Generations Together

Me, my little sister, Gramma & Grampa

For a few years when I was maybe 10 and my sister was maybe 5, my grandparents and uncle moved from their home in North Dakota into a house near us in Pennsylvania. Almost every Friday night we went over to their house to visit. When we arrived “Lawrence welk” would be on the TV, but at 8:00 “the girls” would watch Dukes of Hazard with my Uncle Don, who made the best popcorn -- soaked in butter. My parents and grandparents stayed in the kitchen playing Whist. Finally, at 9:00 it was time for Dallas, and we all gathered in their cozy living room to watch together.

Truth be told, there were times when I found that adult time boring, if adult conversation or card playing exceeded my limited patience. As I became a teenager I found my grandparents, who came from another generation and a different part of the country, hard to know, and I believe they found our ways inscrutable as well- having lived through the depression and married during WW2, the lives of suburban kids in the affluent cold war1980s seemed spoiled. But I know I learned from them values of honesty, integrity, frugality, and the importance of family.

Gramma Grampa and Uncle Don moved back to North Dakota, where the rest of our extended family lived, just as I was heading off to college, and It was hard to know them over that distance. We had no extended family nearby. But I had always gone to church, and so every week I was around people from 5 different generations, I remember how cool I thought the high school youth group was when I was a little kid, and when I was in High school, I remember the toddlers I befriended at our church camp weekend. I remember the boomer youth group advisors who made that formative experience possible for us, the minister who introduced my CoA group to theology, and seemed like a bit of a rock star to me. Even though I never thought too much about it then, I had dozens of wonderful role models of how to be an elder. I knew lots of friendly adults who knew me and my family and witnessed my growing up. I would not be who I am today without those intergenerational church experiences.

Consider the generation raising young children right now, who cared for them during the pandemic when they were cut off from their village. We ask “why are they not at church?” and the answer is “because they can’t even!” Those families are juggling work and school and are drowning in all the work of parenting. They are still overwhelmed and exhausted. We aunties, uncles and aunkles and Grandparents might have to bring church to them for a while -- a form of modern missionary work. Think of the beautiful ministry of that Gramma in today’s children’s story. What a hard lesson for that child to learn- about precious things that break, about forgiveness. That Gramma taught a more important lesson than any Sunday school class.

Rev. Evin Carville Zimmer encourages us to notice such moments of ministry as they happen in our congregations. They write:

Multi-Generational fun at the church picnic

“A few weeks ago in the little congregation I attend, toward the end of a multigenerational service, two five year-olds noticed the play room at the back of the sanctuary had three wasps. They came to me with the emergency. We found a board member who listened carefully to the kids and asked them to show him what they noticed. A little later another member found a ladder, and someone else volunteered to hold it, and two adults and three children trooped around the outside of the building to solve the mystery of how the wasps were getting in. The kids also found a dead snake which they showed everyone and we talked about. These children were taken seriously, were treated as part of the community including having responsibility for the safety of that community, and had one of those mysterious encounters with life and death. Faith formation right there, no planning needed. And then they all played a wild tag game with their new friends that none of them wanted to end.”

That is what intergenerational ministry looks like now, in these strange times- both ordinary and precious.

Now sometimes we get the impression that intergenerational means kids and adults together, but even here, today, where I don’t see a lot of kids, we have Millennials, and Gen X and Boomers, and folks from the silent generation.

Recently, I’ve watched the tensions between generations on social media. It’s the updated version of “Don’t trust anyone over 30” and “Kid’s today!” but now it’s “Millennials and their avocado toast” and “okay boomer” And my generation, Generation X grumbling about being “the forgotten middle child.”

This is not new. This generational conflict has always been a part of church life, as long as I’ve been part of it. Whether it’s arguments about what music we play, how we use technology, or what time meetings should be. Some of the most challenging areas of conflict are around our anti oppressive work. For example, long time activists who marched with Martin Luther King are shocked when we separate into caucuses by race. Younger generations feel this is a chance for white people to do their work without burdening POC with having to listen to it, and BIPOC people might want a safe space to say their truth to folks who are most likely to understand. To older activists, this is just segregation, and didn’t we work hard to end that? How sad it is when people who all long for an end to oppression let arguments about language and strategy divide them.

I think about the Gen Z teens and young adults I know. They are so earnest, and have a precocious calling to work for justice. Think of those teens leading the protests after the Parkland shootings. Thing of Greta, and Malala. Starting your adult life during a pandemic is just one reason that Gen Z are realists. We need their energy, along with the optimistic and collaborative Millennial generation, and their calls for change.

I know for myself, a middle aged Generation X, that it’s so easy to get “in the weeds” with the way the world works. Greta says “we need to stop producing fossil fuels now!” and I can’t help but think of all the slow paced bureaucracies I have worked with over the years, and wonder “how is that possible?” But young adults have this clear-eyed vision that we older adults need. As they articulate a vision of the future they want to live in, we middle aged folks can do what we do best, coordinate the carpools to the rallies, think strategically, write checks.

From where I sit in midlife, sandwiched between the older and younger generations, I can see there is a real pain point in the argument between emerging adults and older adults. On the one hand, real change needs to happen in our world, we all agree about this. But when younger adults say “let’s just throw all this out and start over” I’m now old enough to feel that as a blow- “You mean these things I just spent the last 25 years building? The ones I worked on day after day because I thought they would make a better world?”

I myself had many formative moments in my UU Sunday school, and then after seminary I spent 9 years as a religious educator, running programs for our chidrne and youth. But I need to hold that loosely to make room for the new ministry that is emerging to meet the needs of families with children right now in this new moment. It’s sad but okay if we can’t run Sunday school classes right now, but that ministry of passing on wisdom to our children must continue- though the forms may change the ministry is still crucial.

