IAYN meeting in Mexico -Thursday.

On Thursday Douglas made us review what IAYN is doing and as a result we decided to develop a focus.

We discovered quite by accident (thanks God for the internet) while looking for something else that this year, right now is the UN International Year of Youth. So to help Anglican young people engage with this year, and to pick up the theme that has been a focus of several of the other Anglican Networks, that of eradicating gender based violence.

We began working on developing a resource called Ending Violence, which is basically one of the theological reflection processes I learnt as part of the Masters (the paper I did in 2004). On Thursday night we met with young people and young adults from Mexico City, all of whom are part of “the Happening” the youth version of Cursillo.  When Sally-Sue told them about this they were so enthusiastic. I was really taken by surprise. It helped me realise how institutional I can be. I kept thinking that the UN year “our year our voice” should/could be about the voice of young people in the church. How boring!!!

 These young people exploded with enthusiasm. This is an issue all young people face, violence in some way. And here at last was a church group saying, here is a way you can talk about this, talk about your experience, bring your faith to bear on it, talk about what this issue says to your faith, and find some ways to act to end the violence. It was great. I had to get up early the next morning and rewrite big chunks to take account of all the young people talked about. We spent all day Friday slowing working through what we had each written, and then we had another go today for one final revision. It was so helpful, having the stuff I had written picked to pieces and revamped, and I think it will work a whole lot better as well.