Alan Watts: “The Wisdom of Youth” Recording
Antonio Pontarelli, “The Wisdom of Youth” Recording
To provide the youth with: a) the value of wisdom as guidance for life; 2) the wisdom of youth valued in ancient and modern wisdom sources; 3) the resources to seek wisdom on their own.
Here are some resources the leader may choose to review while preparing the lesson. In some circumstances, you may choose to share parts of them with your youth:
Yale Bible Study Course on Wisdom Literature. Week V: Ecclesiastes
From G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education, Vol 2 (Appleton, 1921), p. 142
An American psychologist, Hall coined the term “adolescence”, arguing in his book that adolescence was a “golden stage” when life “glistens and crackles” – a “vernal season of the heart” uniquely open to experiencing and sharing joy and love and uniquely susceptible to suffering their absence.
From Erik Erikson, Insight and Responsibility, (Norton, 1964), p. 126):
“[Adolescence is] a vital regenerator in the process of social evolution; for youth selectively offers its loyalties and energies to the conservation of that which feels true to them and to the correction or destruction of that which has lost its regenerative significance.”
From Almeda Wright, “The Ministry of Questioning Everything”, Reflections, Spring:2014 at 33-34:
“James Fowler, in his seminal text Stages of Faith, describes changes in faith that typically occur during late adolescence or early adulthood, when young people have experiences that call into questions the symbols, images, practices, and traditions of their communities of origin.
Sometimes the trigger can be a first romantic relationship or a cross-cultural friendship. In light of these experiences, their faith becomes more critically reflective and individuated. And sometimes the communities come up lacking or the practices seem insufficient. In other circumstances, young adults recognize they have to wrestle with the faith tradition and imagine it in new ways in order to make it their own – and not simply accept the faith of their parents, pastor, or friends.
In Fowler’s theory, many young adults – just by nature of maturing – encounter questions that can lead either to a crisis of faith or an enlightening moment. Embracing the importance of faith questions prepares communities for the turbulent changes young adults will experience as they move through life. When we accept questions as a way of being faithful we begin to live into the inquisitive faith of Jesus, and we honor the fullness of who God has created us to be.
Walter Brueggemann reminds us that any community that wants to survive beyond a generation has to concern itself with education. [Walter Brueggemann, The Creative Word: Canon as Model for Biblical Education (Fortress Press, 1982).] Like Fowler, Brueggemann proposes a model of education and community that honors questions. He accounts for the inquisitive young children, who are yearning to know the narrative of the community. He notes the ruptures – often the prophetic speaking of truth to power – of adolescents and young adults, who offer new eyes and skills to question our complicity with the status quo. Bruggemann’s model includes the wisdom tradition, which emerges only from attending to (and I would add exploring or questioning what we see and learn as we live.
Each of these forms of inquisitive learning shows us a way to be more welcoming to actual young people – with all of their innovations and annoying questions as well as their genuine sense that we can do things differently.”
Job 32:1-22
So these three men ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes. Then Elihu son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, became angry. He was angry at Job because he justified himself rather than God; he was angry also at Job’s three friends because they had found no answer, though they had declared Job to be in the wrong.[a] Now Elihu had waited to speak to Job, because they were older than he. But when Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouths of these three men, he became angry.
Elihu son of Barachel the Buzite answered:
“I am young in years,
and you are aged;
therefore I was timid and afraid
to declare my opinion to you.
I said, ‘Let days speak,
and many years teach wisdom.’
But truly it is the spirit in a mortal,
the breath of the Almighty,[b] that makes for understanding.
It is not the old[c] that are wise,
nor the aged that understand what is right.
Therefore I say, ‘Listen to me;
let me also declare my opinion.’
“See, I waited for your words,
I listened for your wise sayings,
while you searched out what to say.
I gave you my attention,
but there was in fact no one that confuted Job,
no one among you that answered his words.
Yet do not say, ‘We have found wisdom;
God may vanquish him, not a human.’
He has not directed his words against me,
and I will not answer him with your speeches.
“They are dismayed, they answer no more;
they have not a word to say.
And am I to wait, because they do not speak,
because they stand there, and answer no more?
I also will give my answer;
I also will declare my opinion.
For I am full of words;
the spirit within me constrains me.
My heart is indeed like wine that has no vent;
like new wineskins, it is ready to burst.
I must speak, so that I may find relief;
I must open my lips and answer.
I will not show partiality to any person
or use flattery toward anyone.
For I do not know how to flatter—
or my Maker would soon put an end to me!