Anthropologist Michael Meade explains that elders have a powerful role to play in times of upheaval:

“The traditional role of elders included remembering what was most important about life and how to hold ends and beginnings together when times become hard. Elders were the guardians of the mysteries of and keepers of the stories who helped people make sense of life’s inevitable struggles. Having survived the troubles of their own lives and having grown deeper and wiser they know both how to survive and how to find genuine vision where others could on see disaster. Being “old enough to know better’ they would know that life renews itself in surprising ways and that the greatest dilemmas can serve to awaken the deepest resources of the human soul.”[Why the World Doesn’t End p. 25]

Like the gramma in The Memory Cupboard who had lived through the breaking of precious treasures, and had learned to make meaning from those ruptures. She helped her granddaughter make sense of what had happened, and restore her to the web of right relationship.

This wisdom is the real heirloom. I remember talking to my Dad, who was part of the silent generation that grew up during the depression, and asking “what was it like to live through the 1960s?” which I assumed must have been amazing. He said “we thought it was the end of the world.” In these days, which often feel like the end of the world, I think about what he said, and remember that we got through that, that we got through even world war 2, and the great depression. Perhaps this is no the first time we thought the world was ending. Perhaps we can get through this.

As Antoine de Saint-Exupery Writes: 

“In a house which becomes a home,
one hands down and another takes up
the heritage of mind and heart,”

This sounds easy, but anyone who’s sat around the holiday table with relatives from other generations knows it’s a dance that must be negotiated. If the elders insist that things must always continue as they have been, without allowing younger generations the support and freedom they need to create the world to come, likewise if the younger generations do not respect the hard learned wisdom of their elders, or make time to listen, valuable knowledge and perspective will be lost.

I received an email this week form the UUA transitions office, which helps ministers and congregations find each other. They wrote:

“the Next Normal is not the pre-pandemic normal… Congregations trapped in the past are likely to shrink. ... This will be a time to redefine why people need Unitarian Universalism, where generational differences are going to have to learn to live together, and where new people coming into our congregations will be looking for communities of like-minded people, multi-theological exploration, and the desire to make a difference in the world (and likely not in the ways it’s always been done).”

And you know what? I think both our Athens and Cortland congregations are good at this. I have always been impressed by the way you are open to new ideas, new ways of doing things, new members, different generations. You give new leaders space to try things and follow their own wisdom. I bet that’s part of why we are still here, why this tradition continues to be handed on from generation to generation. And I know that sometimes when we look out at our congregation and see more olders and fewer youngers, it makes us nervous, and sometimes sad, But I believe in what we are doing, and I think if we are committed to making a difference in the world, in each other’s lives -- if we are committed to remembering and sharing that love that holds us all, and supporting growth wherever it is happening today and in the future we still have a vital role to play in guiding our rapidly changing world towards love and justice.

In Spiritual Direction we practice from a foundational belief that each of us has the capacity to discern what is true, what is holy, where the spirit is leading. We must have that faith in one another, across generations, and support each other in listening to and developing our own inner wisdom. When Nancy Pelosi announced this week that she would not seek re-election as party leader in the house, she said:

"With great confidence in our caucus, I will not seek reelection to Democratic leadership in the next Congress. For me the hour has come for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus that I so deeply respect,…I'm grateful that so many are ready and willing to shoulder this awesome responsibility."

Reporters added that she would continue to serve in the House, and support the work of the new generation of leaders. I have such respect for that- to stay and take her place as the supportive wise elder, while expressing confidence for and amplifying the voices of those stepping into the challenge of leadership.

I think about my UUMA chapter, which has always provided roll models for ministry, both older and younger than myself. Retired ministers continuing to attend and be part of community long after they are done serving in churches. Dick Gilbert, Frances Manly. I remember Martha Munson, one time when I was trying to lead an unruly group of colleagues in a business meeting, calling out above the fray “ignore them Darcey, you’re doing great”

So here’s what we need to hold this multigenerational community together, (which often falls to the older generations to do). We need our elders to keep growing in wisdom, to keep making meaning from their own lives, and keep hope for the future so we can support younger generations developing their own wisdom, can give them perspective when they flounder. We don’t have the abundant energy of youth, but we have foresight and skill and we can choose to do the things that most need doing.

We need the insights and points of view of the young as well; each generation grows up in a totally different world. Teens and young adults are just starting on their journey and with the energy of youth have their own mountains to climb. We need them to be full of new ideas and energy to solve new problems and to bring a fresh view to the old entrenched problems we olders have not been able to solve. I love the story Evin told- it holds all of this. The kids full of curiosity, out scrambling and exploring and finding the wasps and the snake, their concern for the safety of their community. The older adults who had the skill and experience to know what to do, and the wisdom to be present with death, and the generosity of spirit to listen to the kids and their concerns. And then a fun game among intergenerational friends.

Family Chapel 2007 at UUCPA

Our generational diversity is important to who we are, and in this time when generations sling barbs from their entrenched positions in social media, our congregation can be a place of healing -- a place where we listen deeply to one another.

And so for this holiday season, I invite each of you to participate in this spiritual practice of intergenerational community. Whenever generations are gathered to celebrate, we might intentionally listen to the perspectives of the other generations that are present. Start with common ground, as we know is helpful to do when there are conflicts. Listen to what others are curious about, listen to their fears, listen to what gives them hope. We need the perspective and experience of every generation to build the world we dream, and to make our own lives meaningful and whole.