“Two men looked through
prison bars, one saw mud, the other stars” Each of us can see the
same things quite differently. We all look at the world through our
own “inner window”. That window can help us focus clearly or it
can distort what we see.
Don Bosco looked at his work with
young people perhaps through a window with four different “window
panes”. He wanted his youth work to involve a school, a church, a
playground and a home, all focussed on young people. He described
his first Oratory at Valdocco in Turin as precisely those four
elements. The vital part of this four-fold pattern was balance. No
young person was pushed to pursue one at the expense of the other
and Don Bosco probably used these four areas to check the
development of the young people in his care. If he saw a young
person constantly in church and never in the playground he became
concerned. If a young person was regularly alone and did not feel at
home with the rest of the young people he wanted to find out why. If
a young person was always studying and not spending time with his
friends he would talk to his teachers and try to balance things up.
Don Bosco was using this fourfold
approach to young people as a way of seeing into their world. Like
St Francis de Sales, he knew that young people needed to run and
make noise and burn off energy, but he also knew that they had a
deep capacity for spirituality which many adults overlook. He knew
that young people needed to learn but also recognised that they did
this best in a safe and homely atmosphere. In Don Bosco’s vision
then, a child needed a school, a church, a playground and a home.
Today the truth of Don Bosco’s
insight is as relevant as ever. But truth is a strange thing: Why is
it true that the toast lands on the floor buttered side down most of
the time? The truth of Don Bosco’s insight in his four fold
oratory model might seem strange to us today, many of us are not
school teachers and those of us who work with young people know how
difficult it can be to get them into church. What does Don Bosco’s
fourfold insight mean today, how can this pattern help us to make
sense of our work for young people?
I want to suggest we change the words
slightly, changing them from concrete places like church, school,
playground and home to four active words that can help us see more
clearly into the increasing variety of situations in which we meet
young people today. Here is my own “translation” of Don
Bosco’s four words:
- Home=Belonging
- School=Learning
- Church=Meaning
- Playground=Celebrating
Using these four words as parents,
youth workers, friends and teachers we can transfer Don Bosco’s
insight into our own Salesian work with young people.
Home means Belonging
Don Bosco was aware that young
people needed a sense of being at home: safe, welcome and accepted.
When young people feel safe and comfortable it is easier to
establish trust and support them in their growth. Often that will
mean that they will feel free to express both happiness and sadness,
anger and contentedness. The absence of spontaneity and openness for
Don Bosco was a sign that this part of his pattern was not working.
When he saw a boy who was alone, sad or unusually silent he would do
one of two things; either he would take him aside and ask him what
was wrong, reassure him and get him involved with the larger group,
or he would ask some other trusted young people to do the same. The
quality of those relationships and the changing patterns of
connection were vital elements in creating a safe and relaxed place
for young people to be themselves.
We need to look into the quality of
belonging when we work in classrooms, with families or in youth
groups, it will always help us to see things as Don Bosco saw them.
If we notice that a young person is no longer accepted by a group he
was always with, we need to find out why. If we notice changes in
noise levels, we might see beneath the surface and become aware of
issues that are both positive and negative. The development of small
cliques will either help or hinder the sense of belonging felt by
the larger group. All these things help us to focus on young people
in their world. Looking at the sense of belonging leads adults to
build a sense of ownership among young people for what they do and
how it effects others. Salesian belonging means giving
responsibility and holding young people to account, it means
building friendships that will last into life. Belonging -longing to
be all that a young person can be; with a little help from their
friends. For Don Bosco the skill of the adult is to create the
environment that guarantees this safety and belonging among the
young people in their care.
School and Learning
Don Bosco recognised that formal
education was one way out of the poverty trap for the young people
he worked with. But he recognised that education was a much wider
reality than the classroom, it was a “matter of the heart”. In
Don Bosco’s vision “school” was more than formal education.
The main place where learning happens is within the group of young
people and not the physical classroom. If the network of
relationships is right young people learn the deeper lessons of
life: who they are, what their gifts are, what limitations they
have. They learn their own style of being themselves, test their
dreams, teach each other skills for coping and growing to maturity.
The aim of education for Don Bosco was more than academic results.