Joel 2:28
Then afterward
I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
Luke 18:15-17
People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to do it. But Jesus called for them and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
James 1:5-8:
If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.
1 Timothy 4:11-12:
These are the things you must insist on and teach. Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.
From Alan Watts, “The Wisdom of Youth”:
All energies of life have in them a possibility of an excess of going too far.
When you bring up your children, and you tell your children your various far-out ideas and the children suddenly believe in them, I’m horrified.
I think “Oh my god, what will they do next?”
But everybody feels that way in regard to the strength of the younger generation that is coming on.
Cause this younger generation is huge.
When we think about young people, we have terrible ideas.
We think that we know what life is and that they have to be told that they will learn it from us, and be like us.
We don’t take that attitude when we see the new vegetables come up in the spring.
We don’t say the vegetables have to be educated to be vegetables.
We say “hooray! At last, young vegetables. With all the life and energy in them. New meals for everything.”
So when we see young people come up, we might say “good gracious, isn’t this great? To see the human race is still doing its stuff. I wonder what they’ll have to teach us.”
Because wisdom doesn’t come from above down.
It comes from below up.
That’s where the wisdom is, surging into us.
The old people, they have a function.
But they have it in order to fulfill that function.
They have to understand first that they can learn from the young sources.
If they understand that, then they can be wise and be teachers.
If they don’t understand that, they never can.
To be wise, you have to…that’s the meaning of the saying, “to enter the kingdom of heaven, you have to become again as a child.”
From the child’s point of view, the things which the adult considers irrelevant to survival, are perfectly important.
And so children collect pebbles and colored glass, and all sorts of trivia which they consider as precious as diamonds.
The adult says “oh, pfft. Frippery.”
But they really have the secret.
Now the child, as a child doesn’t know how to play the adults game. It is a power game. And so it has to be educated to learn the values of the power game.
To learn what’s what and what is important.
But when he has mastered that game he realizes it has no rewards.
That all the things that the adults thought they were gaining by their power game, are after all not worth having.
Which is why you can be rich and miserable.
So that having learned and having seen through the adults power game, we come back to the point of a child.
Video: Alan Watts: “The Wisdom of Youth”
Video: Antonio Pontarelli, “The Wisdom of Youth”
Lauren Calvin Cooke, “Finding Joy in an Unjust World: Practicing Joy in Youth Ministry”
See attachment from: Dean Mary Elizabeth Moore and Ms. Yara Gonzalez-Justiniano, “Youth Wisdom – Pointing toward Joy and Flourishing”
Gather (15 minutes)
Almighty God, Who has given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will. Bless our land with honorable ministry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion, from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people, the multitude brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endow with Thy spirit of wisdom those whom in Thy name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth. In time of prosperity fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail; all of which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Engage (30 minutes)
Activity I: Reflecting on the Wisdom of Youth and Its Sources
“As I ate she began the first of what was later called “my lessons in living.” She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors. She encouraged me to listen carefully to what country people called mother wit. That in those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations.”
Deuteronomy 32:7
Remember the days of old,
consider the years long past;
ask your father, and he will inform you;
your elders, and they will tell you.
1 Kings 12:6
Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the older men who had attended his father Solomon while he was still alive, saying, “How do you advise me to answer this people?”
“The Importance of Elders in Native American Culture”
“Simon Looking Elk told us that elders often are known for being the kind of people who have paid attention, gaining knowledge and wisdom from life –during their childhood they watched and listened carefully to ceremonies and traditions, and as youth they paid attention to the way the elders in their communities behaved . . .Essentially, elders are libraries of Indian knowledge, history and tradition.”
From Job 32:1-22
So these three men ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes. Then Elihu son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, became angry. He was angry at Job because he justified himself rather than God; he was angry also at Job’s three friends because they had found no answer, though they had declared Job to be in the wrong.[a] Now Elihu had waited to speak to Job, because they were older than he. But when Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouths of these three men, he became angry. Elihu son of Barachel the Buzite answered:
“I am young in years,
and you are aged;
therefore I was timid and afraid
to declare my opinion to you.
I said, ‘Let days speak,
and many years teach wisdom.’
But truly it is the spirit in a mortal,
the breath of the Almighty,[b] that makes for understanding.
It is not the old[c] that are wise,
nor the aged that understand what is right.
Therefore I say, ‘Listen to me;
let me also declare my opinion.’
“See, I waited for your words,
I listened for your wise sayings,
while you searched out what to say.
I gave you my attention,
but there was in fact no one that confuted Job,
no one among you that answered his words.
