The first time SF-UUYAN held a circle on Adulthood, everyone said they couldn't imagine what we would talk about.
But when we asked, "What does it mean to be an adult?" and began passing the pine cone around the circle, the stories flowed. People talked about their changing relations to their parents-- the excitement and pride of being treated as a peer, or asked for advice; the fear and stress of having to solve life problems alone; the frustration of parental relations that did not change; the reversals of becoming a caretaker when a parent gets sick.
People talked about the word "adult" in a moral sense, to "be an adult," to have the strength to do the right thing, to face ethical dilemmas with justice and maturity, to "be an adult about it."
They asked, When did I first know I was an "adult"? Am I an adult? What does adulthood mean? Do I agree with that definition?
Many people told stories of finding their adulthood while traveling: of confronting a bear alone in Alaska, or surviving illnesss in an isolated village where no one speaks your language, or driving a U-Haul truck across the country for the first time by yourself.
(Those orange U-Haul trucks were mentioned often enough that I started to think they should be granted a mythological ritual status in the coming-of-age lore of our people...)
Many people expressed a profound spiritual fear of growing up. They said, when I was a child, the grownups I saw were scary. They seemed grey, spiritually empty, without any real friends, without any real dreams. Being an adult means losing your soul. One said, growing up means you have to stop growing. One or two people were able to think of older adults that they knew who still had a spiritual vitality, a courageous passion for life, that they admired, and they described them to the group. The others listened hungrily to these stories, wanting to be given hope that it is possible for the spirit to survive adulthood.
We went from a circle that claimed to have no thoughts or feelings about adulthood as a topic, to expressing deep feelings about independence and responsibility, to the realization that for many of us, becoming an adult was something we deep down believed we would not survive. No wonder it was hard to think about.
And no wonder some of these same people were still trying to arrange UUYAN programming as if we were all still in YRUU.
What are the implications for Young Adult Ministry work? In San Francisco there have been three programmatic responses:
We organized community rituals and rites of passage for claiming adulthood. We have twice held a weekend-long conference where the curriculum gives people a structured opportunity to reflect on what becoming an adult means, culminating in a formal ritual for taking a spiritual step into that rite of passage, into adulthood.
We began asking congregational elders we admired, especially those who had been raised UU, to come and visit the young adult group and just talk to us. We got to see that there are people who are still alive inside, who are still passionate about their ideals, still growing and discovering, still believing that life and life decisions are important and meaningful. When we started the Guest Elders program I admit I was afraid the young adults would be bored, but they all listen with rapt attention, every time. We bring in an elder congregant every two months or so, and invite at least one elder to speak at every conference and overnight. Contrary to what most older UUs seem to believe, young adults are hungry for intergenerational relationships. Often that's the reason, they tell me, they tried coming to church.
We have also continued to have an occasional adulthood-related circle topic now and again. Just to change it into something that can be talked about, in a spiritual community setting. It makes a difference.