What a blessing it was to have some of our graduating seniors up front this morning. What a blessing it was to be in this space, in person, and have members of the congregation bless them and send them forth into their next chapter.
Like so many things not very long ago this was a routine thing we did as we came to the end of another church year. Sending forth our seniors into what’s next for them. Sending them forth with our love and blessing. And like so many things lately their path to graduation and to what’s next has not been anything like normal. Their path has been pretty complicated in these last years of Covid with at home learning and loss of so many of the familiar rituals of their high school years. These years have not been easy for many of us but perhaps our young people have been among those most impacted.
Perhaps that is why it is all the more important to acknowledge and to celebrate those milestones.
This is that season when we mark milestones like graduations. I talked to someone the other day who said her child was having his fourth grade graduation this week. I have to confess that I didn’t realize fourth graders had graduations. But as I thought about it, it is important to mark the passages of our lives, whatever the grade, whatever our age. As the writer Sandra Cisneros reminded us in our reading this morning as we go from one year to another it doesn’t just happen automatically. It takes time to find our way into our new reality. Marking those milestones is important.
My own high school graduation was quite a few years ago now but I do remember how important it was. Looking back, it was for me the leaving of not only high school but my leaving the little town in Wisconsin where I grew up to head off to college in a city a long way from home. I remember the high school band playing pomp and circumstance, a little ploddingly, as all 42 of us in my class made our way down the aisle of the school gym. I gave a speech at my graduation based on the quote from a man named William Allen White, a famous newspaper editor from the early 20th Century, who said, “I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today! …”
I don’t remember what I said in that speech but I can say here today that I’m really thankful that cell phones and their ability to record things like graduation speeches did not exist back then.
Each of us, I expect, carry memories of times of transition with us. They may be recent or a long time ago. They may be of some formal passage or maybe that moment, that for whatever reason, is with us still, seemingly as clear as the moment it happened. They may be happy but they may be moments we have spent a lifetime trying to recover from. We bring all of those histories, all of those life experiences, into the stories of our lives that we carry forward.
And I wonder if that isn’t especially so in this time that we are in. We are all figuring out where we are in this Covid, post covid or we’re not quite sure when and how we’ll know if it is post covid time. I think we’re all figuring out what our new normal is. Or maybe more accurately the newly emerging but we aren’t fully sure yet new normals about how life will be. And I think that is true for individuals as well as communities.
It has been interesting lately hearing stories from the community in our chats in the narthex before or after the service. Or in zoom rooms as we gather for virtual meetings. Those who are very much taking the cautious and slow approach when it comes to reentering. Those who are pretty content to not rush back into things. And there are those who have been all over the place, wasting no time getting on airplanes and trains and automobiles, ready to venture out to all kinds of places. For some it feels as if there is a whole lot of pent up energy to release. And most of us probably somewhere in the middle of it all, finding our way one step, one moment, at a time. Finding our way back into the world.
This has been, at least for me, and maybe for you too, a time of discombobulation. A time that has challenged my sense of where I am and how the world is ordered. And I know it is going to take some time before whatever feels like normal may return.
In life we integrate our experiences, our histories, our learning and we find our way—or at least hopefully we do. in this process we get to know how things work, something about others and maybe even something about ourselves. We come to know our gifts and also our limitations. We figure out the things we have some modicum of control over and the vast sea of things that we have no control over at all. And I wonder if these covid times have asked us to see things in perhaps ways we weren’t seeing them before.
Maybe we’ve once again come face to face with some of those lessons that we seem to be asked to keep learning over and over again. Or maybe this liminal time has allowed us to break free of some of those patterns that were well established and hard to see past. Maybe in the process of finding ourselves discombobulated we have been reminded once again of all the things we know and that we don’t know.
And perhaps it is in midst of endings and beginnings that we are asked to take a pause and notice more than ever. Maybe it is in the midst of beginnings and ending that new learnings can become more apparent. Maybe it is in the process of day by day living that we keep figuring out who it is we are and where it is we are going.
The philosopher John Keats described it this way: “Do you not see how necessary a world of Pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul? A place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!”[1]
Schooling an intelligence and making it a soul.
How our souls get shaped gets us into the realm of mystery. We are born with inherent qualities. We are influenced by the people and environments around us. All of this shapes us to become the people we become. And still so much of our response to any given event will vary from person to person. Over time our lives take a shape and form unique to us.
Staying present with our world these days requires what might be called soul work. Trying to hold a world where gun violence plagues us in what feels like some unending tragedy we are all caught up in, some tragedy where it is hard to imagine a path forward. A world where the legacy of racism and sexism and transphobia keep coming round with all the hated they perpetuate. How the cycles of war and bullying seems so hard to break. How sometimes keeping despair at bay can be a very difficult thing.
Amid all there is to hold, I have to confess that I have kept finding myself drawn to watching the observances marking Queen Elizabeth’s 70 years on the British throne this week. I will confess that I like to watch the pomp and circumstance—and the British can do pomp and circumstance like nobody else. And I note that being drawn into the pomp and circumstances doesn’t mean we also don’t need to hold the legacy of colonialism and imperialism that’s part of the story of those 70 years—and hundreds of years before that. But I also have had to note how the Queen’s presence and her duty to god and country is a kind of glue for that country’s identity and all the questions that come with it—whether that will hold when she dies—whenever that inevitable day will come.
And what about our lives? What are those things that are constants for us? What are those things that endure, that hold us steady? People, likely. Places. Stories. Communities. Those things that make for our own bridges from one chapter to the next, from one birthday to the next, from one graduation to the next. What are those things that hold us steady?
Many of us haven’t marked 70 years in the same role. But no matter our age we are asked to stop and notice sometimes those turning points. Those times like birthdays when we notice where we have been and where we are going—even if may take us a while to figure out where we’ve been and where it is we are going. To pause and to ask how it is we are graduating, the endings and the new beginnings we are seeing in our own lives and in the lives of those around us.
I think about those things with our church right now as well. A new senior minister has been called. Rev. Alison has been welcomed here as the new senior minister and she is now in the process of saying goodbye to the congregation she has been serving before she and her family make their move west. And next Sunday will be Rev. Bill’s last time in the pulpit and the following Sunday we’ll celebrate his ministry. It will be important for each of us and for all of us as a community to do that well.
So how is it that we stay present to a world that is so broken and at the same time so beautiful?
What is asked of us no matter what our age is that we keep learning. We are asked to be in the present time and bring into it all the experience that life has brought us. One experience is integrated into all our other experiences. Life moves, maybe not in a straight line but a circle, or perhaps a spiral.
Marking the passages is important and each of us, I think, handles change in our own way. Some of us welcome it with gusto. Some of us resist as long as we can. That was one of the things I took away from a reflection our Board of Trustees had the other night on the theme of endings and beginnings—that we each approach changes in our way. And I noted when one board member reminded us that the one thing we can all count on is change, that inevitably things are going to change.
We come to know that there is knowledge and that there is wisdom and that the two are not necessarily the same. And knowing that wisdom doesn’t just come from a certain amount of learning or from reaching a certain age. And perhaps part of that wisdom is a coming to know—and also accepting—not only what we know but also what we don’t know. It is our ability to live in that place of unknowing and for that to be all right.
That in all of this there’s a paradox. Life gets more complex and at the same time it gets simpler. Sometimes it is about emptying—it is about being in that place of not-knowing. It is in that place of being receptive.
The writer Thomas Moore introduces the idea, a little tongue-in-cheek, that we consider a system he calls “lower education.” He writes, “In this school a student comes to us with a Ph. D. and after four years of “learning” we withdraw the degree. The next step is a four-year high school course, beginning as a senior and “advancing” to freshman, when we take away the diploma. Finally come the elementary years, beginning with eighth grade and descending to first. After completing the first grade and student becomes the teacher.”[2]
In these complicated and even discombobulating times may each of us find ourselves in that learning mode. No matter our age or stage may be stay present with what is here before us. And may we pay attention to the sign posts we find along the way. May we mark the graduations of our lives—big or small—and through it all—each day that we live—give thanks.
Prayer
Spirit of life, be with us in this moment. This one wild and precious moment we have been given. May we find a way to live with our hearts open to all that life has to offer us. In this time of beginnings and endings be with all of us and with this our beloved community, as we look to a new chapter together with hope. As we look to what has been and give thanks. Help us to know our story, where we have been, that we might be grounded as we discover where it is we are going. In this place we call beloved may we find ourselves lifted up. May we find ourselves held. Amen.
Benediction
Know matter where you might find yourself, know that here you have a place to call home. Help us spirit to live in faith, in hope and in love. Amen.
[1] Schooling Our Intelligence by Thomas Moore. Parabola Spring 1997.
[2] Schooling Our Intelligence by Thomas Moore. Parabola Spring 1997.
Topics: Endings and Beginnings