with all the kids from our church and asked them to list all the things they're interested in, no exceptions. They came up with all sorts of stuff: skateboarding, laser tag, paintball, scrapbooking, soccer, art, video games, cooking, rock climbing, movies, poetry, camping...nearly forty different categories. The youth minister said, "Okay, for every category you listed, we're going to provide a forum (with an adult leader with some expertise in that area) for you to do that activity." He hopes the kids will see that there are adults that are interested in the same things they are. And that they're interested in them.
I offered to lead a forum on writing. Participants can do poetry, journaling, fiction, whatever. This is the sort of thing that I did with Writer's Way. I never led a workshop with only teenagers, so that will require a little adjustment, but probably not that much. Writing is writing. And I worked with teenagers for 15 years as a band director, so I know a little about them.
But what can writing do for adults who are hurting, for someone hooked on drugs or someone in deep depression? I led a Writer's Way session once at a DC halfway house where all the guys were recovering from some type of addiction. We wrote a lot and those guys came up with some incredible stuff. More importantly, they talked about what they wrote, talked about how hard it is to walk past a liquor store and not go in, how much it hurts to come home high and have your children greet you grabbing you by your legs because they've missed you, not knowing where you've been for the past three days.
Obviously this is a different type of writing from what I normally do. But as any writer knows, writing can show you things inside yourself you never knew were there. And that can open people up to all sorts of things leading to all sorts of healing.
I'm not sure where any of this is going to go, but it's caused me to examine a lot of things. I used to think I was helping people when I was a teacher and I probably did help a lot of people. But there were many kids I didn't know how to help. I wanted to, but just didn't know how. Or was scared to.
Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe the leadership in our church is crazy. But maybe we can help some people who need help. That's not so crazy.
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