Tag: Graduation

Global

Go into all the world and share God’s Love with every creature. Mark 16

God who is able to open the eyes of our hearts: Give our graduates the special ability to share their compassion and talents during these trying times. Amen

This week’s evening drop of hope is dedicated to the class of 2020. Yesterday I wrote about the reality of being chosen. Today I’m thinking about the significance of global compassion within our graduates.

My youngest daughter Amy graduated from CU in December—not quite the class of 2020, but close enough! So, here’s an open letter to Amy. Some of these ideas are inspired by a recent editorial written by Melinda and Bill Gates.

Dear Amy: Your grandparents were just coming of age at the end of WW2—over 70 years ago. In 1947, then Secretary of State George C. Marshall gave the commencement address at Harvard University. He urged the graduates to rise above their own comfort and security and assist our European neighbors despite being “distant from the troubled areas of the Earth.”

About that time, your Grandfather Eusebio Martinez was your age and living with his Mexican, immigrant family in north Denver. Grandpa Chepo was deployed under the Marshall Plan and served with the U.S. Army near Munich. It was there that he met a 19-year-old Bavarian villager, Anna Höecker.

Your grandparents fell in love in war-torn Germany where Chepo was serving the vision of the Marshall Plan. This strategy, which helped Western Europe recover, also spurred a turning point in history from global war to an era of peace and prosperity.

Today in 2020, we again face mass suffering and uncertainty. Again, groups will need to work together to recover and rebuild. Only now, we look to a generation of young adults who are extremely tuned in to the world. Unlike the Harvard grads of 1947, you are well acquainted with what is happening all over the globe! You’ve been online since you were toddlers. You consume popular culture from near and far. Your thinking has been shaped by a multiplicity of mentors who speak various languages. You have access to the truth about our cruelest problems such as racism, economic injustice, mass incarceration and hunger.

I am hopeful, because your access to cross cultural information and experiences has made you exceptionally compassionate and aware. You know that you are inextricably connected to the whole human family—across generations, ethnicities and access to resources. There is no limit to how you might serve humanity well—public service, teaching, writing, parenting, researching, healing, feeding…

It’s true. You’re entering the workforce in a time of global suffering. For some time, you and your peers will grieve the loss of rituals and rites of passage like grad parties, family memorials, weddings and birthday celebrations. Your sister Anne will give birth to your nephew, and there will be no baby shower– perhaps not even a hospital or home visit. These are big deals that will change us forever.

You and your peers have a hike ahead of you. So, don’t accept any pressure to answer the big questions about jobs, housing plans or graduate school on anyone’s timeline but your own. There are so many ways you can use your voice and share your talents, wherever you are. Oswald Chambers said that prayer is the highest form of social justice. Jesus said that sharing food and water with the hungry and thirsty proves that one is close to God.

The willingness to connect and serve the world led your grandparents to overcome global tragedy and create a better world. Now it’s our turn. The same spirit that empowered Jesus is still healing the world from generation to generation. I treasure every moment we have to love and serve together. Love, Mom.

Spiritual Practice

Friends: If you have endured this mercilessly long post, will you also join me in serving the class of 2020? When we write out our graduation cards, can we do the following?

  • Empathize with the graduate. It must be terribly disappointing and weird to miss the rituals and festivals of graduation.
  • Affirm the graduate. Graduations mark a very special passage from one stage of life and learning to the next. The world needs brave and brokenhearted young adults more now than ever. “We have the highest confidence in your talents and your courageous heart, and we can’t wait to see what you teach the world in the next decade and beyond!”

If you live with a graduate, please affirm them NOW. Say, “Word on the street is that you and your class are going to be a very special influence in the next decade. I’m not sure what that will look like, but I can’t wait to see how it turns out.”

God bless you, and please encourage a graduate this week!
Katie

Chosen

For many are called, but few are chosen. Jesus

God who calls everyone to live in the light of your love, help the graduates of 2020 to realize how special they are. May this bizarre circumstance result in them leading us more deeply into Your Love.

This weekend Tom Hanks delivered a virtual commencement address that moved us to tears. Good! There’s healing in our tears, especially the hopeful ones. And God knows we need to shed some hopeful tears these days.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the graduates who are grieving the loss of pomp and circumstance—the collective pride and joy of a stadium brimming with parental hope, grandparental love, friendships, educators, coaches, flowers, cameras, brass instruments and inadequate sound systems!

So, I was planning to dedicate the evening drop of hope all week long to the class of 2020. Now, inspired by Tom Hanks keen choice of words, I want to write about the hopefulness of being CHOSEN.

“I’m here to say congratulations,” Hanks said. “Congratulations to you chosen ones.”

The chosen ones. On the one hand the phrase has an exclusive ring to it. To be chosen is to be privileged. But in Hanks’ mind and the mind of Christ, “chosen” is not something that puts you above the crowd. Being chosen makes you an essential steward of God’s gifts, which are meant for everyone.

In the tradition of Bible literature, to be chosen by God is to be selected by God as an ambassador of everyone’s status as the beloved children of God. Moses was chosen to help the children of Israel understand their belovedness. Peter, Paul and Mary were all chosen to help Jesus bring all of humanity into the blessing of God’s love.

As Father Richard Rohr puts it: “It’s not that God likes anyone better or that they are more worthy than the rest. God’s chosenness is for the sake of communicating chosenness to everybody else! You lead others to the depth to which you have been led.”

Can we help our graduates live into their unique vocation of being chosen for leadership at a time like this? The class of 2020 is stepping over the threshold from childhood to adult vocational service during a global health and economic crisis. These young adults and their families have been led into the depths of disappointment and uncertainty. Is the universe picking on them; or have they been selected for something special?

Bravehearted people simply know that they are a unique minority. In the Jesus-sense they know they are being used as starter yeast, flavorful/healing salt and vitamin-D rich sunlight. (See Matthew 5 and Luke 13.) Remember that yeast is not dough, salt is not a meal and light shines to illuminate something else.

Jesus knew whom to call. What if we help our graduates understand the highness of this calling and the unique way that Jesus thinks?

Spiritual Practice

When we write out our graduation cards, can we do the following?

  • Empathize with the graduate. It must be terribly disappointing and weird to miss the rituals and festivals of graduation.
  • Affirm the graduate. Graduations mark a very special passage from one stage of life and learning to the next. The world needs brave and brokenhearted young adults more now than ever. “We have the highest confidence in your talents and your courageous heart, and we can’t wait to see what you teach the world in the next decade and beyond!”

If you live with a graduate, please affirm them NOW. Say, “Word on the street is that you and your class are going to be a very special influence in the next decade. I’m not sure what that will look like, but I can’t wait to see how it turns out.”

God bless you, and please encourage a graduate this week!
Katie