In his continued efforts to have the youths of the parish develop holistically, a three-part series on relationships was recently organised by our parish priest Fr Arnold Francis. The facilitators for each session were members of God’s Anointed New Generation (GANG).

These sessions were highly informative, interactive and enjoyable. The first session dealt with a definition of relationships. The subsequent sessions consisted of discussions on sexuality and understanding the relationship pyramid.

According to the Oxford dictionary a relationship is defined as a connection or an emotional association between two people. This definition of a relationship seems not to be understood by many persons. Mistakenly, many think that there is a correlation between a relationship and sexuality, and sexuality is often mistaken for sex. However those of us who participated in the seminar have now come to understand the true meaning of a relationship.

Some young people who participated in the workshop

After much discussion it was agreed that a plausible definition for sexuality would be   “the ‘fire’ within us to reach out to others and have others reach in to us”. It is also the desire to love and be loved.

Our facilitators brought to our attention, that there are actually three aspects of sexuality: the primary, the genital, and lastly, the affective. Primary sexuality being the birth or entry into the world, the genital consisting of all the biological reproductive aspects, and the affective being the produced effects of society on all of us, based on the ideas of what we should look like.

Our discussion also informed that it took time to build that sort of connection or to begin any sort of relations. Before any relationship with anyone can form it must follow a process. All relationships began with communication, followed by honesty, trust and lastly love. As we eventually learned, this could even go on to include marriage and sex. Only when this format is followed will our relationships ever succeed.

Our leaders Avinesh and Mikhail emphasised that before we could ever have proper relationships with one another, we must first establish a relationship with God in our lives.

This is not to say that relationships are impossible without God in our lives, but rather that it is only when we can enter into a relationship with God, will we truly understand how our lives and our relations should be structured.

We can never see the larger picture or the greater idea God has in mind for us if He is not invited to be part of our relationships.

We are truly grateful for this experience. Many thanks to Fr Francis for this initiative. We hope that it is repeated so that others can benefit. Thanks to GANG for sharing and making the time spent together a wonderful experience.