Riverbend, Next Chapter by Avalan Wilson

Homefront pioneer/Animator reflections after first official junior youth group meeting on June 6, 2018

(Background: a few junior youth have met for three Wednesdays up until today, collaborating to grow the group through conversations at school and home visits among a network of friends who happen to also live in a geographic pocket of the focus neighborhood—praise!)

We had a BLESSED and beautiful group meeting—Bahá’u’lláh was helping us, for sure!

Able to gather as six junior youth and myself for a first official meeting—and a co-animator friend (neighborhood youth in the Institute helping with this new group) came home from the park midway through (his home is where we meet because he and his junior youth sister are involved in the group and it allows them both to participate while still being at home with the younger siblings), and even though he missed preparing and the first half of the meeting today, it seems like we are all good. He is enjoying the summer break and an increase of soccer, which is understandable as it’s literally the first week outside of school and he was just away for an intensive all weekend with little to no autonomy for four days straight. So as group let out I spoke with as much kindness as I could offer to convey to him that he is invited to help with the group as much as he’d like to—and that I support him in choosing what he does. And I really think there is love and friendship present and holding things together, and proper respect…

Such a spiritual and happy and fairly focused and united time together, first sharing prayers and encouraging reverence and saying something like “we pray because we are all spiritual beings with a body and soul”—sharing prayers read from books and singing together in call and response the prayer, “O Lord! I am weak, strengthen me with Thy power and potency… ” (first exploring for a moment the meaning—we are weak but God who made us all is strong, so we ask for His strength)… Then briefly sharing our names in a circle…

And then really jumping into meaningful consultation rooted in the—very helpful—content of Book 5 Unit 3 Section 30, which shares the fruits of the world’s collective experience in starting junior youth groups and what concepts have proven useful to explore in the first four or so meetings of a junior youth group! I really looked at Book 5 Unit 3 Section 30 right before the meeting—and am so glad I did! Even took some notes in a small notebook to keep my train of thought going in the group and make sure the questions were posed and flow of concepts introduced, of course letting the junior youth consult freely together as we went—which is exactly what they did!! Praise God!!

So after prayers and names, tried to share with brevity (again but this time with the whole group together) that this is a “junior youth group” which is part of the junior youth spiritual empowerment program, a program carried out all over the world—in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and India, in England, in Canada, and South America… “in Africa!” they exclaimed!

(I think they didn’t hear me say the Democratic Republic of the Congo first in the list—or maybe they were like, “this categorization is whacky. Are we talkin’ countries or continents?” Ha! Both!)

Then I shared that I’m here to be a friend and help them meet—that I’ve done some training to serve in this way with people their age, to serve as an “animator”—to animate or kind of “bring them to life” at this very special time when so much in them is changing and their capacities are developing quickly to shape their community and start to live a life of service and develop good habits that will last their whole life!—Yah. That I’ll be there—but of course it is not my group. It is their group. They will create the environment in which they will support each other and make the community better and the world better.

Then I addressed the whole group asking the questions suggested in Book 5 Unit 3 Section 30, straight up! “What is the purpose of a junior youth group?” And they jumped right into offering responses! “To work together… ” (Wish we wrote them all down but the ideas were flowing and I didn’t have the paper out yet! Ha!)

Then I asked, mindful of allowing everyone to speak, “Why is it important to have such groups in the community?” (So, moving from our own group to the influence this group and many more groups will have in the community at large.) First we had to explore what “influence” means…

Like an older sister influences her younger siblings when she goes to school… “Ah, yes… “

To help explore this I asked a follow-up question, “what is the difference in a community that has junior youth groups and one that does not have junior youth groups?” After a bit of silence, Cedrique, our only young man in the group, raises his hand respectfully. In the community without junior youth groups, the junior youth would “forget God.” Yá Bahá’u’l-Abhá!

And other sincere responses were offered… “They wouldn’t learn new things… and wouldn’t make new friends… ” And with groups, “they could support each other… help the children… ” It was such a solid start! Praise God!

Then we explored what it means to have goals as a group—not just as individuals but as a group—and came up with a list of goals and activities we could pursue together, in light of the concept of excellence, which can be both spiritual and intellectual.

Before we got into what spiritual and intellectual excellence means we had to explore what excellence itself means, as they were needing some clarification. To assist I asked them to think of how an excellent student is? And what is an excellent mother like? “They help others… ” “They love the kids… ” “Maybe make sacrifices to make sure the kids are cared for and educated?” I asked. “Yah!” they responded. This was helpful and clarifying and we landed on excellence being basically doing your best.

Then unpacked briefly what spiritual excellence means, straight from Book 5 Unit 3 Section 30, that to strive for this “we need to develop qualities that belong to a higher nature such as love, generosity, honesty and humility.” And that to strive for intellectual excellence means “we need to acquire knowledge and practical skills that will help us improve our lives and the lives of others.” Kinda said that. And encouraged them to make their list of goals and activities by thinking of striving for excellence in these ways. Then they started making an awesome list!

