Commentary Athena Huckaby
Kids these days, huh? With their Facebook and their smart
phones and their gadgets. It’s hard to get their attention and even harder to
keep it. My grandmas’ generation wasn’t like that, or my mom’s, am I right?
Actually, I’m wrong. People have been talking about the “kids
these days” probably since the beginning of time; specifically, newspaper
articles that came out around the time of the invention of the telephone and
the car lamented that both items would make us more distant from one another. “To the contrary, when the telephone
arrived, people didn’t stop knocking on their neighbors' doors; they called and
then knocked," says Claude Fischer, author of the book Still Connected. "The car did not
isolate us; women flocked to driving cars because cars made it easier to get
out and see people.” To be clear, it’s not that the car or the telephone are
entirely unproblematic inventions, it’s just that they didn’t divide us the way
that naysayers predicted, in fact, they connected us in new and unforeseen
ways.
I find myself defending Facebook sometimes; that’s a hard
line to hold considering what’s going on with their tax situation and the dawning
realization that we’re a product to be mined for consumer information, and that
the keeping up with your friends and relatives part is only a by-product.
Still, I keep in touch with cousins now that I haven’t seen since my childhood
summers in Oklahoma, and was even involved with a “flash mob for nostalgia,” an
event where many of us that were teenagers in Colonial Williamsburg in the 90’s
reunited. Some feel that these connections through Facebook, gchat, twitter or
other social media aren’t “as good” as old-fashioned face-to-face chatting, but
“The Atlantic’s” Alexandra Samuel and I disagree. She says, “It's the result of
looking at an emergent digital lifestyle through a generational prism, one that
assumes conversations are only meaningful when they look like the conversations
we grew up having.” Different is always scary, but let’s consider pushing
through that fear and having some conversations that look different than the
ones that we grew up having. Let’s consider having some services that look
different than the ones that we’re used to. Let’s grow and change and stretch
ourselves, and keep in mind that such stretching doesn’t have to be painful.
I’m excited about the possibility of Soulful Sundown and I hope you’ll join me
in that excitement.
Commentary Susan Karlson
“What matters most to you; what are
you most passionate about in a church home?” and “why should you care about
worship that matters most to young adults?”
Those are the questions I asked my intern congregation when I helped
raise money for a national fund for young adults and campus ministry. Several young adults shared what fed their
souls and then I told them why I am so passionate about young adult ministry-- because
of the experiences of the young adult first in my heart, my daughter.
I told how my daughter told me how she
always thought of herself as a religious person, but her best friends at
college didn’t understand her spirituality.
She taught me how lonely it can be when there is no campus ministry or
young adult program even in our Unitarian Universalist churches.
We have all felt some kind of loneliness,
a concern over not being welcomed just as we are. Soulful Sundown services provide a spiritual
home and a warm invitation to explore what matters most and how to live out our
passions with support from a spiritual community. Soulful
Sundown reaches young adults (and so many others) because they are geared to
the whole person—who has a body, mind, emotions and spirit. The theology is inclusive and open—allowing
people to connect in various ways. It has
a strong social justice component steeped in respect and dignity for every
person, for the whole web of life. Music
and the arts like poetry, drama, and dance are at its core. There is an invitation to participate and
move without feeling forced to join in. Guided
meditations lead into a deeper, more profound place of peace. They are a feast
for the eyes, the ears, the fingertips, the heart, the mind, the spirit through
multi -media technology. Fellowship
happens and free food nurtures the body and offers people a way to connect.
The first Soulful
Sundown service I went to was in Quebec.
A Quebecois band played and probably half of us or more just couldn’t
sit still any longer. We had to get up
and dance; The music, the poetry, the community felt so welcoming, so
inviting. Then a member of this church
and I visited Fourth Universalist for their Soulful Sundown with multicultural,
multiracial and multiethnic drummers and singers called Festival Ruah. Ruah means breath in Hebrew and these
drummers and singers held our attention and our breath. One of the singers asked each of us our name
and sang to us, describing how each of us was a perfect embodiment of breath
and spirit.
We need Soulful Sundown in this church
because of the reasons Wilder, Athena, and Annette mentioned. We need to soar to new experiences which will
stretch us and enable us to serve younger generations at a time other than
Sunday mornings. Perhaps, even some of
us older folks will also find that a later service with movement, participation
and soul force calls to us. We invite
you to consider how Soulful Sundown might make this church a more passionate,
justice center and spiritual home for younger generations—that feeds all our
souls and reaches out to those who may need a spiritual home.
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