Building Relationships - Rapport/Loving Kindness

268 Thomas Koshy
nious growth of the young person’s inner resources. It is the relationship that helps to bring out the best in the youngster. For the caregiver/educator this means being with the young, not merely in physical sense but more importantly at the level of the mind and heart.”
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This is a relationship of trust which cannot fail. The youngsters had the temptation to return to the enjoyments of the street. It was this trust which they found difficult to betray. Don Bosco was therewith his loving kindness in time of crises and encouraged them to trust him. This mutual charismatic love and trust is at the heart of the Loving Kindness in the preventive system. Don Bosco’s originality lies in his method, but his greatest originality lay in the way he handles the element of loving kindness.
The basis of the Preventive System is a thoroughly Catholic anthropology belief in the basic goodness of the human nature coupled with a healthy and realistic acceptance of its woundedness. Don Bosco followed neither Jansenist rigorism nor Rousseau’s naturalism. He seems to have taken elements from both. Like the
Jansenists, Don Bosco stressed individual attention, gentleness and constant vigilance. Unlike them, he believed in the innate goodness of the young in spite of all the wrongs he may have committed in the past. Don Bosco allowed expression, noise, cheerfulness and made place for affection.
The young who manage to thrive, despite the harshness of the environment that surrounds them, have much to teach. They remind us that competence, confidence, and caring can flourish even under adversity. As noted, we call this quality resilience in a person. The educator does well if he is able to identify resilience in a young person because this comes out as the strength in a person and hence can be used as the foundation on which further strengths could be built. We recall the incident when Don Bosco found a boy who had no abilities to mention and he asked him if he could whistle. This appreciative enquiry approach is a reflection of Don
Bosco’s deep involvement in the lives of the young. This style of education works as a nursery for the all round growth in the young - spiritual, moral and intellectual. Finally, the young person is prepared to go out into society and live a life as honest, self-reliant and responsible citizen. The positive and enabling presence (assistance in traditional language) could be used as the means to help the young at risk to develop secure bonds with caring adults.
“Unless we look at a person and seethe beauty there is in this person, we cannot contribute anything to him or her. One does not help a person by discerning what is wrong, what is ugly, what is distorted. Christ looked at everyone He met, at the prostitute, at the thief, and saw the beauty hidden there. Perhaps it was distorted, perhaps damaged, but it was beauty nonetheless, and what He did was to call out this beauty. This is what we must learn to do with regard to others. But to do so we must first have a purity of heart, a purity of intention, openness which is not always there. so that we can listen, can look,
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Palackapilly George, The Three R’s of Don Bosco’s Education System,” in You Touched
us: We have grown, Palathingal Pius (ed, Kristu Jyothi Publications Bangalore, 2014: p. 94.

The relevance of Don Bosco’s preventive System. 269
and can seethe beauty which is hidden. Everyone of us is in the image of God, and everyone of us is like a damaged icon. But if we were given an icon damaged by time, damaged by circumstances, or desecrated by human hatred, we would treat it with reverence, with tenderness, with broken- heartedness. We would not pay attention primarily to the fact that it is damaged, but to the tragedy of its being damaged. We would concentrate on what is left of its beauty, and not of what is lost of its beauty. And this is what we must learn to do with regard to each person”
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