Each adding to the list, passing the page around, not rigidly and not forced… pretty organic and supportive of each other contributing! I did have to step in and say that we of course wouldn’t tease or make fun of anyone in their writing ability… That this would have to be a space where we would support and encourage each other. And they really pretty quickly nipped any criticism in the bud and proceeded without comments about anyone’s writing ability! (I pretty much just kept sending out the vibe of—yes—to all of them and made sure each had a marker in hand and a chance to contribute!) One of the young friends so acutely, along the lines of this thinking about excellence, offered the insight that we can make mistakes and learn from them—and we can help each other in that way. I was so delighted and quickly affirmed the idea by saying “Yes!” and adding that we can all learn from any experience—as long as we choose to!—and by looking at this young friend and offering thanks for sharing the helpful insight.

Then we swiftly moved into memorizing the Creative Word to enhance our understanding of excellence! I shared that we could memorize some sacred words from the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh, the teachings of the Bahá’í Faith—which tell us we are one human family and created to love God and love each other—and asked how they would like to memorize, as I wrote the words kinda big on a piece of large paper so everyone could see, “Let each morn be better than its eve and each tomorrow richer than its yesterday.”

They quickly started reading aloud together… One saying, “I can do it already!” and swiftly giving it a go! Happy about this, I sort of sat quietly while she recited… then I remembered the importance of these young friends learning to work together more and more and to form a sense of moving together and accompanying each other, so I encouraged them to consult and decide a way they could work together to memorize… and began offering a few ideas to them… of singing, and going around in a circle. Soon they settled on going around in a circle each saying one word at a time and build the sentences together! It was really beautiful! A joyful moment, for sure. By the end of a few rounds of doing this seamlessly they each, like little popping popcorn, excitedly requested to try it and succeeded so gloriously! Praise!!!

We then came around to the concept of service—that anything we do in the spirit of helping others is service. Just like Book 5 suggests, I shared and emphasized that we are all human beings and depend on each other and then asked one of them, “what would it be like if no one ever helped you in life?” After some laughing and silliness, all agreed it would be really hard to live life that way. We then explored how it’s important for everyone to strive to improve the conditions of the community they live in for themselves and for others. That we would develop our friendship in serving together and collaborating together to improve the conditions of our community—unpacking very quickly what it means to be true friends, specifically that it would take love and support and unity that builds in strength each time we meet.

At that point we took a moment and looked at how we can have unity within our own race, our own country, continent… But that we can also have unity as the whole world because we are all human beings and created by God and are here to develop our souls! No matter our skin color, or background, or how we grew up… we have all been given a soul and a body and that unites us all. And that this is the idea of unity that this program is based on. Then we made a quick list of service project ideas for the next few weeks at least…

“We can visit the nursing home!” exclaimed one. This lead to a short conversation on how in this country a lot of older people are put together to live, rather than staying at home with family—and how great a service it is to visit with them and bring happiness to them. To hear their story and learn from them.

After some silence, I offered they could visit Sweet Tooth Farm (a humble urban farming initiative just started by a couple in our neighborhood, mere blocks from where we all live and meet) and help there and also plant flowers at “9th” (my roommate and I’s home), with the help of dear friends standing ready to assist (collaborators in the expanding neighborhood nucleus who will be staying home through summer while myself and a few youth travel to learn more about the development of vibrant community life and the junior youth spiritual empowerment program in some further advanced clusters in the country)—yes, that dear friends are eager to assist them in meeting and carrying out these activities for the next three weeks! All agreed these are good ideas… And after the heavy rain had fallen outside we hopped up to head home together running everyone to their houses and jumping into the car for the last drives home!

This was pure and complete joy, this moment.

Reflected briefly on the drive. The question, “how do you think the first real meeting went?” was met with a resounding “good!” And finally, the last two… while still riding home… gently began repeating the quotation… unprompted and by heart… “Let each morn be better than its eve and each morrow richer than its yesterday.”

***

Friends, this is the God-given capacity of these precious young friends! And the tremendous power of the content and assistance of the institute materials and process (the power of the Word of God)! And of course evidence of God’s confirming grace and unfailing aid and assistance when one shows up to serve Him!

***

Lastly, to share a bit more context and shed light on reparations/ capacity building up until this meeting:

Two participants are junior youth sisters of the two neighborhood youth (brothers) who have sustained participation in the institute (weekly and intensively) since “Summer of Service” outreach in 2017 in the neighborhood. Also, this family has been coming (including a younger sibling) to a weekly devotional for about a year! And are very close friends now with the friends that make up the currently expanding nucleus in the neighborhood. And, they were and are friends with Bahá’ís in Congo and Tanzania! Know the Faith pretty well from that time! Praise! I think these two junior youth sisters may have been in Bahá’í children’s classes in the camp in Tanzania. At least for a minute! This is not the case for all the junior youth of the world, so I think what I’m really trying to convey is the blessing of it and confirmation that we, a nascent expanding nucleus, would choose this neighborhood to live in and arise to meet neighbors in and swiftly meet these people—and to say that wow, the refugee population (in this case from Africa) is indeed proving receptive and bringing a certain strength!

We did also have weeks of home visits together as a group—having to clarify what we are doing so we could share with friends and their parents (often in Kiswahili and Kibembe and Kirundi) what it is we are and what we are doing! I think meeting and praying as a small core group weeks ago and setting this goal together of growing the group and putting feet to that for a few weeks—learning through action and reflection on action, striving to articulate the aims of the program and refine that with each visit—helped them know what they were in for by last night!