Bob Griffith

I've been thinking for a while about the new, rising generations. I've been reading about the affect technology is having on their emotional, physical, and spiritual development (going back to my college student development days). And, then, considering it all, how does the Church engage new, rising generations (going back to my Imago Dei Initiative days - which I never really left).

I've been asking and mulling over these questions:

- What does it mean for a tradition of people who are referred to as the "people of the book" when a generation is socialized to not want to read? Who cannot pay attention long enough to effectively process what is read? (This is also what I hear from teachers and professors.)

- What does it mean for this tradition when brain development among this generation generally excludes paying attention for longer periods of time?

- What does it mean for a generation in the aggregate who knows little or nothing about Christianity - its history and thought - or has been socialized by a media that emphasizes the worst of it all?

- What does it mean for a generation that no longer has in their "mental bones" how to research and discern fact from fiction, reality from virtual experience, truth from a lie?

- What does it mean for a generation that has such an aversion to silence and even a fear of it?

This is about where I live, Sunnyside Queens, an area of United States that over the last 10-years has been judged repeatedly as having the most cultures, languages, religions, and peoples in one geographical area of any other place on earth. This is about what, in my opinion, has truly made this country exceptional, great, and a place that compels people from all over the world to want to come here, to make a better life for themselves, to have a chance to succeed when they and their families never could have in their home countries. After all, why would a young South African want to move to the United States to make something of himself, to become a starry-eyed tech-bro? Why would a man from Kenya want to come here, and have his son become POTUS. Why would the successful woman with a number tattooed on her arm want to escape to the United States and take up residence in a small-town on Lake Erie, by herself, not knowing the language, the culture, the people?

Sunnyside, well, this place is amazing. In 2022, there were approximately 126,000 people in an area that takes up about a half-square mile of space. All these people in such a small space. Part of the three neighborhoods of Sunnyside, Woodside, and Jackson Heights – together making up, as I said earlier, the most diverse place on the planet. Here is what it is like living in this neighborhood of mine… Within a literal, easy 15-minute walk around my apartment… In my opinion, this is what makes the Unites States unique in the world, as shinning hill, a democracy that inspires the best of people from all over the world...

There are two Turkish grocery stores and two restaurants, three Japanese restaurants and a grocery store. An incredibly good Romanian bakery and two Romanian restaurants. Three Himalayan/Nepalese restaurants and two stores. An Egyptian restaurant. Two Thai restaurants (with lots of stores and places of business in Woodside). Multiple Peruvian, Salvadorian, Colombian, Mexican, Paraguayan restaurants and bakeries. A very nice mom-n-pop Korean restaurant. A great Indian restaurant, with another “Indian Chinese” restaurant – the kind of Chinese food served in India, and it ain’t the same as American Chinese! I don’t like it. Italian restaurants owned by Italian natives – really good! Lots of Irish, not just from Irish families who immigrated generations ago, but more recent immigrants from Ireland (like my neighbors), with their own bakeries and a really great deli, and more Irish pubs than you can shake a stick at (oh the Fish-and-Chips at The Lewery!). Really great hipster coffee houses, perfect New York bagel places, and places I really just don’t know what they are. Every summer, the week of the “Taste of Sunnyside” restaurant crawl is spectacular. All within a 15-minute walk, with most just around the corner from my place.

Then, there is the brand spanking new-city of Long Island City neighborhood (Queens) with glass skyscrapers, incredible views of Manhattan, with upscale everything, and young adults (a strong presence of Asian young people, children of parents immigrating here decades ago to make sure their children had a chance in the world) filling the little apartments in all the new gleaming glass skyscrapers. (MOMA’s PS 1 art gallery is there, too.) I can walk there within 15-minutes.

There are four store-front Muslim mosques. A Jewish synagogue at the end of my block. An incredibly huge Korean Presbyterian church, with another big one a couple blocks away, and three more store-front Korean churches. An Episcopal mission. A Reformed Church. Two Roman Catholic churches. Several storefront Hispanic churches. A Romanian Orthodox church. Two hipster Evangelical churches meeting in schools. A large Jehovah Witnesses Assembly Hall (not a small Meeting Hall), with streams of mostly black (African American, West Indian, Haitian, Dominican) and Hispanic members. With Hindu, Buddhist, and Roman Catholic religious stores.

The neighborhood park, a block from me (only a block large), is full of kids on the playground with parents wearing all manner of dress, speaking all manner of languages, and all playing together. They play – they don’t care that they don’t quite understand each other’s words. They learn. The teenagers play basketball and handball. The older men play cards and chess. The Hispanic women have an outdoor Zumba class. The younger singles – straight, gay, and anyone’s guess – have their dogs in the dog-run. Older couples sit on the benches surrounding the park watching the world go by.

Fridays, the Muslim men wear their clothing for services. Women in full burkas – and I mean full. The Nepalese have their own dress. On Romanian Orthodox religious holidays, their best traditional dress. Indian women in absolutely beautiful saris.

