iPhones? facebook? tech-free life? or toys that beep?
knitting? gardening? skateboarding? or trapeze-ing?
fine lace? ripped jeans? sweater vests? or tube tops?
twittering? texting? sending postcards? or visiting?
I’m imagining a large-scale poll, administered by Gallup or the like, that tracks dozens of statements in the form “I love____” across ages 1-100. “I love facebook” would probably spike at the 25-30 range, “I love David Letterman” a decade or two older, “I love xbox” around 15 or so, “I love canasta” certainly in the later generations of the graph. My point being: different generations like different things.
Here’s the puzzle. How do you bring people together across generational lines, when they just aren’t interested in the same kinds of things? Throw a bridge party, and certain folks never arrive. Announce a trip to the water park, and plenty of people will announce they suddenly lost their bathing suits and can’t come. These may be obvious examples, but consider: Who wants to go to a pizza party? And who wants to have a committee meeting and write an important mission statement?
The Presbyterian Women’s magazine, Horizons, just published an issue that is all about “bridges between generations.” SCORE, says I, that’s exactly what I need! In the assortment of things I now do at MPC, “intergenerational events” (with the Family Life committee) are among my tasks. This is something we take seriously at MPC. “Multigenerational” is proudly trumpeted across the front of our webpage. But we need to focus on making that a deeper reality. So I’ve been working on this question: how do we gather people across the generations?
The first thing that comes to mind for me is “keep it simple.” A statement like “I love food,” for example, would probably keep a pretty straight line across the graph I imagined. OK- so we gather for food.
Another statement – this one ungraphable – has endless varieties: “I love Susan,” or “I love Bob,” etc. We love the people we know, across the generations. If we get to know and love one another better across the generations, the draw to come to an event might no longer be “it’ll be so much fun” but “Megan will be there!”
The last one – I’d imagine this would graph a straight line – is “I love surprises.” When we get together we never know what kind of connection will be uncovered, what common interests we will discover, or how we will be transformed by our encounters with one another. Get ready to be surprised by someone new!
I look forward to surprises with all of you.
~Talitha~
PS and personal plug: the Horizons magazine includes an article I wrote, about my intergenerational roadtrip with the Presbyterian Hunger Program last year. The only problem is that Horizons doesn’t love the internet as much as my generation does… and only a small percentage of the content of this magazine is available online! So you can see a brief teaser of the article I wrote there, but if you want to read the whole article you’ll have to subscribe… or come by the MPC office and see a copy there. Of what IS available online, however, I recommend this article: the re-fashion show !