YOU NEED THREE

Some years ago I read the wonderful little book, What Kids need to Succeed [Peter Bensen et. al. 1995, Free Spirit Publishing Inc ISBN 0-915793-78-4]. It is the result of research done by the Search Institute in Minneapolis. It is built on a list of 30 assets that children need to succeed in life–that's not just succeed financially, but live healthy, productive, positive lives. With each asset the authors give practical advice on how to help a child acquire these assets. Sixteen of the assets are external, things in children's environment that support them. The other 14 assets are the values and attitudes children need, something I have discussed in connection with virtue in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Books. One of the external assets is fixed in my mind: Asset #4, other adults. "Kids have other adults beside their parents they can turn to for advice and support. Ideally, three or more adults play this role in their lives."

A month ago I heard a lecture by Dr. Robert Brooks, a psychiatrist who specializes in family therapy and co-author with Dr. Sam Goldstein of Raising Resilient Children. During the lecture he posed a question: "List three people in your current life who would name you as their charismatic adult. What do you say and do that would lead them to list you as a charismatic adult?" "Charismatic adult" is a term Brooks takes from Julius Segal who wrote: "a charismatic adult—a person with whom they can identify and from whom they gather strength."

So I thought: who were the persons in my youth with whom I can identify and from whom I drew strength? The first person who came to mind was my Uncle Herb, my Father's brother (pictured). If the world were filled with people like my uncle, we'd leave in a near paradise. He embraced the qualities of self-reliance, hard work, living up to your responsibilities, taking care of you family, supporting your church, and never cheating or taking advantage of someone or knowingly hurting another person. He exemplified the solid virtues every man should have.

There was another lesson, the great lesson, I learned from my uncle, but I really wish he hadn't been the teacher. The great lesson: life isn't fair. You can be a diligent employee giving 110%, but still be out of a job when it become convenient for the company to move away. You can be a faithful church member, only to have a church leader treat you abysmally simply because that leader cannot work with difference in opinion. You can lead a good life only to have disease rob you of your physical and mental abilities.

Charismatic adult number two, Russell A., a member of my home church, advisor to the Luther League, and a very odd duck. Uncle Russy, as we often called him, would drift in and out of church, suddenly becoming very active in things and then disappearing again. He'd always been like that. Professionally, he work for the Juvenile division of the state. On the side he taught celestial navigation and parliamentary procedure. It must have been from him that my love of Roberts Rules of Order arose. Rus said exactly what he thought about anything. There was never any pretense about him. Maybe that example is what allows me to be the very eccentric person I am. I think what I appreciated about him was that he talked to youth the same way he talked to adults. It wasn't that he was trying to be your "buddy." He didn't try to be "with it." That would have been a phoniness incompatible with him. But he was condescending in dealing with us just because we were a whole lot younger than he was.

Charismatic adult number three, Kurt D., one of my piano teachers. Mr. D. taught for a music studio teaching piano and accordion, mostly accordion, that shows you how lo g ago that was. I went through a number of teachers before him. They often came, put in their 30 minutes of teaching, and left. Mr. D. recognized there was more to me than just another student. After a while he arranged that my lessons was always the last on his schedule so it could easily run an hour or hour and a half. After a time he would also ask my mother for a glass of beer to tide him over during these extended sessions. (He was a German after all.) Mr. D was able to teach me (I don't know how) that there was a lot more to playing than getting the right notes at the right time at the right dynamic.

After we had answered these and a few other questions to ourselves, Dr. Brooks asked: "List three young people in your life for whom YOU are a charismatic adult." You could hear a sharp inhaling of breath, some ohs, and then silence. This was scary. If each of us had needed three adults to support us and give us strength in our growing up, who were the three youth to whom we have given what we received. Oh, my goodness. What an obligation! Sometime later this Bible verse came to my mind: 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me" (Mat 25:45 NRSV).

I wrote this much months ago and then stopped. I was then and am now perplexed over what to do. I don't think I've been one of these charismatic adults Dr. Brooks wrote about. I'm not sure I can be. So I do what I can with my abilities. Right now my church is working on a program to send backpacks of food home with kids so they have something to eat on weekends when the free school lunch programs aren't available. Some of these kids in our own community go without anything from Friday to Monday. What has really troubled me is that I have been able to enlist very few churches to work with us. But we have to do what we can, even if it's a little bit.

None of this leaves me very happy, but that is a life-lesson to be learned. The resilient person knows they can't be happy all the time, but the keep on keeping on anyway.

Keep on your pilgrimage. May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne






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