Week of 7/22-27/2024: Sadness among our Youth & Renewed Hope in the Face of Momentous Current Events

July 22, 2024: The Unhappiness of Young Adults World Over: A Scientific Study
A recent article shares with us disturbing news about the state of young people around the globe.* For many generations, the pattern was for young people to be among the happiest of human beings and for there to be a dip in that happiness level once they became middle-aged. Sadly, according to this study, that pattern has flipped. Our youth are now profoundly unhappy and happiness tends to increase with age. These results are evident across cultures around the globe. Especially disturbing is this: In the United States, one in nine young women report “every day of their lives as being a bad mental health day.” The scientists do not know the cause but there is conjecture that cell phones may play a part.

July 23, 2024: Youth Despair and Biden’s Decision to Let Go
Yesterday we received the news that President Biden decided to step down from the presidential race. We praise him for the many accomplishments of his administration, including: forward strides to combat climate change, supporting infrastructure, increasing manufacturing jobs, taking on big pharma, helping relieve students from the burden of loan debt, and so much more. As he passes the baton to Vice President Kamala Harris, a much younger woman, the unspoken message is that not all adults cling to power until their last breath. Some have learned to trust potential leaders emerging from the younger generations. 

July 24, 2024: About Sadness Among the Young & Uplift Around Kamala Harris
In the DM two days ago, a shocking study was shared about sadness among young people. Meanwhile, President Biden officially endorsed Kamala Harris as his replacement in the run for president of our nation. The political mood seems to have metamorphized from anxiety, fear, grief and anger, to joy and even “exuberance,” as one pundit put it. Since then, more than 28,000 people have signed up to work on the campaign and around $280 million in donations and pledges have come in, of which 888,000 were from small-dollar donors. Is some hope returning for our species, for the planet we love, and for our democracy that’s so in need of fixing?

July 25, 2024: Elder and Youth Interacting on Holiness and More
As we continue to reflect on a recent study noting profound levels of unhappiness in today’s youth, we look back on the story of an Matthew and a young man who took to heart the meaning of “Original Blessing.” [FROM THE ARCHIVE: 5/23/20] Years ago, Matthew was speaking at a Sierra Club conference. During a break, a 27-year-old man came up to Matthew to tell him how much he appreciated his book Original Blessing. A year later, Matthew had an opportunity to talk further with Jaih Hunter-Hill about what moved him in Original Blessing. It was the concept of “holiness as Cosmic Hospitality.” Jaih has an engineering degree from Stanford, but he also loves to cook. He really resonated with the idea that his passion could be a spiritual practice. Matthew, unhappy with the dominant definition of holiness as perfection, proposes that holiness be redefined as “hospitality–cosmic hospitality.” Creation has been laid out for us as a banquet. God is a host; we are guests. Through the Incarnation, God becomes a guest and we become hosts.

July 26, 2024: Creating Ceremony for Ritual among Homeless Youth
Continuing to reflect on how we can support our young people, we explore creating ritual together, which can be deeply healing on multiple levels. [FROM THE ARCHIVE: 11/7/20] Authentic ceremonies recharge us, heal us, energize us, and amaze us. Adam Bucko, co-author with Matthew of Occupy Spirituality, and his co-worker Taz Tagor created a retreat and ritual for young adults who live on the streets of New York City. The goal, said Adam, was to teach youth how to cultivate compassion for their perpetrators and to step out of victimhood and into a more empowering mind. Two days were spent reflecting, journaling and discussing how and why we need to forgive each other. Then all gathered at the lake and each person was invited to step into the water, release objects representing people they were ready to forgive, and to describe how it felt to let go of their pain and anger. Adam was in awe of what he witnessed. Their capacity for forgiveness was astounding—and they seemed to grasp the ways in which their suffering was also a blessing in their lives.

July 27, 2024: Another Striking Observation from Howard Thurman about Youth & Spiritual Leadership
Matthew and Adam Bucko were so moved by the following from Howard Thurman that they included it in the introduction of their book Occupy Spirituality. [FROM THE ARCHIVE: 9/22/2019] Dr. Howard Thurman was an African American mystic and prophet who was in many ways the spiritual genius behind the civil rights movement. Present at the march on Washington DC that included Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, he offers this very original reflection. As thrilling as the whole day was, he said: What impressed me most was a small group of young people representing student nonviolent groups, fresh from the jails and violences of the South, who time and time again caught the spiritual overtones of the speakers and led the critical applause which moved like a tidal wave over the vast audience.

* Dr. Katie Spalding, Young People are Now So Unhappy That They’ve Changed a Fundamental Pattern Of Life, IFLScience.com, July 16, 2024.

Banner image: “Vice President Kamala Harris with 2019 interns.” Wikimedia Commons

Recommended Reading

Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation

Authors Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox encourage us to use our talents in service of compassion and justice and to move beyond our broken systems–economic, political, educational, and religious–discovering a spirituality that not only helps us to get along, but also encourages us to reevaluate our traditions, transforming them and in the process building a more sacred and just world. Incorporating the words of young activist leaders culled from interviews and surveys, the book provides a framework that is deliberately interfaith and speaks to our profound yearning for a life with spiritual purpose and for a better world.
“Occupy Spirituality is a powerful, inspiring, and vital call to embodied awareness and enlightened actions.”
~~ Julia Butterfly Hill, environmental activist and author of The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story

The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance

In what may be considered the most comprehensive outline of the Christian paradigm shift of our Age, Matthew Fox eloquently foreshadows the manner in which the spirit of Christ resurrects in terms of the return to an earth-based mysticism, the expression of creativity, mystical sexuality, the respect due the young, the rebirth of effective forms of worship—all of these mirroring the ongoing blessings of Mother Earth and the recovery of Eros, the feminine aspect of the Divine.
“The eighth wonder of the world…convincing proof that our Western religious tradition does indeed have the depth of imagination to reinvent its faith.” — Brian Swimme, author of The Universe Story and Journey of the Universe.
 “This book is a classic.” Thomas Berry, author of The Great Work and The Dream of the Earth.