Football and Faith

Junior Youth Around the World

This Saturday Oxford University Baha’i Society is going to have an amazing workshop for anyone who wants to get involved in social action through junior youth empowerment!

What is Junior Youth Spiritual Empowerment?

The objective of the junior youth groups are the empowerment of participants through the development of spiritual perception, the enhancement of their power of expression, and the building of a sound moral structure.  The program molds the capacities of all the junior youth for service to humanity, releasing their energies for a purposeful and constructive life. Now tell me, who doesn’t want to do that??

The Junior Youth Empowerment Project

The junior youth program is a globally developed social and economic development initiative that began some thirty years ago in a number of countries around the world. Its purpose is to empower young people to contribute effectively to the advancement of civilization. Today there are junior youth groups in every part of the world, who meet in various places (homes, schools, under trees, centres).

Why Junior Youth?

Junior Youth are young people between the ages of 11-14 years old. This is a very important time when jr youth are transitioning from being children into being youth. It is during this period of life that the majority of behaviours and habits are developed. They are impacted by a number of different forces (media, society, friends etc). To find out more come on Saturday.

Why Service?

Empowerment

One of the main objectives of junior youth groups is to empower the young people to be able to contribute to the advancement of world civilization. Individual and social transformation go hand in hand, their is a great need to encourage young people to better their environment through service. It is impossible to chance just the individual or society, it must be a dual process to be effective.

Why Language?

There is great importance in developing a rich vocabulary and eloquent speech. Junior youth are dis-empowered when they cannot express what they see and experience in the world. More on Saturday!

Why Religion?

The majority of junior youth believe in religion, or ‘a’ religion, and this is a topic could not be avoided. In families, and all around the world, religion is a powerful social force, and the majority of the peoples of the world have beliefs. Junior youth groups make a space so that people from all religions could come together and make the world a better place and at the same time talk about what spirituality is.

A Baha’i from Canada describes this so well
“This is very important because junior youth have many dimensions to their reality; they are physical beings, they are social beings, but they are also spiritual beings. We have to help ensure that all these aspects of life become integrated and one, not separate from each other. It is actually when we start making separations that things become confusing and problems arise. We tend to fragment life in compartments, life, school, work, church/mosque, family, and we begin to act differently in each setting, until you end up forgetting who you are. This is because spiritual and material, or intellectual, progress needs to go hand in hand.”

Where & When: Saturday, February 14 at Brasenose College (Lecture room 11) from 10 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Last night was a long night at work. It was a wonderful night that ended in a brawl.

On Tuesday nights for work I run a youth club for young unaccompanied refugees and asylum seekers. On average we have about 33 boys attend. They come in and have a soda and play pool, surf on the net, play video games, mix music and chat with volunteers. They are a great group of guys and I always enjoy my hours in the club. In the past few weeks we have had a number of fights with last night being the worse, where two of the boys ganged up on one of the others and broke a pool stick over his head and on his back. They waited till one of the volunteers’ back was turned and WHAM, WHAM… no eye witnesses.

CRISIS?!

I’m pretty good with responding to crisis situations, but I didn’t see this one coming… with no one who saw what happened and a boy with a banged head, a broken pool stick and a lot of language problems what do you do?? I kept thinking over and over in my head… “noble being, noble being. Clare you must remember that they are noble beings, and you must uphold justice.” I was like great, so now I know WHAT to do, just not HOW to do it. whatever isn’t dealt with now will resurface later and it could be worse.

The power of a name

After initial examination we have understood that the all the recent fights have been in response to something that has happened in school and that wasn’t dealt with. In this case, it was because one boy allegedly called another boy Bit$%. Imagine? This is a word that the boys did not even know 6 months ago before they arrived in this country and yet the word has such a powerful force that they are willing to risk their asylum claim in order to save face? What does this say about their identity? What does this say about the need to develop language skills and a strong moral framework?

A letter from my past

Writing Home

I was just cleaning out my old Yahoo mail account and i went back to the first e-mail that I sent from it and this was it. I love reading over what I was feeling at various points in my life. It’s rather a personal e-mail that I sent out to the entire world… eish. It’s actually a funny story for a number of months I had accidentally been sending very personal and private e-mails that were intended only for my mother to about 70 people around the world. I had been accidentally pressing the wrong button and sending it to the ‘mother of all groups’ and not ‘mother’. I started getting these very personal e-mail from friends across Alaska, I was so touched that they were sharing experiences very similar to what I was going through… I kept asking myself, ‘how did they know that I was going through something similar?!’ only later my mother commented on how courageous i was to share to openly what I was experiencing with so many people did I realize that I was writing to 70 people and not to ‘mom’. After that I continued writing them letters, but changed, Dear Mom to Dearly loved friends, or Dear loved ones. This was the last of the e-mails surrounding my first two years in East Africa.

Dearly Loved Friends,                 Tuesday, September 3, 2002 10:55 AM

Here is the first of my mass e-mails for this year. I have a wild assortment of emotions racing through foggy mind. I feel so scared, and yet excited. I feel like a cold wind has whipped my back leaving a deep wound and at the same time I have been given the most-great honor that a girl could ask for. I feel sad that I am leaving so much behind, but at the same time I see gold and jewels on the trail of my travels. Yes… I am one very confused girl. I have been contemplating so many different things these past few months and new worries have crept into my soul. Neither fears that no one can soothe, nor comfort can ease. One fear is of the condition of my heart, is it being pure? Or do I have some ulterior motive that only my inner-tongue can voice? Am I pioneering solely out of love for Baha’u'llah, and desire to change this world, or does ego play a part? I can tell you all what my greatest fear is. It isn’t snakes or mockery, although I can’t say I enjoy those, it is that my ego will take over the gifts God gave me and I will turn into a monster. I fear that the more public praise I receive will be taken to heart and will eat away the life I have. To me that is the scariest thing that I will face… myself. I ask you to please pray that I learn to only love my self through loving God, but not through the deeds He allows me to perform.