I am not exaggerating about any of this. Other’s living in Queens will back me up. This is my everyday life.

This is an immigrant place. The only way this place, this New York City, works is because of the immigrants working alongside the generations and generations of past immigrants who made their way through Ellis Island in New York harbour – the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free – all of these who make up what we know as the United States, located on the North American continent and islands around the world. This is what makes us great!

I well understand the arguments against insecure boarders, and I agree. The government has the right and obligation to secure the boards. Are there illegal immigrants here, who have let their education or travel or tourist visas expire? Yes, like a couple Irish people I know. Are there a lot more Hispanic immigrants who came through our southern boarder over the last few years, unsuspectedly bussed here by the governor of one of our boarder states? Yes. I ministered to some of them when they attended the local Episcopal church in Astoria, Queens, where I was the long-term supply priest a couple years ago. Sometimes, while trying to simply live, they sleep in my neighborhood park overnight before they move on trying to find work. There are a couple who are obviously mentally ill. Who knows what kind of trauma they experienced walking a continent trying to escape violence and poverty, yearning to be free. Are there gangs infiltrating some other neighborhoods and spreading violence and fear (though, fortunately, not mine)? Yes, and the policy and ICE and the FBI are after them, and catch them, and deport them.

Sunnyside is an amazing neighborhood. People living together, side-by-side, shopping together, eating together, playing together, learning together, praying side-by-side. Yes, there are problems. How could there not be? Sometimes just tolerating each other. Sometimes, worse. There is all manner of prejudices and hatreds. How could there not be – we are all humans, and that is part of being human, as sad as it is. But, we live in peace. We are so much more, together.

A good read in these days…

A quote from the article, "The rules of social convention ensure that we behave in a reasonable, courteous manner most of the time. But certain situations bring our baser instincts to the fore, and we discover we were not actually seeking the common good, but our own — that is, if we are even capable of that degree of self-reflection. This present moment in American history, like so many before it, is an hour of revelation, a moment of truth in which our real nature is displayed."

"We write our own destiny. We become what we do." -[Madame Chiang Kai-Shek]

This is one of the things we have to resolve and move past – "The end justifies the means."

It is all about the means.

It is about reason - and there are reasonable conservatives and reasonable liberals. It is not about feelings, no matter how strongly felt they may be.

It is about honesty, period.

It is about facts - verifiable, repeatable, and consistent. (Understandably, "fact" has come to be in the eye of the beholder, but what is happening in these days is a replacement of any sense of objectivity with blatant subjectivity. A post-fact society based on the assertion that I can believe about myself or the world whatever I want to believe, and no one has the right to tell me otherwise is just not workable in the long run, whether it comes from leftist or rightist perspectives.)

It is about the common good - hyper-individualism is a wrecking ball to any society. Respect for the other, the dignity of every human being, must be the maintained and championed.

It is about compromise - no democracy can exist without the working together of a wide variety of peoples and perspectives, not in this country. Fundamentalism, whether political, social, or religious, is not sustainable - never has been, never will be.

No matter who is in the White House or the governor's mansion or city hall, we can still dedicate ourselves to reason, to honesty, to factual considerations, and to compromise for the common, for the betterment of us all.

In these trying days, for our seemingly fragile democracy, a prayer for our country:

"O Lord our Governor, bless the leaders of our land, that we may be a people at peace among ourselves and a blessing to other nations on the earth. Lord, keep this nation under your care.

"To the President and members of the Cabinet, to Governors of States, Mayers of Cities, and to all in administrative authority, grant wisdom and grace in the exercise of their duties. Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

"To Senator and Representatives, and those who make our laws in States, Cities, and Towns, give courage, wisdom, and foresight to provide for the needs of all our people, and to fulfill our obligations in the community of nations. Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

"To the Judges and officers of our Courts give understanding and integrity, that human rights may be safeguarded and justice served. Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

"And finally, teach our people to rely on your strength and to accept their responsibilities to their fellow citizens, that they may elect trustworthy leaders and make wise decisions for the well-being of our society; that we may serve you faithfully in our generation and honor your holy Name. For yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are the exalted as head above all. Amen."

"And finally, teach our people to rely on your strength and to accept their responsibilities to their follow citizens, that they may elect trustworthy leaders and make wise decisions for the well-being of our society; that we may serve you faithfully in our generation and honor your holy Name."

Within American Christianity, particularly among Evangelicals, and considering our national obsession with our individual selves, we think of this repentance as individual acts. Among the more catholic expressions of Christianity, there is broader understanding of common confession - admittance and asking for forgiveness undertaken commonly, by all, together.

It is good for the mind, the heart, and the soul to repent. To recognize, admit, and seek forgiveness when we wrong others, to make restitution when we can, individually and in common.We the people of the United States must collectively come to terms with the evil, the indescribable wrongs done in our name - by our own hands - to the inhabitants of this land before the Europeans came, to those brutally bound and forced into dehumanizing slavery.