Advice for Young Adults

Description

I’m thinking today about the advice I would give a young adult, and it keeps circling back to clarity and freedom. We share experience, we don’t command it. Over time you learn that while the world keeps changing, some truths still matter deeply. Cynicism, for one, is a killer. It promises insight but delivers a kind of false clarity that binds everyone involved. We tell stories about people, we lock them into motives, and in the process we imprison ourselves. Forgiveness works the opposite way. As one theologian I love puts it, “I unbind a sinful deed from the person who committed it against me.” From a Swedenborgian perspective, spiritual growth always carries a sacred yes and a sacred no. Yes to ordering our loves wisely, because religion helps us keep first things recognizably first. No to the negativity that clogs the arteries of the soul. The New Church teaches that there is something inmost in each of us already connected to heaven, and our work is to clear away what blocks it so that what is truly human and truly loving can come into the light. So my starting advice is simple and demanding. Value clarity. Get rid of cynicism. Let love breathe again.