Esther Hookway
Orthodox Youth Self-Awareness

   When some months ago I was asked to give this talk on Orthodox Youth Self-Awareness, I hesitated because I was not sure what the term meant. As time went on, and I tried to turn my mind around it, I became even less certain and began to feel a sense of panic. I confessed this to a friend who advised me that what I should do was to ask my church friends what they understood by the term, and make their opinions the basis of my talk. This advice gave me a ray of hope and I sent out a short questionnaire. The responses were so varied that, at first, I felt no less confused. But on taking a closer look and comparing what others said with my own experience - such as it is - I began to see one or two common features which suggested some sort of coherent view of the topic.
    Someone pointed out that self-awareness is a term used in both psychology and sociology which suggests that, from an Orthodox perspective, we should consider it first in relation to ourselves in the whole community of the Church, and secondly as Orthodox Christians operating in the world - in the society around us. This is easily said, but, as my kind respondents pointed out, not at all so easily done. In fact, our Orthodox self-awareness is really rather a delicate plant. It needs the right sort of nurturing. In one kind of climate it could grow into something woody and rigid with rather unattractive flowers. Whilst in another climate, it may never flower at all, or else bear flowers which are a kind of hybrid, indistinguishable from the plants of the world around it. We know from our theology that all that comes to perfect growth in the Orthodox garden is lovely. But, unfortunately for us, the Orthodox garden is constantly invaded by pollutants and poisonous weeds from the surrounding environment. I suppose all of us agree, and certainly my respondents did, that this is the situation. And it was here that I noticed a consensus among them about how to confront the problem of fostering Orthodox youth self-awareness, and about the hazards to which the growing plant is exposed.
    The two horticultural situations which we must avoid in the Orthodox garden are, on the one hand, the attempt to create a micro-environment protected as far as possible from the hostile world, in which the young Orthodox plants are to flourish. On the other, we should also avoid a willingness to accept the environment of this world as a neutral habitat where Orthodox growth must take its chance with the rest, unprotected by any fence.
    In both of these assessments of the conditions in which Orthodox self-awareness grows, the world figures: in one case as an absolute enemy, and in the other as a totally safe and trustworthy friend. It seems then, that Orthodox youth self-awareness has, among other things, to do with how we are to relate to the world, as well as how we relate to the Church. I read an article recently in which the author said that the Church is that part of the world which has already responded to God's invitation, and the other part of the world is the one which still resists God's invitation and has not yet found its way to the Church, and for this reason, we pray for the whole world in the Liturgy. One of my respondents was quite hard on those of us who try to create a micro-environment in which to live our Orthodox lives, regarding the world as inherently evil and hostile, and in every way a threat to our Orthodox self-awareness. He argued that engaging with integrity as Orthodox in the world is a means of coming to true self-awareness of who we are as Orthodox Christians, because of the potentially hostile attitudes which we will encounter. These will sometimes lead us to question ourselves and our motivation, and help us to be us humble. He said that this was a very different, and much better, thing to remaining at ease in our Church context with only like-minded Orthodox friends around us. He even went as far as to say that every contact with a different reality is spiritually profitable.
    I remember when I was working in the SYNDESMOS office a few years ago with Alexander Belopopsky, the former Secretary-General, how strongly he felt that we have to show willingness to engage with the world; that we have to accept that our Orthodox identity is going to be challenged by the world, and that we have to assert it with discretion by engaging in society and making our contribution wherever there is willingness to accept it. Alex initiated the "smartened-up" SYNDESMOS which we now have, where we are not ashamed of being practical, professional and thorough. Work for the Church does not mean shabby work. Alex found a way of presenting SYNDESMOS and highlighting features of its work which others, including the European funding agencies, understood and were willing to support. This has had a great impact on the ability of SYNDESMOS to organise gatherings of Orthodox youth worldwide in recent years. Surely this is true to what the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul say about making a worthy contribution to society so that people outside the Church will appreciate that our faith is something universally positive, and not at all sectarian.
    If SYNDESMOS has something to witness to the world, it is something which has managed to grow in the Orthodox garden, despite all kinds of inclement weather. This garden does have its specific atmosphere, which is not a micro-environment of our own making, but is the breath of the Holy Spirit. Even so, we have to co-operate with God in sustaining the atmosphere because it will not impose itself. We breathe and grow in this atmosphere by living according to the Tradition and teaching of the Church, which have come down to us from the Holy Fathers and the Scriptures. This is the big problem for us because our Orthodox self-awareness, as I have learned from my respondents in various parts of the world as well as from my own personal experience and in talking to others, is really rather feeble.
    The problem shows up in different places and in different ways. Some Orthodox in their determination to create a churchly micro-environment isolated from the world, marginalise themselves in their refusal to engage with secular life and non-Orthodox people. In so doing, do they not run the risk of putting off other young people who, despite being caught up in secular life, are actually in search of the Truth? Do they not risk losing the spirit of the Tradition, which is rooted in Christ's salvation offered for all His fellow-humans?
