Making Connections

            Graduates of 2012, I congratulate all of you for your High School academic and extracurricular achievements that have brought you to commencement.  The pain is over and you can breathe—at least for now: no more rushing to class, taking exams, writing papers and  working in the lab.  You have run the race, achieved your goal and earned your diploma.  This is your day and our culture is pointing you toward the good life ahead.  But before you pursue the good life, how did you get where you are today?  Who paved the way for you?  The         celebrities of our day would have us believe that they have or they themselves are the answer.  To give credit, there have been good examples and even some heroes.  Consider how Steve Jobs has touched our lives in the 21^st century.  What an impact his innovations have made to change our present world and will, no doubt, continue doing so despite his passing as well as our passing from this world?  I can already imagine the day when neither I nor my computer will ever save any hard copies of anything I own.  It will all be out there somewhere in the “cloud.”  We will be retrieving all of our data from the network of the virtual world.  People like Steve Jobs had passion and changed our world.  He had the creativity to connect things and now we are all, at least, digitally connected. 

But before we all get lost in the virtual world of the cloud, we have all made other connections with the ordinary people who have become extraordinary heroes in our lives?  In the years of learning since your birth and your formal education, I submit to you that it is our    parents, our teachers and friends who have kept us well connected.  Parents certainly have endured burdens to offer you the shelter of their maturity, their wisdom and their labor.  Teachers who refused to give up on you, but tried one thing after another in a warm and caring way to unlock your desire for learning.  Friends have formed your social network and emotional bonds that provided you with a balance between work and fun.  And, I am sure there have been many others whose influence have urged you to go beyond yourself and to imagine yourselves as better, more compassionate and more thoughtful.  All these resulting accomplishments are yours, but the work to get there is by no means yours alone.  It is now the time for you to connect whatever you have learned from the work of these heroes to your own unique works.  And, in this way the next generation will come to know your particular gifts that were born from the common legacy of your life.

You, and we, and all who came before us, are   indebted to the ordinary heroes who helped us to carve out the milestones of our lives.  Through their work joined to our own we can each discover the passion in our own lives.  Do what you love to do and you can change the world for the better.  Dedicate yourselves to the things that are worthwhile—achievements that require sacrifice and pain and heartache and risk and, yes, sometimes, failure.  For your work to endure, desire what is good, be inspired by what is true and beautiful, and expand your spiritual strength.  Listen to the heroes who have truly cared for you.  Get enough sleep at the appropriate times, eat healthy, be honest with yourself, evaluate whether your goals are achievable and what effort is required.  Balance work, sports activities and social events.  Making connections from our past learning to our future hopes bring us into a community of companions who share our journey.  Making connections with new pilgrims along the way can enrich our lives and foster creativity.  As we reach out beyond ourselves in an ever expanding   community of work, study and service to others, we will also discover our own personal limitations.  Mutual relationships in community offer us what we need to be more than we can become by ourselves alone.  In making these connections with others we are formed and informed into a greater human being. 

But it does not end there.  Making connections stretches us beyond our reach in this world of space and time.  No matter how spiritual we as human beings can become by making connections on this earth, we must never lose sight of the bigger vision.  Wherever your lives take you, none of us is ever complete without making connections to another universe outside of our space and time world.  Community can both hurt and heal us.  We humans cannot fix everything.  Ultimately, there are questions that do not have answers and problems that  cannot be solved.  Our search in making connections must also take us beyond the limits of our human community into a universe of mystery. 

We all need to be connected with the absolute mystery of God.  There is yet another cloud much earlier than the internet cloud of the 21^st century.  The Hebrew Scriptures speak of it as a “column of cloud.”   By means of this cloud the presence of the divine preceded and showed a pilgrim people the way to their destination.  It reminds us even today that the God of every age is guiding us.   Faith in God is our connection beyond the limitations of humanistic spiritualism.  In your search for the good life, remain connected to God who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Graduates of 2012, my sincere congratulations to all of you and I wish you the blessings of a bright future as you continue “Making Connections!”