generational divides & bridges

I have noticed a very interesting thing through teaching classes at the church. I have classes with an overwhelming amount of people, not of parent’s generation, but of their parents’. Teaching to a retirement age crowd seems very different than the younger baby boomers. I’m not sure of the exact reasons for the difference.

I feel more certain around the 60-70 plus crowd than the 30-50 year old. Oddly enough there seems to be a better connection between us. That connection goes beyond the traverse of technological divide. Though I can’t chat with them on facebook—which the 40&50 somethings have caught onto—we are able to chat about things face to face.

It seems that there is less of an ego threat between me and the retired folks than the middle aged. I don’t mind talking to my grandparents, and they don’t seem to mind listening to someone much younger teach. {At the start of it all, I really thought that this just wouldn’t work; they wouldn’t listen to someone so young.} I’m not sure if this an ego thing, simply a result of some weird authoritarian struggle between parent-child generations; so the grandparent-child relationship can skip over that stumbling block. Maybe this is true. The middle aged are my parents; they still have the vested interest in holding me under their authority. They are less likely to want to hear me.

I still don’t fail to be surprised that these chaps keep showing up, to listen to someone who is a third the age of them, in many cases.

Relatedly:

I have noticed one thing. The grand parent has experienced sacrifice. They know it—it is real to them. The parent has no experience with sacrifice, they have rode the tidal wave of prosperity. They don’t know how to live without it. The GPs have lived it; the Ps only can talk about it.

That leaves my generation without the knowledge/experience of living simply. We never were taught how to live any way but the life of comfort. Though as it turns out, many desire a different way—a way that the grandparent knows a thing about. I have seen this connection beyond simply my experiences, it can be seem on much larger scales. There can be links to much of the green/sustainable/community-centered/shop-local type of movements as a return to something of old—it is definitely not anything new, it just happens to be trendy.

I am lucky to have connected with folks of that earlier generation; I’m not sure what they see in me, but I know that I can learn a lot from them. I could worry about how healthy churches need lots of young people, but I’m grateful for being able to be a part of generating those cross-generational ties, nonetheless.