Baccalaureate Speech Episcopal

Student, parents, families, teachers, staff...Welcome. And congratulations to the class of 2014.  You, my friends, stand at one of the most pivotal moments of your lives.  If you find your parents weeping and acting like idiots, dont mind them.  We who have left high school many years ago, we know what it is that is happening to you.  We understand the magnitude of this night and of tomorrow's graduation ceremony.  For when you walk across that stage, your whole life will change.  The ground will quite literally shift from under you.  You will, with one decisive step, move from childhood into full fledged adulthood.  And yes, there are lots of small adjustments that will happen before and after that moment.  You will still need your parents from time to time, but in essence, you will be adults. College-bound, you will make choices that will affect your entire lives.

So first, some practical advice from a person who does a lot of weddings and other huge life changing events.  Bend your knees and breathe.  Try to stay awake so you remember the day and don't worry about what you feel.  Its simply too much to fully take in.  Who knows how you will respond?  

If we human beings really woke up to what was happening to us on this tiny planet hurtling through space at millions of miles per hour, we would be scared all the time.  God made us only be able to take it all in in small doses.  So you probably will not take it all in tomorrow, but you can watch and be awake and remember.  Watch the faces of your best friends who have walked with you through all these years, the ones who drove you mad and the ones who you can't imagine living without. Watch the faces of your teachers, who have poured their love and wisdom into you in ways that you will only fully appreciate years later.  Watch, most of all, the faces of your parents who have sacrificed and worried and loved and prayed and hoped for you all these years.  In a way, their lives are changing as much as yours.  Be nice to them. They are happy for you but they are also sad.  They are having a lot of complicated feelings right now. They have to say goodbye not so much to you as to your childhood. This can be really hard for them but also joyful and so many mixed emotions make people act weird.  So forgive them if they act weird. Look into the eyes of all your loved ones tonight and tomorrow.  You will be able to see their love for you. Such events are so beautiful that they can be almost blinding. It is like catching a glimpse of God himself.

It is typical for someone to give you a few pearls of wisdom as you get ready make your way across that stage and graduate from Episcopal School of Jacksonville. My advice for you, every single day of your life, is very simple.  I want you to remember this.  Every single day, for the rest of your life, I want you to do two things.  I want you to do something that scares you and I want you to play.

That is strange advice coming from me.  If you knew my past you would know that the greatest struggle of my life has been with my father.  My father has suffered from massive chronic depression every day of his adult life.  And his depression also was and is coupled with anxiety.  He is so scared that he can barely function.  I never knew if he would be able to get out of bed in the morning.  So I prayed every day like crazy, that my dad would simply survive the day.  I remember riding the school bus on the way to school and looking at every church steeple and at every steeple saying a prayer for my dad. The prayer would last until I saw another steeple.  The church was a source of strength and peace for me then and it always has been. The church gave me courage to face the day. But I was one serious little girl with a great weight on her shoulders.  So why would I want you to play?

My first memories of playing were in a church.  My mother, who was a concert pianist and a composer, would practice up in the chancel area of this beautiful big church in downtown New Haven, Connecticut.  While she was playing, she would only turn on the lights in the chancel area. So I would take off my shoes and run and slide down the marble aisles in my socks.  And i would hide under the pews.  There was this cool space right under the pulpit that was like a cave.  I played and explored and ran and danced and hid.  And I was free. It is no coincidence that I devoted my life to serving the very place where I could play.  To this day, when I walk into a church, I feel this strange combination of both safety and freedom.  And when I travel, I look for the church steeples.

I wanted to be an actress, Meryl Streep in fact was exactly who I wanted to be. Getting up on stage scared me, but I did it again and again and it gave me life and confidence and I explored all these amazing characters in theater and learned to sing and dance.  I found that there was this link between what scared me and what actually envigorated me. The two were not always so far apart.

At Vassar, I studied theater, but it did not hold the excitement for me that religion did.  I traveled to Russia by myself to study the Eastern Orthodox Church and what they call the divine drama.  I was terrified to fly half-way across the world.  I was scared to speak another language and try to understand another people. I worked in orphanages. And the experience changed me forever. It was in Russia that I gradually realized I wanted to be a priest. I wanted other people to find the strength and peace in church that I found.  And the first time I had to walk into a pulpit and preach, I was scared to death. In fact, I still am scared.  Every single time I step into this pulpit, I'm scared. And the day that I am not scared and in awe of what I am trying to do is the day that I should retire. 

Jesus tells us that we are in a battle with the forces of darkness.  Everything that you do on this earth has cosmic significance.  You are important.  Don't ever let anyone convince you otherwise.  No matter what you chose to do with your life, you are important. And you should be scared, not debilitated, but just scared, because every decision that you make is vastly important to God. Why do you think that the angels had to tell everyone, when they appeared, not to be afraid?  If you are going to stand in the presence of angels, you are going to be afraid.  And if you are going to open your eyes to the presence and beauty of God in the faces of the people you love, you will be afraid. Or the ancient Hebrews had another word for this kind of fear, they called it awe.

Becoming comfortable, living life in order to avoid fear, this is the best way to sleep through life and there is nothing more offensive to God than a life half-lived.

We live in an era of rapid technological advances.  Many people are scared that the internet and technology will ruin the human brain.  But let me give you a few other moments in history in which people were afraid...

Socrates, when told that words might be written down on a page, was terrified and thought that it was a terrible idea.  It would capture meaning and pin it down in time!  He advised against it, but his students knew better and Plato wrote down much of what Socrates said.

