About
ten years ago I did mission work in Calcutta, India. One day as I was walking
to my work site I noticed a man cooking on the sidewalk as a small crowd
gathered around him.  

Never
one to let ministry get in the way of food, I walked over for a closer look.
Behind a steadily growing number of fan-customers stood a thin, dark, shirtless
man holding a steaming pot high in the air. He began pouring a three-foot
stream of milkish-brown liquid through a sieve into another pot. “What’s this?”
I asked a stranger next to me. “Chai!” he said, and pointing to the man, “Chai-Wallah.”    

Sensing
that I wasn’t sufficiently impressed he went on, “Chai-wallah is very important
to our culture.” I found that hard to believe. Here was a guy who didn’t deem
it necessary to get dressed this morning, yet he’s the bedrock of the world’s
second largest country?

I
would soon learn the importance of this seemingly common vendor. For starters,
they are everywhere—train stations, street corners, store fronts—anywhere the
people are, there too is the chai-wallah.

 Serving
chai is more than a job for them, as most feel they are born to brew chai.
  Each chai-wallah takes great pride in perfecting  their own unique
blend of tea, spice and milk. There are as many different chai-wallahs as there
are unique combinations of these three ingredients.

And
while each chai-wallah is distinct, what they hold in common is even greater.
As a whole they nurture over a billion people with their stimulating
caffeinated nectar. They could earn more money by making and selling other
products, such as biscuits or clay cups. Instead, they focus on perfecting
their chai, and leave the biscuits to the biscuit-wallah and cups to the
cup-wallah.  

In
their wisdom the Hindus bestow the name wallah upon a person who combines skill, personality and passion to
perform a specific task that nurtures the whole of society. In doing so they
anchor them within their culture, honor their unique contribution and insure
the longevity of their service.  

Could
we do the same for those who work with kids? What difference would it make if
those who offer their lives in service to young people were validated like that
of an Indian wallah? What if we regarded teachers, youth ministers and
volunteers as Youth-Wallahs whose unique gifts, style and passion sustain our
younger generations and nurture their growing faith? 

This
would be a seismic cultural shift. We would start by no longer regarding the
youth worker as a  babysitter who looks after the “future church.” It would mean
that we embrace the reality of a youth-wallah who bridges a widening
generational crevasse between the Young and Adult Church, making it possible
for each to receive the other’s gift.

If
a culture can do that for a guy who serves tea, can’t we do that for the one
who serves our kids?

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A whole new world. This is even better than Shift Happens.  As always thanks to the ever vigilant Scott Miller for posting this.

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A few years ago I
joined several groups of young people from around our area to travel to
Washington, D.C. for the annual March for Life.  We went to stand for those who could not stand, to walk for
those who could not walk. 

We wanted to be
peaceful witnesses for those on life’s now dangerous periphery—for those whose
“death row” has become a mother’s womb, a nursing home, old age. 

We hoped to make a
difference.  

At the end of the
March, very near the steps of the Supreme Court, stood dozens of women and men
holding signs that read, “I regret my abortion”, “I lost my motherhood”, “I
lost my fatherhood.”

We could not walk
by them easily. It would have felt too cheap, too irreverent.  

 I was willing to
settle for making eye contact with them. I could feel a small part of their
pain and that was enough.  It
gripped me.  It held me. Glimpsing
into their wounds broke my heart.  

But I kept my
distance. I was comfortable on the other side of an invisible line which so
often separates well intentioned Christians like me from the hurting members of
Christ’s body.  

Before I could stop
them, the young people in our group crossed over that line.  

They weren’t
content to be spiritual onlookers—good pilgrims who would pray, be touched and
return home feeling more sympathetic for the victims of abortion.

No, these kids
needed to touch. They discovered Jesus in those often neglected victims of
abortion and lunged for him.  They
unabashedly walked over and embraced those weeping mothers and fathers, and in
doing so laid to waste my “mature” sense of what is appropriate. 

Those teens showed
me something I hadn’t seen or felt in a long time: unguarded love that is
altogether unconcerned with good manners.

Those young people,
unlike me, have not yet learned how to ignore another’s pain.  They haven’t erected a protective wall
around their heart that keeps them moving on, feeling good and being efficient.  

Theirs’ is still a
love that reaches out to strangers, welcomes the lonely and hugs the hurting.
They could not walk casually by those hurting people content to offer a
sympathetic nod and a vague promise of future prayers. 

Those kids reminded
me of a simple conviction that was once the very foundation of my spiritual
life: When you see Jesus, wherever you find him, get to him quickly. Hold him
tight.  Hold him close enough to
feel God’s skin and stay there long enough to hear him say “I love you.”  And most importantly, try never to
forget what you heard.

Youth have a
powerful lesson to teach our modern Church. They remind us that the Gospel
rarely appears “spiritual”, and is usually recognized in the human impulse to
love and be loved.

In the midst of
leading kids to God, just maybe, if we are attentive, we may find ourselves being
led by them, to that same God.  

For more
information on the annual March for Life contact Magnificat Travel through  www.holytravels.com
.

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I always thought that Henry Ford’s first car was the Model T. I
was wrong.  As it turns out, his
first gas-powered motorcar was the “quadricycle”—its name reflective of its
f  our large bicycle-like tires.

 At 2 a.m. on the morning of June 4, 1896, in a rented coal shed
behind his Bagley Avenue home in Detroit, the thirty two-year-old Henry
completed his first car. Anxious to test drive it on Detroit’s cobblestone
streets, he rolled it to the door, only to realize there was a problem—not with
the car, but with the doorway.

 He assumed he would be able to get it out of the existing shed
door. Mind you, it’s 1896—garage doors were not necessary yet. Needless to say
the doorway built to aaccommodate a person was much too small for his car.

 Being a man of determination and action, Henry immediately
grabbed a sledgehammer and began swinging and smashing bricks to widen the
doorway—of a rented shed—at two O’clock in the morning.

 Hearing the smashing noise, an infuriated William Wreford, his
landlord, arose to set Henry straight. Upon arriving he noticed the quadricycle
and stood in awe and disbelief. But he was eager to see it in action, and went
off to get his own sledgehammer. Together they cleared away enough bricks enabling
the quadricycle to pass through. And in the following weeks, Wreford hired a
carpenter to install the first ever “garage door” at his own expense. 

 My hunch is that you’ve probably never heard of William Wreford.
His name is not listed alongside Ford’s in the annals of automotive history.
But his role in the birth of motorized transportation was pivotal. Without
Wreford, it is possible that Henry’s original genius would have remained
trapped in a coal shed. 

 Like Henry, young people work hard to recognize, develop and
then bring their gift—the invention of themselves to the world. Often, those
same kids arrive at the doorway of life unable to see their way through a too
narrow threshold. These are kids who lack the confidence, courage and skill needed
to share their life with others.

 And, like William Wreford, we have a choice. We can hammer them
for not anticipating life’s challenges. Or, we can be thankful that they have
chosen to work near us and help them to hammer away at the bricks of doubt and
fear that constrict the threshold of their hearts.

 Most of what you do in the life of kids will go unremembered,
unrecognized and at times unappreciated. Fear not. You make a difference. You
are not alone. You are armed with a sledgehammer of grace. The work you do
in the lives of young people helps make Christ present to the world—one swing,
one brick, one kid at a time. 

Roy Petitfils is a syndicated columnist and counselor at St.
Cecilia School and Pax Renewal Center. He can be reached at roypetitfils@yahoo.com.

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