they humble me

Early this morning . . . at 5:50, to be precise . . . I drove Younger and her bestie to drop them off at "The Walk" organized by a group called *The Coalition.  During The Walk 100-200 teenagers, dressed in black with a red "X" on their chest, walk a mile to school in silent solidarity to symbolize the children in Northern Uganda who commute from their homes to find a safe place to sleep for the night.

I watched these kids milling around in the dark before 6 a.m. (yes, I'm serious, teenagers voluntarily woke at 5 something in the morning) and I was impressed.  We all think of teenagers as the slobs in the mall, acting like inconsiderate jerks with their potty-mouths and bad attitudes.  But then, in a moment like this, I am reminded what great thinkers and believers teenagers can be.  They are bright and curious and they care.  They care about our world in a way that we older, allegedly smarter, and certainly more jaded adults do not.

I don't know about you . . . I care, but I rarely find the time or energy to do something like take a symbolic stroll at 6 in the morning.  Perhaps it is because I feel that their message--and the energy it takes to put forth--will be lost.  A great and honorable shouting into a void.

As I was contemplating these thoughts, I read my morning meditation and once again Merton spoke to me.  On September 19, 1961, he wrote:

[M]y awareness of myself as a personage with definite opinions and with a voice has kept me sensitive and afraid on a level on which most monks long ago became indifferent.  Yet also it is not good to be indifferent to the fate of the world on a simply human level.

So I am concerned, humanly, politically, yet not wisely.

And on September 29, 2011, as I read Merton's words, my thoughts responded to this wise monk with the simple thought that so much of humankind . . . or perhaps just adultkind . . . is concerned, humanly and politically, yet almost none of us care wisely or actively or as passionately as these kids.  

A house in Northern Uganda (photo from here)

So I ask, just when was it that we stopped being idealistic?  When did we stop believing we could change the world?  And maybe, just maybe we could all learn a thing about being wise from these teenagers.

*The Coalition is a club at their high school that works for three main causes: Uganda, Darfur and the organization Love 146 (a group dedicated to stop sex-trafficking in southeast Asia).