When Guttenberg invented the printing press, scholars such as Nicolas Perotti were terrified and thought that it was an awful idea. "Now anyone is free to print what they wish!" he lamented. Or the poet William Stafford wrote that he was afraid because "closing the book, I find that I have left my head inside."

These things called books were terrifying and new, but they were the best thing that happened to us. These innovations were created by those who new how to play, who were not afraid to create, to try something new.  Liberated from their fear, they were able to create and we grew and expanded as a human race. 

In this new digital revolution, keep on stretching yourself.  It is the great innovators, the people who are willing to scare themselves enough to try something new, these are the folks that are rising ahead. Will we wear glasses with all our information in them, like living in a digital world that interprets what we are seeing? Will we find new ways to interact online and in cyberspace?  You are the people who will answer these questions but you must be willing to go on a limb and try something completely ludicrous to get there.  And that means learning to both play and be afraid.

JK Rowling, when she gave the commencement speech at Harvard, told them all that they had not failed enough to be truly successful.  The greatest creativity comes when you are on the edge and scared and dont know if any of this makes sense. That is the creative place where God dwells.  

So make a vow to do something every day that frightens you. And then look out into the world and find your sources of strength and comfort, your church steeples, you might say. Friends, books, loved ones, music, art, food...whatever you love and that gives you energy. Hold onto these things as you step out into adulthood.  And play! Find out what brings your joy. And remember, most of all, that Jesus was scared too. 

Many Rooms: A Vision of Heaven

It is evening, the night before Jesus is to die. He is sitting with his best friends. He has just washed their feet. It is time for Jesus to say whatever he has to say. This is the last night, his last will and testament. And Jesus tries to tell his friends about heaven.

"In my Father's house," he says, "there are many rooms."

My grandmother had a huge house up the Hudson River from New York City. The house had nine bedrooms, which meant that every grandchild could own a room. My cousin Jody and I claimed a small room with two twin beds at the end of a long hallway. The hallway was full of pictures of our family, a gallery of memories: our parents wedding photos, grandparents, great grandparents. The room was ours. My grandmother kept it just the same for us. There was a certain smell. It was ours.

When I was going to have my first baby, we spent months on the nursery. We had Noah's ark theme. People gave us such great Noah's ark gifts. I made sure that the crib was well built for the baby, a great rocking chair, paintings, drapes. I needed to have that nursery ready to welcome my baby. It was my way of making it clear that there was a place in my life for my first child. I would just sit in that nursery and rock in the rocking chair, thinking of my baby and what it would be like to hold him in that room.

Jesus was trying to tell his disciples that God was preparing a place for them in heaven. Each one of them would have a special place, designed just for them. And God does the same thing for us. When we are born into eternal life, we will find that God has a place for us, designed specially for us, in heaven. My heavenly place would certainly look different than yours. God has so many areas that each one of us can be welcomed to a place just our own, lined with our favorite people, our colors, our flowers...a place of rest, refreshment, beauty and peace.

How can heaven have so many different places? Most of us tend to think of heaven as having a uniform quality for all people, a destination without complexity or variety. Most images of heaven in movies or tv show a plain white place, very sparce with little in it. It never looks comfortable or like home at all. I wonder why we are prone to think of heaven in such simple, bland, boring terms. Jesus assures us that there are many places within heaven. It is a complex and multifaceted place, where there is not only room for everyone but also specifically a special place just for you.

Jesus promises that he will come back for us and take us to the place he has prepared for us.

JD and I had been married only two years. I was to graduate Seminary and we planned to move to Connecticut, where we both had jobs. But I had to take some final exams so JD went ahead to find us a house. To this day, I can't believe that I actually bought a house sight unseen but I trusted his taste. We were the kind of couple who registered for wedding gifts with no disagreements. He knew me and what I liked. And I trusted him to buy us a house.

I will never forget first walking into this place that I knew was mine. It was like meeting an old friend. It just felt right. I was home.

Jesus says that he wants to bring us to himself. He goes ahead to get the space ready for us.

When a beloved mother or father is aging and must move into assisted living, often the children will create a new home for them. My friend Ed, after his wife died, had to move to assisted living. So his son had his favorite belongings set up in the new space, compete with his model airplanes and his favorite paintings. His son made a home for him. Ed called it his window to heaven.

Jesus was trying to tell us that heaven will not be some hotel that you don't recognize or some empty space full of white clouds. Heaven will be your true home and no one knows how to get it ready for you better than Jesus. The homes you have here are just reflections, shadows of your true home, where there don't need to be pictures on the walls of the hallways because the people you love will there there themselves, sitting on the sofa, smiling and ready for you to arrive.

In 1989, an earthquake shook the country of Armenia, killing thirty thousand people. Moments after the tremors ceased, a father rushed to the elementary school where his son studied. The school had collapsed. The father kept hearing his own promise to his son ringing in his ears, "No matter what happens, I will always come for you." When all the other parents were weeping and wailing, this father got to work. Using his bare hands, he began to remove the rubble. The other parents told him that it was useless. The children had been crushed. But the father would hear none of it. Without argument or explanation, he continued to dig. Eight hours, sixteen, thirty-two, thirty-six hours. The father's hands were raw and bleeding when he heard a faint voice. He called his son's name, "Arman! Arman!" and a voice answered..."Dad, it's me!" The boy would later explain to his father that he had told the other children not to worry. "I remembered your promise, that you would always come for me," he said.

Jesus has made you a promise. He will come for you. And he is even now preparing a place for you. So if this earthly place falls apart and it feels like the walls are caving in, remember that he goes ahead to prepare a place specially made, just for you.