Yet do not say, ‘We have found wisdom;
God may vanquish him, not a human.’
He has not directed his words against me,
and I will not answer him with your speeches.
“They are dismayed, they answer no more;
they have not a word to say.
And am I to wait, because they do not speak,
because they stand there, and answer no more?
I also will give my answer;
I also will declare my opinion.
For I am full of words;
the spirit within me constrains me.
My heart is indeed like wine that has no vent;
like new wineskins, it is ready to burst.
I must speak, so that I may find relief;
I must open my lips and answer.
I will not show partiality to any person
or use flattery toward anyone.
For I do not know how to flatter—
or my Maker would soon put an end to me!
From Joel 2:28:
Then afterward
I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
From Luke 18:15-17:
People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to do it. But Jesus called for them and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
From James 1:5-8:
If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.
From 1 Timothy 4:11-12:
These are the things you must insist on and teach. Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.
From Almeda Wright, “The Ministry of Questioning Everything”, Reflections, Spring:2014 at 33-34
Walter Brueggemann reminds us that any community that wants to survive beyond a generation has to concern itself with education. [Walter Brueggemann, The Creative Word: Canon as Model for Biblical Education (Fortress Press, 1982).] Like Fowler, Brueggemann proposes a model of education and community that honors questions. He accounts for the inquisitive young children, who are yearning to know the narrative of the community. He notes the ruptures – often the prophetic speaking of truth to power – of adolescents and young adults, who offer new eyes and skills to question our complicity with the status quo. Bruggemann’s model includes the wisdom tradition, which emerges only from attending to (and I would add exploring or questioning) what we see and learn as we live.
Psychologists who have studied the dynamics and capacities of adolescence have gone so far as to conclude that adolescents have unique capacities for insight and, indeed, have a vocational responsibility to the community to lend their gifts to the accumulation of communal wisdom.
G. Stanley Hall, the American psychologist who coined the term “adolescent, argued in his book that adolescence was a “golden stage” when life “glistens and crackles” – a “vernal season of the heart” uniquely open to experiencing and sharing joy and love and uniquely susceptible to suffering their absence.
Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson concluded:
“[Adolescence is] a vital regenerator in the process of social evolution; for youth selectively offers its loyalties and energies to the conservation of that which feels true to them and to the correction or destruction of that which has lost its regenerative significance.”
Alan Watts was a lifetime student and teacher of Zen Buddhism. After graduating from seminary and serving for a time as an Episcopal priest, Watts spent most of his life writing and teaching about Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. He had particularly provocative thoughts on the wisdom of youth. Watch the following video together of an excerpt from his teachings:
Video: Alan Watts: “The Wisdom of Youth”
From Luke 18:15-17:
People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to do it. But Jesus called for them and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
4. What do you think Jesus meant when he said, “whoevever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it?”
5. Do you think our modern American culture appreciates the wisdom of youth? Does your community? Does your church? Does your family? Do your friends? Do you?
Activity II: We Begin Compiling the Great Book of our Youth Group’s Wisdom
Reflect (10 minutes)
The short summary of the wisdom acquired Native American elders emphasizes “Simon Looking Elk told us that elders often are known for being the kind of people who have paid attention, gaining knowledge and wisdom from life experiences”
One of the nation’s leading scholars on the wisdom of youth is Dean Mary Elizabeth Moore, until recently the dean of the Boston University Divinity School. Dean Moore led a twenty-five year study of youth wisdom in two successive projects: “Youth and Culture” (1994-2005) and “Wisdom of Youth” (2005-2018). She co-authored a paper (with Yara Gonzalez-Justiniano) entitled, “Youth Wisdom: Pointing toward Joy and Flourishing” for a Yale Youth Ministry Institute grant project. This paper, and the curricular suggestions it sets forth will be woven through most of the following weeks of the course, supporting “The Great Book of Our Youth Group’s Wisdom” project. Dean Moore’s paper is attached at the end of this curriculum. You may choose to pass out the entire paper to your youth, or you may choose to pass out the most relevant excerpts, for their reading at home over the following weeks.
Dean Moore and Ms. Gonzalez-Justiniano offer three concrete curricular proposals at the end of their proposal to support the youth in cultivating “youth wisdom” which can be found on our website at the following links:
Note: Our “Seven Sections to Wisdom” curriculum presumes only that you assign Curriculum Resource #1 as an activity for Week 4, but you may choose to structure participation by your youth in Curriculum Resources 2 and 3 in following weeks.
Send Forth (5 minutes)
This resource includes supplementary materials: