Pass it on

This week, and several times a year usually, we have a group of high school or college students doing a "retreat" with us at the Gainesville Catholic Worker. The retreats are equal parts spirituality, service and education. But the goal is the same: to share something we’ve learned that we think is really important and essential to being human at this time and in this place.

 The spiritual, service-oriented and educational aspects of the retreat are all woven together to reinforce values which we believe in but which are not so readily affirmed or even taught in our larger culture. We try to model some degree of simplicity, trying to get these groups of young people to think about how little they really need in order to live well, as opposed to our culture’s call for excessive consumption. We talk about community and the benefits of living a life for others, with others and among others, intentionally—as opposed to our culture’s stark insistence on the preeminence of the individual, the overarching importance of “me” and “mine.” We also talk about and experience what it means to practice compassion and solidarity, to be accountable to others, to work with one’s own hands, and so forth.

Our own desire to live differently and to learn to live in the rhythms and cycles of a particular place are really only part of the challenge. A sense of self-reliance, an ethic of limitation and responsible use of resources, respect and compassion for others—all these things must also be passed on to the generation which follows us. Many of them are already way ahead of us compared to where we were at that age. But the lies and misrepresentations about what makes a “good life” are still being spun, with horrifying speed and incredible effectiveness, by our opponents on Madison Ave and Wall Street, in Hollywood and the halls of government. For those of us who no longer sway under the spells of Svengali or Rasputin, we have a responsibility to live in such a way that invites questions, that cries out “no more business as usual,” that does not make sense by the conventional measures of our society.

But more than this, we have a responsibility to our children and our grandchildren. When they come seeking, we need to make the time—and have the patience and willingness—to pass it on. 

-John

Comments

[Kimberly]

I'm a new reader here. Just wanted to comment to let you know how much I am enjoying reading the posts. Keep up the good and inspiring work!