Invocation at 2010 Graduation

We have come from all over the place to this place to say good-bye. Loaded the SUV, unloaded the dorm. We’ve dressed in medieval robes and put on square hats. We will listen, anticipate, reminisce, regret, giggle and show off. We will thank those who have helped us and snub those whom we believe misread our worth. There will only be few times like this-a soufflé of emotion and memory. Resplendent in all its pomp and circumstance, its tears and, most of all, the explicit end of something and the far more fuzzy onset of the new, the unforeseen and the unsuspected.

Heroes are often scrawny little guys or forgotten girls in deep cellars who no one notices until they demonstrate their curiosity and focus, their willingness to go over the fence and out of the Shire or up from the cinders and off to the ball. All the diplomas in the world are no substitute for a better, new idea and the genuine willingness to make something vague tangible, something personal universal.

College will not teach you how to build the better mousetrap or even where to put it to lure and end the mice.. And here’s to understanding rodents, where they are from, the enormity of what they have done and will do. The more you know about rats the sooner you shall make that contraption for which the world will beat a path to reach your door.

Be curious. Learn the pleasures to be found in solitude; Ipodless, alone. Consider the leaves of grass and how they came to be and then the lilies of the field that stretch all the way to the factory fence where smoke stacks fume and boxcars gather. You can answer more questions than ever before. We are the New Humanity and now we have even more to waste. Ignorance can no longer be acceptable. In this brave new world the creatures in it will be argumentative, passionate, learned and sincere. We pray to whatever gods may be that you, the Class of 2010, are in the middle of the debate and that you will re-cast the world by imagining that which is now unheard of. One of you might discover the undiscovered country and, unlike all the other travelers there, bring back a map.

“Trust,” the Bedouin whispers, “in God, but tie up your camel."

“Remember,” the old storyteller admonishes, "but new stories are their own reward.” Look carefully at those here you have taken for granted, ignored, obsessed over or loved- they are soon to be memories themselves just like you are soon to be.. High School is over, childhood at an end but you might, down the long road, recall this tree here that rises up so high and reaches down so low at the same time. Amen