LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS; The Explore Experience

Since the seventies I have been saddened by the number of young people who have been suffering quietly from the rejection of a parent.   Single parent children come in two groups; the single mother who has been used, abused, and abandoned with a child or children and God knows how hard these mothers struggle to give their children the love that is missing.   I remember one 16 year old who had once visited the Church and met me at Adoration returning to pray and tell me that she had just found who her father was and his telephone number.  She had phoned but was met by abusive language and told that he wanted nothing to do with her.  These children feel the loss of a Father and grow up unable often to make lasting relationships.  The Divorced mother also has children with great difficulties, since they often blame themselves for the marriage breakup and feel the absent parent did not like them.    I have spoken to many of these lonely children and tried in the eighties, nineties, and early 2000 to make people in my Church recognise there is a problem not just now but for the future of these children, a large number would be unable to form lasting relationships.   And from my experience looking at the scene the Church in England was then too engaged in being popular with the parents and showing 'understanding' that the problems of the children were completely ignored.  To stand in the pulpit and say that good marriages were an 'ideal' was utter contempt for Christ as far as I was concerned.    In schools in those early days the priest would go in and give Church teaching followed by the teachers who would then talk about condoms.    Little wonder many young people left school with utter contempt for the Church.
But something has been happening for the better.   Recently an organisation called EXPLORE has come on the scene in my local secondary school.    It has been noted that Government sponsored PHSE schemes which taught relationships noticeably omitted words like love and commitment.   But how do you teach these things?   The answer was to invite couples with long term relationships into the schools to tel them how they kept together, how they approached problems together, how they trusted each other and thought of each other in a daily basis.   The young people were intrigued for this examination of a lasting marriage was something new in their lives and it filled them with hope.  They are asked after the talk to fill in a form which asked them questions on commitment, trust, love sex,  and what they had learned from the talk about such topics.  The answers are overwhelmingly positive.    Do you know that less than 5% of young people get the opportunity to ask these questions about marriage?   A light has now shone in the darkness for these largely ignored young people.  One wrote that despite her own experience she saw that marriage was after all something good.   You can learn little more on www.theexploreexperience.co.uk.    It is wonderful when you believe you are alone in seeing these problems to find people who have not just thought of the problem but are coming forward with the solution.