Remember? -the Malayalam movie titled 'ABCD'? Two young Malayali friends who grew up in America without any sense of responsibility are in a way deported to India by one's father without providing any financial security- was the background of it. In a sense, it was a survival movie. Those young people, in unfamiliar and poor conditions, take out their survival skills and manage to return to the United States was the theme. If we consider it in another way, the story was about providing strong muscles of experience to those who grew up without any real life experience.

This principle is applicable in any given field. It would hold good in educating kids, in training youth, and in forming Religious or seminarians. The methodology Jesus used in training his disciples was the same. He did not in the first place train them by merely giving lectures or classes. He took his disciples to the huts of the poor, in the boats of the fishermen, the houses of the tax collectors, and the towns of the Samaritans. He taught them to receive from all these people and to give them what they had. He not only made them to serve food to a hungry crowd, but also took them along to walk on a Sabbath hungry. He sent them out two by two to preach, with clear instruction not to take food or money with them. He enabled them to rely on the goodness of the people and to accept the hospitality of the needy. Every single day they saw people in sickness, poverty, deprivation, isolation, loss, death, and pain. All these developed compassion in them. He made them donate the five loaves and two fish that had been offered to them by the crowds. In short, through all these he made his disciples vulnerable.

He didn't teach them to pray. He only taught them to pray when they asked for it. He gave them the opportunity every day to see, hear, and feel the vulnerabilities of humans. That was only the first level. That alone is of little use.

Love makes one vulnerable. At a second level, in his own life he showed them how to be vulnerable in his flesh; in his life. In Jesus vulnerability became flesh. That was the great second level. This second level in the lesson of vulnerability is very important. Only when you can teach at this second level can you get absorbed to the third level.

The third level is the level of glory that goes beyond death - to pass through death and come back.

Imparting experiences is the way of true training. It is not like training a parrot by repeating "I love you!"