Belonging?

  I was recently chatting to someone who is about to become a Catholic. He said that one of the attractions was that it felt like family. In fact, he said he looked around and saw a lot of people he wouldn’t mind going to the pub with.

I think when we enter somewhere new, a workplace, a gym or a church, we look for people like us. We look for community. There are signs of this everywhere. Our local yoga class, for example. After serious flexing and bending, there’s herbal tea, very healthy biscuits, and a good chat. Which part do people enjoy more I wonder? Equally, a glass of wine and time to talk, doubles attendance at a Church event.

In this area young people and adults are very alike. A lot of my work has involved helping teenagers explore their spirituality. What I discover time and time again, is that the key to young people’s involvement, is the presence of people they’re in relationship with. And this isn’t just their peers. It can be family members, or other adults. Young people are looking for somewhere to belong.

At this crucial stage in the development of their identity, to move towards community can be something of that a survival tactic. However, the Catholic understanding of community would go further. I recall a quote from Henri Nouwen, who said, ‘we come to realise that we were together before we came together and that community life is not a creation of human will but an obedient response to the reality of our being united.’ Each Christian community can be a place where individual is recognised as a spiritual child of God, of equal value and import. The idea is that we are a body. That means someone’s absence is a bit like the loss of a little finger….or a nostril….or some other vital component!

You don’t have to travel far to hear adults in faith communities bemoaning the loss of their young. But if young people do not experience the community in question as a place of unity, strong in both spirituality and relationship, why on earth would they want to stick around? Far better loiter in the local park, or in the high street, where there’s a real sense of camaraderie.

Whatever our background, we can all take stock of the communities we belong to, and check whether they’re in order. Are they healthy enough to receive guests?! And are they places our young people are made welcome?

By Emily Davis, Life4seekers Team Member

(This was broadcast on BBC Radio 2's, Pause For Thought, in March 2007.)