Helen, your most recent mention of Off The Map [One way to find The Way is Off the Map, Viewpoints, Jan. 16] taught me more about another way of being on The Way with Jesus. Thanks also for mentioning Brian McLaren's upcoming visit to Oak Park (April 4-5, First United Church) with practical steps for combating global poverty and injustice. (The man gets around; a year ago I saw a huge billboard in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, announcing his presence and program.)

As I learn more about cybertech venues for being on The Way, this comes to mind: How do these forms of being on The Way move from out there to in here - down to earth, close to home? Putting it another way: Religion, like politics, must be retail. Crass though that sounds, it's what we ask for when praying as our Lord taught us: "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

Here's something down to earth and close to home that brings people of The Way to one of the most important locations in our community: Oak Park and River Forest High School. There's an achievement gap there. We've heard about it over time. We're hearing more about it these days as OPRF Supt. Attila Weninger makes it a key priority.

The achievement gap doesn't appear when 3,176 students arrive each morning and disappear when they leave each afternoon. This Grand Canyon-size chasm between the kids who excel and those who don't reflects the tectonic-like forces at work in family, marriage, race, economics, justice, politics, culture, and not the least, religion in the homes from which the kids come and the larger community of which they are a part.

Nor is the achievement gap unique to our public high school. It's in the Oak Park elementary schools, indeed in every human institution, everywhere, all the time. It's naïve to think that OPRF or any other school can solve the problem by itself. We're all involved, like it or not. Weninger's proposals, framed within four pillars, say as much: parents, community, school, and students.

Weninger reports that those within the high school are working at finding effective remedies for the achievement gap. He notes especially what students themselves say about the problem they live with every school day: mentoring will be effective if upperclassmen not only mentor them one-on-one or in groups in the safety of meetings and structured after-school activities, but also acknowledge them in the hallways, in games, at lunch time, on the street - wherever they each are more vulnerable in front of their peers.

So, a process and program is underway within the high school and Weninger anticipates this program will be ready for implementation in the fall.

The time is ahead, though, he adds, when adult mentors from the community will be needed as well. I know that even now there are adults in our town who have proven skills and high commitment to mentoring kids for whom so much is at stake. Are there more out in our communities who can and will respond? It's not whether they're needed, but how to bring the wider community together with students and staff for effective mutual involvement when that time comes.

And it is coming.

What does The Way have to do with all of this? Everything! The achievement gap is hardly confined to students who make it or not. It's in the fundamental human condition. It reflects how pervasive sin is, mine and yours and all of us, a truth we neglect at our peril. Remedies have no staying power if the diagnosis falls short. Remedies will heal when they are well rooted in people, youth and adults alike, who can outlast frustration, resistance, prejudice, pride, indifference, and whatever else makes giving up attractive. The kids of the high school already know something about this. They'll learn a lot more as they tackle the gap and discover how tough, baffling, and resistant it is.

As the mother of your son, a freshman Huskie with promise, you're in a good position to realize how much courage, want to, and smarts teenagers need to make peer relationships count for good when the chips are down--in the hallways, in sports, in the cafeteria and wherever their good intentions make them vulnerable. Your parenting is utterly vital for that support. That support is not there without you. Being on The Way offers sustenance for your high calling. Hard work though it is, it's good work.

And this is about more than closing a high school achievement gap.

It's following The Way in the wide range of human relationships, crossing barriers that divide, accepting others when its not easy, admonishing and forgiving with sincerity, arguing and learning together, enjoying and respecting each other, and at the deepest level helping each other grow into that fuller human community our God intends by making us all in his image. As kids get in on that now through families and friendships, teachers and mentors, congregations and community involvements, they're better prepared for their future in a world where gaps are daunting, where The Way finds a way.

I believe this about gaps and speak from experience: they've been bridged once and for all. God has come the distance to meet us with truth and mercy, and keeps on coming with an unfathomable love we can count on. Walking The Way of Jesus, cross-centered as it is, in the good company of so many others who help us in their own way see the depth and cost of God's fidelity to the world, means living with readiness for many things, including what's ahead for gap-closers at our high school.