    One of my respondents drew attention to the problem of marginalisation among the Orthodox youth of his country. He referred to an address given by his Metropolitan earlier this year to the young people. The Metropolitan said that the youth tend to keep their faith to themselves, perhaps out of timidity because of a lack of theological education, and that they keep to the margins of society making too little a contribution as Orthodox to the life of their country. From my own experience and that of other Orthodox friends, I know how easy it is to grow up with an insufficient sense of Orthodox culture and tradition, which are of vital importance for our formation as Orthodox Christians. With regard to all these things, I believe that SYNDESMOS fulfils a twofold role or function.
    The first of these functions is to provide contexts in which young people can come together and experience, as a community, the life of the Church in its integrity for a short space of time. We know from experience that the youth encounters organised by SYNDESMOS have a lasting effect, at least on some participants. They can make up for what has been lacking in the life experience of participants who have been brought up in environments where Orthodox tradition may have become attenuated. Some years ago a friend of mine took part in a SYNDESMOS event for the first time. She was struck by the fact that we tried to keep to the lenten fast. Although this seemed to her a bit pointless at the time, somehow, even after returning home, this awareness of fasting remained until Holy Pascha. The same friend has been involved in many other projects since and she was taken aback by the persistent interest of many participants, including how they managed to keep the fast in a non-Orthodox country. Through my involvement with SYNDESMOS I, like my friend, have become more aware of the importance of the traditions which have always been part of Orthodox life and which help to define our spiritual identity by involving Church life in everyday matters and bodily concerns. We easily fail to recognise their importance and to live by them, due to the overriding influence of secular life-styles.
    We have among us a lot of theological knowledge about the Orthodox Church, but it can easily become merely intellectual and fail to permeate our lives. The many elements and important details which make up our Orthodox culture - such as fasting and chastity - are neglected. So our youth need chances to be taught theology and to live theologically.
    Some of my respondents have observed attitudes at the opposite end of the spectrum, which may not be so bad as the above, but are evidently not very helpful to the growth of positive Orthodox youth self-awareness either. One of my respondents writes, "In every Orthodox parish that I have gained an insight into, there are persons who consider Orthodoxy their private property - without their consent, Orthodoxy cannot be offered to or shared with anyone else.... They give the impression that access to Orthodoxy should be strictly limited." He goes on to say that "some of these sole owners of Orthodoxy think that Orthodox Christianity belongs only to the white race, others that it belongs to their nation, others to their village. Where I live," he continues, "lots of us believe that you are only Orthodox if you meet all of the following criteria: a) you must partake of Holy Communion only a few times a year; b) you must understand only very little of the Church services - once you learn the liturgical language and understand it fully, the mystery of the Church services is gone; c) you must be born into an Orthodox family even if your parents only go to Church at Pascha and Christmas. In this way we turn our parishes into dying ghettos. We exclude a great proportion of our youth from the Church, and we deter many non-Orthodox youth from entering it."
    This cry from the heart from my respondent may be an overreaction, and he is identifying the Church with its local manifestations. But youth awareness of Orthodoxy is bound to depend on local impressions, and that is my point. SYNDESMOS can provide opportunities for "local" and "universal" to feed each other.
    On the subject of Holy Communion, I heard a spiritual father, a holy monk, say that young people should try to take Communion once a week if possible, because it is the best medicine for succeeding in our struggle.
    It seems to me, that we have to overcome the tendency to sideline or disregard Orthodox tradition, and actually strive to live it. This must be our particular task in raising our consciousness of  our self-awareness as Orthodox Christians in the Church. In many  of our countries, Orthodox Christians are a minority of different ethnic origins as well as of converts from the local Christian or non-Christian traditions. The role of SYNDESMOS in raising youth awareness must surely have to do with encouraging us all to realise in an active, practical way that the Church is one, by being prepared to join in the services of Orthodox communities whether they be in Greek, Slavonic, Arabic, Spanish, French, English (or Finnish for that matter!), and to cultivate good relations and make friends with our Orthodox contemporaries, realising that our ethnic traditions are of little value in themselves unless they are animated by the true ethos of Orthodox culture in which we experience our unity. In all parts of the world we notice unused potential for contact among Orthodox youth of different ethnic traditions, and unfortunately sometimes a lack of interest on the part of clergy in doing anything to foster shared activities. A spiritual Father I know once said that marriage is "a contest in humility." Some of my respondents think that SYNDESMOS should do more to encourage our clergy to "compete in humility" and be examples to young people by sharing resources and showing more enthusiasm and encouragement for activities outside their own domain.