For him it should fulfil the gospel promise “I have come that they
may have life, and have it to the full”. For Don Bosco everyone is
potentially a teacher. In a school it may be the dinner-ladies or
the caretaker that help a young person to learn a vital lesson in
life. In a parish setting the old person sitting quietly at the back
who talks and smiles to young people may be a profound teacher of
wisdom. Most of all in Don Bosco’s mind, so often it was young
people themselves who were the best teachers speaking with an
honesty and immediacy that few adult friends could match.
So Don Bosco found ways of making
every situation a learning experience, games, domestic work, fights
in the playground, friendly encouragement and even major problems.
In his talks to young people he would often ask them what could be
done about problems. In sharing their conclusions, they learnt
together and Don Bosco learnt with them. The role of the teacher is
dynamic, one moment teaching, one moment listening, always learning.
We need a deep respect for this process of learning because it links
us moment by moment to the Spirit of God moving through the group
bringing maturity, deepening wisdom.
Playground and Celebration
Young people need to earth their
energy in fun, games and physical exercise. Some educators see this
as wasted time, Don Bosco never did. Instead he saw it as vital in
the process of celebrating life. The most important thing about play
and hobbies is that they are not duties, not seen as a burden. We do
them for the joy of doing them and they allow us to enjoy the
present moment. Moments of fun and recreation allow responsibility
to stop and joy and excitement to bubble up. As adults we may take
ourselves too seriously and when we do so we are in danger of losing
the energy we need to be ourselves. We may even feel threatened by
young people’s exuberance. In a recent article in The Observer
Suzie Hayman says:
“We constantly misinterpret their (young
people’s) behaviour, seeing them as badly behaved when in fact
they are joyful and excited. We don’t say that we adults feel
threatened, we say they (young people) threaten us” (Observer
August 1st 1999)
Don Bosco encouraged his workers to
be “young with the young”. He wanted young people to grow to
maturity and yet still have access to that youthful inner energy
that could let them play and simply be. He saw play as an act of
faith that in the end each person only carried a small part of
responsibility for the world and did not carry it all on their
shoulders or alone. Don Bosco was looking for balance, between work
and play. He did not like to see young people avoiding recreation or
becoming too intense or serious about work or religion. He wanted
them to live the fourfold balance.
Church and Meaning
The chapel or church was always
close to the playground in Salesian Oratories. The idea of linking
faith and fun was part of the geography. Don Bosco wanted the sense
of God’s presence to be available in every situation and the door
of the church was rarely locked until very late in the day. He
encouraged short visits into the silence of the chapel even during
games or on the way to workshops or classes, it was an open house.
Don Bosco wanted the young people to be aware that his whole
approach to young people revolved around the mystery of God
represented in the tabernacle at the centre of the oratory chapel.
In today’s settings we have lost
the on-site church to give that mystery a clear focus for the young
people. Symbols can help. But awareness, a way of seeing, is the key
to the way Don Bosco was looking at the young people in his care,
looking through the fourth window into his oratory vision. Just as a
young person in the oratory could slip out of the playground into
the darkened mystery of the church, so in every youth group and
individual young person there are moments when they slip from fun
into faith questions. It could be that they are angry about an
injustice and ask why? Or it could be issues around dreams for the
future or disappointments that lead to deeper questions about life
and it’s meaning. We need to give space for such moments, to
recognise them. At points like these, when words fail and only
questions remain young people need a “good listening to” and not
answers. If we are lucky as adults they will then invite us into
their questions, invite us to share some of our own faith and
struggle.
In that moment we have entered a
church built out of the relationships we have formed with the young
people, a cathedral of kindness and respect where mystery is touched
and our fragile gospel is shared with sensitivity. These graced
moments do not come ready packaged or regularly. Like a number 19
bus they rarely turn up for long periods then three or four come
along together. We are not in control of this invasion of mystery
into the lives of young people, but we must not miss them. We simply
need to be aware, like the disciples after the resurrection, that
“It is The Lord” standing on the shore of our awareness and
feeding all of us with the bread of his presence among young people.
It is this network of friendship that forms the church that holds
God’s presence, Don Bosco’s fourth window on the world of young
people.
Fr David O’Malley SDB |