I leave in just 4 days to start my journey back to East Africa. I will make a few stops on the way to visit some old friends and family. On the 13th I will arrive at my new pioneering post, Kenya. I will attend a university there for the next four years. It is my hope that it will be more accredited than the one I went to last year that gave me absolutely zero transfer credits, but it gave me years of experience. My plans are to travel during my breaks where ever needs people to travel-teach and do institute work. As long as funds hold up, I hope to take off one semester every year to travel to one country and offer my services in Ruhi. I am very excited about starting study circles and devotional meetings at the university; I just hope I will find the strength to be more than I am and to offer myself just a little more.

Sorry this is so short and doesn’t really say a whole lot, Once I get a little more packed I will have my thoughts together more fully.

So much love to you all!

Clare Jamal O’Brien

Snow

Snowy Oxford

These past few weeks have been really busy and borderline crazy. Gracie and I have moved into our new home. We were warmly welcomed by snow by the foot! It covered our home, yard and sidewalk with a beautiful blanket of white. When i looked out in the morning I felt like I was back in Alaska and I was half-expecting all the neighbors to have Alaskan accents… yet alas, the snow was Alaskan as my day got. England is not used to a few feet of snow and everything seemed to shut down… even the buses that ran to my house. Later in the day they started up again but I was aware the each environment reacts differently and has a different experience when confronted with the same thing.

Our football practice also had to be cancelled. I must admit that I would love to have seen the 30 lads running around in the snow looking for the white ball camouflaged in the snow. However after our 2 hour fun in the snow they would still have to walk the better part of 50 min to their homes in the freezing cold. So football was postponed to this coming week. I was relieved to know that I wouldn’t have to bike or bus during the night. Again in Alaska, this would not have stopped a team from playing but our reaction to a few feet of snow has to take into consideration a whole different aspect of reality, its so new here that we don’t have years of learning to draw upon in reacting to it.

Learning how to learn

Learning in life is very much the same. Sometimes things are so new for us that we haven’t had time to properly prepare ourselves… or more importantly we haven’t had the practice of preparing ourselves. I guarantee you that there is nothing so unique about England that we CAN’T respond in a positive way to a few feet of snow. I think that if it were to continue on like this for a few weeks we would develop methods on how to adapt ourselves and prosper even in new conditions. We would pull out chains for bus tires, we would make more salt available for sidewalks, we would buy shovels and develop the muscle power to use them. We would assume a humble posture of learning and strive.

I think this is a lesson that I need to take to heart… that there are bound to be conditions, experiences, situations and relationships that I am not well suited for. They might make me feel like 4 feet of snow in sunny Kenya. It happens all the time! Right now our beautiful junior youth group, who are from the Nepali community, have been training to be assistant children’s class teachers. They have helped us to start a neighborhood children’s class with their younger brothers/ sisters and friends. Sometimes, it feels really awkward… like we have no idea what is going on… like 24 hours of sunlight in Alaska in December (a shock to the system)… but we keep making the effort and are trying to learn how to learn.

Seeing what I want to see

Looking for the Beauty

Sometimes I look at a talented football player and I admire their skills, talents and efforts. Many times in my past I have been so impressed with their talent that I found it easy to appreciate everything about the person. I often put people up on pedestals and in my mind adorned them with qualities that I didn’t actually know they have… say for instance if my attention was captivated by a striker who had precise and powerful goals, I might assume that they must also have the skills as a goal keeper, coaching, defending and they probably were also a great referee. In my mind they were in general an amazing football player, end of story.

Spiritual Perception

Looking at the best qualities in every person is a spiritual quality that is important to have. Abdu’l-Baha tells us, “always look at the good and not at the bad. If a man has ten good qualities and one bad one, to look at the ten and forget the one; and if a man has ten bad qualities and one good one, to look at the one and forget the ten.” However when we put someone up on a pedestal based on our perceptions of who they are, I think we do that person a great unjustice. When we develop our ideas about a person based on

Up on a Pedestal

heresay, gossip or speculation we deprive ourselvs from noticing their genuine talents, qualities and gems. As we draw closer to the people we have on pedistals sometimes become disapointed to realize that our creation of who they are and who they are in reality are not the same (and we think our version is much better). I think the opposite might have some truth to it too… I have a funny feeling that niether is healthy.Its a hard fall from a pedestal… especially if someone doesn’t want to be sitting up there. I think it test peoples egos in ways that can be dangerous.

Developing Perfect Vision

My darling little brother, who just so happens to feature in many of my posts,  used to tell me that purposely tried to be below average so that when he was average people would be impressed. I’m not sure that I follow that logic. I guess what I have been learning is that I must learn to detach myself from what others think of me… in fact not think so much about myself.

“look at one another with the eye of perfection; look at Me follow Me, be as I am, take no thought for yourselves or your lives, whether ye eat or whether ye sleep, whether ye are comfortable, whether ye are well or ill, whether ye are with friends or foes, whether ye receive praise or blame; for all of these things ye must care not at all. Look at Me and be as I am; ye must die to yourselves and to the world, so shall ye be born again and enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Behold a candle how it gives its light. It weeps its life away drop by drop in order to give forth its flame of light.”