    The yearning to live in the life-giving tradition of the Church quickly flowers in the right spiritual atmosphere. We saw this in a wonderful way two years ago when a heiromonk from the Monastery of Essex in England took part in a visit to Argentina supported by SYNDESMOS. Most of the young people there were meeting a representative of the monastic tradition of the Church for the first time. We all responded immediately to his presence and to the atmosphere of prayer into which he led us. We know that his influence has been profound and lasting for many of  the youth who met him. This again goes to show that by themselves, academic descriptions of the church and of theology won't change people. They are needed, but it is experience and example that does so. This kind of thing is what SYNDESMOS exists to facilitate.
    This brings me to what I think is the second function of SYNDESMOS. The first, which I have just spoken of, is that of helping to sustain us in our lives as Orthodox Christians within the Church. The second function is that of helping to equip young people to act as examples to the other Orthodox youth in the societies to which they belong. SYNDESMOS does this by providing opportunities for training in youth leadership similar to those which are organised by other Christian organisations and by the European institutions. SYNDESMOS can offer something for Orthodox youth which is generally recognised as responding to the needs of youth in the world today. Youth leadership training, in an Orthodox context, is a form of diakonia, of service to our contemporaries in the Church and outside the Church too. Participants in SYNDESMOS leadership training events will have a greater self-awareness of the opportunities for service which exist in the Church. They will have gained some confidence to fulfil them through having been in contact with other young people. One of my respondents who saw working with youth in this way, as a spiritual activity, was concerned that sometimes people who assume leadership roles in the Church do not realise this is a spiritual activity. He writes: "Many things in the Church are not explained in words but in actions. If a youth leader does not know himself well, the chances are that he will act in ways which may mislead other young people." He quotes a saying from his country: "One bad cow brings discord to all the cows." He goes on to say: "Just as the saints are remembered for their positive impact through actions, so should youth leaders be remembered."
    My two points are inseparably linked. Ideally by participating in all kinds of SYNDESMOS events, a person should receive an input which will help him or her to live the life of the Church more deeply, and by doing so, will help him or her to make a more effective contribution to the Church and therefore to the wider society in which he or she lives. The European Youth agencies, which have been a major source of funding for SYNDESMOS in recent years, have a policy of promoting active citizenship among young people through giving them a sense of common identity, by raising awareness of cultural diversity, and by celebrating difference and equality in the attempt to overcome racism and intolerance. Admittedly, their approach is a broadly humanistic one, not a Christian one per se, and it presents certain ambiguities from the Orthodox perspective, but the general intention is a good one, and we as Orthodox youth have something to learn from it. Indeed, haven't we in the Church got enough stereotypes, prejudices and intolerances of our own to overcome, let alone those of the world? As Olivier Clement pointed out recently, some attitudes among Orthodox Christians are the consequences of a kind of deformation of Orthodox consciousness due to historical misfortunes. In the words of one of my respondents: "There are no chosen people among us on the basis of race or ethnicity and there should be no adjective attached to Orthodox" (apart from "Christian," I would like to add). Archimandrite Sophrony says the same thing in a more theological way: "I do not know a Greek Christ, a Russian Christ, an Arab Christ. Christ for me is everything, the supracosmic being.... If, as we confess in the Creed, Christ is true God, the Saviour of the universe, the Saviour of the world, by Whom all things were made, how can we bring our understanding of Him down to a question of nationality, place or epoch?". While it is understandable that those of us who live in what were traditionally Orthodox countries will tend to identify the Church with our ethnic identity, language and territory, we all know that this can be dangerous if it does not go along with a deep sense of the unity of mankind, which must embrace everyone irrespective of his or her origin. And we must certainly never rest on the laurels of our ethnic ancestors, but keep an Orthodox spirit of humility and repentance in all we do for God's glory - not for our glory, or our nation's, or our organisation's, or for SYNDESMOS's glory. A theology student wrote to me recently, that we must keep both our hands in Christ's, because if we keep one hand in Christ's and use the other to attack those whom we perceive as our enemies, we shall lose our balance and do nothing but harm. As Saint Paul tells us, our real enemies are not other people but the spiritual forces which sweep through the world and through us also - however carefully we try to tend our spiritual garden.
    To conclude, perhaps we can say that Orthodox youth self-awareness is about being a Christian in a real way, not by creating a micro-environment and trying to live it in Christ, and not about succumbing to worldliness, to secular attitudes and to a secular life-style. It is about trying to acquire wholeness and fullness of life in Christ, which rises beyond the extremes of marginalisation and secularisation. It is spiritually unrealistic to want to live in an enclosed garden immune from worldly influences. But everywhere and at all times we can live in the atmosphere of the Church, because the atmosphere of the Church, which comes from God, is stronger than the atmosphere of the world, and I think that this is what SYNDESMOS wants to promote.
    Finally, as another wise respondent wrote, "Even though we cannot change the world, we can at least humbly fight to change ourselves and be prepared to make our contribution as Orthodox to good purposes in secular society."
    Thank you to everyone who responded to my e-mail and questionnaire, and who sent contributions for this talk.