Morning Thanks--Commencements

I don't remember who delivered the commencement address at Dordt College in 1970. It was someone from the Reformed faith, I'm quite sure, since the only really distinguished visiting scholars were men (an occasional woman) with recognizably Dutch last names. 

I don't remember enrobing, or donning the cap or fixing the tassel--that's all gone. In some file drawer down here there's a diploma that documents the fact that in May, 1970, I graduated from college.

I'm sure there were faculty in the parade who were thankful for my leaving. In a way, so was I. The country seemed coming apart, maybe more dangerously even than today. The Vietnam War was raging. On campuses all around the country, there were no grad parties because there were no grads. Many universities shut down because of the very real possibility of violent confrontations. At Dordt, the vast majority of kids were Nixonian.

At Kent State, not even a month before, four students were shot when National Guard troops opened fire on an anti-war protest that had grown out of hand. I'd been to Washington to protest those deaths, even though I'd just recently officially flunked my draft physical for a heart condition I barely knew I had.

My relationship with a young woman had ended a few months before, and I had no job. It seemed to me then that I was retreating to Wisconsin, the country from whence I'd come four years before, and I'd be carrying with me nothing more than that diploma. I hadn't done any kind of job hunt--I had a teaching degree--the specter of the draft kept me from looking. Truth be told, I didn't know what I wanted.  

All of that may explain how it is that the single image I remember from a Dordt College graduation in 1970 is a late night stroll through a women's dorm to bring some female friends back from a little party we had in Sioux City--a few drinks, a dance, just a handful of kids, some grads, some not. 

The only lights were dim in a hallway that seemed haunted. Burly bundles were strewn before every door, where students, as directed, had left their sheets and pillow cases. In the darkness, in my imagination those bundles somehow resembled bodies.

The only real haunted-ness is what I felt in my heart just then. I'd been at this place for four years, doing the standard college kid stuff and then some. I'd be graduating the next morning, leaving yet that afternoon; and I had very little to show for it, or so it seemed in the graveyard hallway of  shadowy corpses. 

Oddly enough, I'm thankful for that memory. At the time, it was painful, but when I think of that moment now it appears as a torturous moment of vital growth. What I knew the next day, going home, was that, wherever I'd been, whatever I'd done, I now had to start something brand new. I was no longer welcome at the college I'd attended for four years. I'd graduated. I was handed a diploma at my own "commencement." I had to start over, and I'd be alone doing it--it would be my job, my office, my calling (I had a Calvinistic education) to determine where this life of mine was bound. That hallway cemetery was scary, but essential.

Today, I'll march down the aisle at another Dordt graduation, this one 53 years later. I've done it often before, of course; but it's been ten years since I retired as a faculty member of the institution where I had matriculated so many years ago. But, 53 years later, I've got good reason to "join the throng." After all, two of my grandchildren are graduating. I'm deeply and sincerely thankful. 

I hope their memories of graduation are as long-lasting as mine. I hope their memories will be sweeter, but no less significant. Today, the two of them will set out to determine that character of the lives they will live in the presence of God and a loving family. Maybe painful, but finally crucial to "calling."

This morning I'll don a robe, pull on one of those goofy hats with a tassel, and march one more time with a faculty full of men and women I don't know. 

But I know two of grads very well, and love them both. For them, on this important morning of their lives, I'm greatly thankful.