Weave us together

There’s a song we sang in girl scouting – a prayer, really, sung while standing in a circle, with arms weaving forward and back:

– Weave, weave, weave us together, weave us together in unity and love,
– Weave, weave, weave us together, together in love.

That prayer is needed more than ever, yet we have few places where we can ask, or even imagine, that kind of weaving taking place.

The Kaiser Family Foundation just documented the use of technology in our teens’ lives, and other reports demonstrate the growing isolation of both adults and teens. (One frequently cited study was done by Duke University in 2006 ).

From my own vantage point, as a youth pastor, parent, friend to many families in distress, our current culture does much to pull both youth and parents into ever more self-determined paths. Points of intersection, for families, friends, church communities, neighbors, are less frequent, less potent, less of a priority, as other demands become increasingly insistent. I'm sometimes reminded of the sobering poem by William Butler Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Kids can't hear parents, parents can't hear kids. Families seem to lack a center, a place of focus, and spin into dissolution.