by Lucinda Secrest McDowell
Do you remember what was said at your graduation? I don't.
All I remember was that the ceremony had to be changed from the end
of May to the beginning of June due to gas rationing in 1974. See, if
it had been held at the end of the month, parents wouldn't have been
able to buy gas to make the trip, so we waited an extra week. (If you're
old enough to remember long lines at the gas pump, you'll understand).
So...even
though I can't recall
the text of my own commencement address, there are a few others
I've never forgotten. Remember the one a few years ago which
said the most important thing to remember was to "Wear Sunscreen!"
Or how about the advice given to Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate"
" I have only one word for you --- Plastics." Then, there was that
infamous speech by Winston Churchill in which he said only three words
-- "Never Give In!" (but he said them three times, then sat down).
Last year Maria Shriver published a book from a commencement address
she gave entitled Ten Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Went Out Into
The Real World- It's so practical that it was a best seller.
What does the Class of 2002 need to hear?
Why not a word
from God?
It's
my observation that even the best and the brightest
are puzzled when it comes to knowing what's really important in life
-- to believing that God, the Creator of the Universe, has a plan
and purpose for their lives. Listen to Noah from Harvard University:
"As
a soon-to-be-graduating senior, as I explore that
dark
abyss known euphemistically as "The Real World," I cannot help
but feel dangerously ill-prepared. Sure, ostensibly I have an ample
cache of bankable practical skills--I can put together a mean
Power Point presentation and can do basic arithmetic with
the best of them.
But
when it comes to answering
the really important questions--how to live and what to love--
I'm afraid that my performance would fall in the bottom percentiles."
~by Noah
Oppenheim, excerpted from The Harvard Crimson
No university asked me to speak at graduation ceremonies this
year (no great surprise there!) But if I had been asked, I think
I would have said something along the lines of "how to live and
what to love" -- Noah's "really important questions". In fact, my own
studies this winter with King Solomon provide lots of material for
discerning what's really important in life, and what is merely
"Meaningless" (Ecclesiastes 1). Recently I've been teaching on this
subject "Wisdom for the Journey". Meanwhile,
one of my favorite examples of someone who offers
"wisdom for the journey" is from another commencement address--
this one delivered at Villanova University by author Anna Quindlen:
"Here is my resume.
I
am a good mother to three children.
I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a
good parent. I no longer consider myself the center of the universe.
I show up, I listen, I try to laugh.
I
am a good friend to my husband.
I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say.
I show up, I listen, I try to laugh.
I
am a good friend to my friends, and they to me.
Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today,
because I would be a cardboard cutout. But I call
them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch.
I show up, I listen, I try to laugh.
I
would be rotten, or at best mediocre at my job,
if those other things were not true. You cannot be really
first rate at your work if your work is all you are.
So here's what I wanted to tell you today:
Get
a life, a REAL LIFE,
not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the
larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things
if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?
Get
a life in which you are not alone.
Find people you love, and who love you, and remember that love is
not leisure, it is work. It is so easy to waste our lives, our days,
our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to exist instead of live.
I
learned to live many years ago.
Something really, really bad happened to me,
something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my
druthers, it would never have been changed at all.
What I learned from it is what today seems to be the hardest
lesson of all. I learned to love the journey, not the destination."
by Anna Quindlen, author of One True Thing
excerpted from her Villanova University Commencement Address
Frankly
I think Anna has gotten to the core of the matter.
What the Class of 2002 (and all of us, really) need to hear is to
live life every day (cause this ain't no dress rehearsal!), to
love our loved ones, to know how to distinguish between right and
wrong (and then choose the right), and to turn to the
Lord Jesus Christ as both Guide and Partner on our journey.
Mother Teresa once said "We can do no great things,
only small things with great love."
Your life may not be perfect (whose is?) and it may not be the one
you thought you would live (surpise!), but it's YOURS and it is REAL.
Your Life is a GIFT that's why they call it the Present.
copyright 2002 Lucinda Secrest McDowell
