Benediction

5/16/2006-- the speech I gave at graduation




As I look out tonight at my class, our diplomas finally in hand, I can’t believe this is real. Time is no longer on our side, and there is no going back now. There is no more redoing, or undoing. Our days at Logan High School are now reduced to remembrance.

God has graced us with so much learning and experience throughout high school. We have learned more than cosine functions and how a bill becomes a law. I think we’ve finally figured out that there is so much more to life than the pettiness we have busied ourselves with for the past four years, because the person next to us is not going to remember if we were on homecoming court, or made the winning basket, or our GPA. Instead, I hope we’ve learned how to treat people, how to be a true friend, and, most importantly, how to be true to ourselves. As Matthew 16:26 says, “How do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul in the process?” So I hope that tonight as we walk away, we do so in peace with our souls.

Looking back on the past nine months- our last nine months together- I find it so bittersweet because tonight the world seems utterly foreign to me and completely out of my grasp. I am trying to ask God questions that I cannot enunciate. But from Holden Caulfield and Jay Gatsby to you and me, there is one question we’re all asking: what world am I living in now? This is the question of your life. It is a deeply personal quest; it is the quest. When Jung and Campbell talked about the hero journey; well, this is it. As a very wise teacher told me on the first day of high school, “we are all the heroes of our own life stories.” Be the hero of your story.

Tonight I ask God to bless the Class of 2006. Give us guidance when we don’t know which road to follow. Offer us Your love when it seems there is none left in our hearts. Let us see Your light when we are surrounded by darkness. Help us to stand firm on our own shores in a world whose current is trying to sweep us away. Bless us with the humility to know when the only place for us is on our knees. And most importantly, give us the courage to question deeply, make every decision count, and to be rather than seem. I ask God to help us all live our questions as we embark on this brave new world. Congratulations and Godspeed. Thank you.