| Skolevideos | Yet | Videocafe | Free TV | Online jokes |
| Free Games | Online Radio | PcPoker | Free online Tv |
Added: Feb 22, 2012
From: MACCSA1
Duration: 3:16
Ministry in a Multicultural World: Beyond Borders The pastoral agent has a role to play in providing processes for young people to discover who they are culturally and to go deeper than just to the externals of a culture. To help them see the values that we carry in our faith expressions, those that tell us about who we are and from where we have come. They are the values that will help us go to where we are going. I will give you an example. At "Joven," a center where I worked with young people primarily in a community setting during 1992, we had 15 kids in the city killed because of gang violence. At least three of them were from our immediate neighborhood. Many people were affected by these murders and by the violence that was escalating every day. We gathered the kids, and they were depressed. They were angry. Many of them had been affected personally. We decided that we would draw from our culture to do something to help these kids, our kids, deal with the grief and express it. It was late summer at that time and we decided that in November we would celebrate "Diá de Los Muertos." We said, "We are going to make an altar here at 'Joven.'" We explained what an altar is, why you do it, and why we celebrate DÃa de Los Muertos. We explained it all that to them and said "What we want you to do is help us build it. We want you to bring pictures of your friends who have died because of gang violence and we want you to write poems about them. The reaction of those kids was incredible. Maybe not initially, when their reaction was to ask," what's this about?" But once they got into it, it was a beautiful way for them to express their grief, to express their anger. That night, "DÃa de Los Muertos," when they came to the "Joven" center with their families, we had hundreds of people. We could not fit them all. They came because people respond to that deep yearning within them to express who they are culturally and spiritually. They respond to how these aspects are connected in a ritual like building an altar for "DÃa de los Muertos." I think if we, as pastoral agents, make those opportunities and those processes available, the kids respond. I have seen it time and time again. END Copyright MACC and JM 2001
Channel: Education
Tags: value (personal and cultural) culture
Rating: ( ratings) Views: 19 Comments: 0
|
|