While not frequent, I've heard grumblings the last few days at DU: "Parking is impossible to find. The roads are crazy full." But those grumblings are a bit predictable; they happen every year in late May. The reason? Graduation season! Magness Arena, home to DU's hockey and basketball teams, is a favorite venue for many of the Denver area's high schools to hold their commencement exercises. During these days, I derive a lot of enjoyment from walking to the gym, seeing the happy grads in multi-colored gowns, ecstatic (maybe harried) family members carrying balloons and flowers, stopping--and holding up foot-traffic--to take photos. It is a happy time (all grumbling aside).
It is, indeed, commencement season. In a week's time Magness will be wrested back from the high schools, and DU's own graduation ceremonies will take place.* We will be fortunate to have Susana Cordova, acting superintendent of Denver Public Schools, and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as our featured speakers. But, at this time of the year, many eyes are on the schools that were able to convince the President of the United States that he needed another honorary doctorate. In the past few weeks, President Obama addressed the graduating classes of both Howard University and Rutgers University. Listening to the reporting on those speeches, particularly that at Rutgers, I was struck by one theme mentioned by many who were interviewed. The President exhorted his listeners to remember that things don't happen quickly, to "take the long view" -- but that the time things take does NOT mean one shouldn't be engaged
The implication of being engaged is dual-edged. There is a sense of hope, a feeling that NOW we can go out and make a difference. That hope is accompanied, I've come to learn through speaking with many students, with a nagging fear that "I'm not ready! I don't want to leave the "cocoon" of school! I don't have all of the skills that are necessary to do the job I've accepted!" And I often find myself telling them, "You're right! But, you'll never be fully ready! That would imply that you know everything now, that you'll never be surprised, that you're done growing." I wonder what a seed would say (assuming seeds had consciousness and were able to speak) as a farmer dropped it into a hole in the dirt? "What am I doing here? This dirt is cold . . . and dirty! And, wait, what? Now the farmer is covering me up with MORE dirt? And . . . is that water? I can add "drowning" to the list of offenses! I wasn't prepared for this! Let me back into the seed packet; at least it was safe there!" And, yet the seed survives. The nutrients from the water and the soil combine with the potential in that seed. The seed begins to transform. Its skin breaks a bit and something unexpected emerges -- a sprout. And that sprout grows and, soon, emerges from the soil. The nutrients and the water are joined, then, by sunlight, and whole new "thing" appears. A seed planted in the ground differs immensely, of course, from a newly-minted diploma-holder. The seed, basically, is passive, its potential being influenced and transformed by outside elements. New "diploma-holders" have the opportunity and--I would assert--the responsibility to engage in the act of transformation, both of themselves and the world around them. It may take more time than expected; it may be more difficult than expected. But it is what we would hope, we who send the graduates out. In this, I am reminded of the parable attributed to Jesus: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in a field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches” (Matthew 13.31-32)
May all who begin to commence to start this spring (whether commencing from Magness Arena or elsewhere) become such "trees" that provide sustenance, rest, and shade for a weary and hungry world.
Blessings,
Gary
*Of course, the graduation ceremony for DU's Sturm College of Law was held last weekend, as the law school is on a different calendar.
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