|  Many
years ago, when my family was younger, I returned home late on an
especially bitter cold winter night with driving winds blowing the
snow into ice. The house was dark, but warm inside. Everyone was
comfortably asleep. We burn wood to heat our home, so in order to
keep the house warm for the morning, adding more logs to the fire
later at night is an advantage.
Leaving the room dark so as to not disturb, I quietly opened the
door to the wood stove and raked the coals forward to add more fuel.
As air rushed in, sparking the hardwood coals to life, they shone
with an intense heat, clinking with a sound of metal when stirred
by the tool. Having just come in from the cold and feeling how much
warmth they gave, it occurred to me that these red hot golden coals
were more valuable in their service on that dark frozen night than
if they had been real gold.
In recognizing the true value of something so common, I suddenly
felt the presence of every man on earth throughout time who had
worked to secure shelter for his family. The beauty of that moment
was transcending and it remains with me. I wonder what will remain
with you from your time here.
We are given many glimpses of beauty. Most often they arrive like
this one in quiet and unexpected ways. Our gaze may be stopped by
a spray of sunlight across a wooden floor, or in shadows of rustling
leaves cast on a plaster wall. A line of poetry or phrase of music
will sometimes catch us off guard and raise unexpected tears. A
landscape in full spring blossom may cause us to linger. We are
invigorated by the smell of fresh mountain air and calmed by a breeze
off the ocean in summer. We surely find Beauty in the face of a
loved one when their eyes sparkle with happiness. When we see what
is Beautiful, we remember what is Good.
There was a young German man (Paul Tillich) who became a soldier
in World War I. Three-quarters of his company would be killed in
the conflict. While on leave, he one day found himself in the gallery
of an art museum in Berlin, even though, despite the enduring efforts
of his parents and teachers, art had always left him cold. From
a painting of the Madonna and Eight Singing Angels by Sandro Botticelli,
his eyes met the returning gaze of Mary and he was surprised to
find himself sobbing uncontrollably. The exceptionally tender sphere
of the painting and the barbarous lessons of war combined to stir
in him an awareness of beauty which, until then, he did not know
he possessed.
I imagine that many of you have spent the past few days packing
up posters, clothing and other things in your rooms that you have
accumulated over the last school year. A textbook from a class you
might initially not have wanted to take, now curiously embodies
something for you that you might need again later. The dried flowers
of a corsage found in a dresser drawer or ticket stubs from a concert
attended with friends may have stirred your memory, erasing time
to reveal unknown feelings quietly stored from those occasions.
What did you decide to keep and what to throw away? Many of our
possessions actually serve little apparent functional purpose, but
we treasure them no less for this. It seems we collect things more
because of how they speak to us of whatever we find important and
want to be reminded of. They help render vivid to us who we might
ideally be.
As your time has been running down to this final day, I am sure
you have each been suspended briefly and unexpectedly by an awareness
of something beautiful about your time here. Graduation is a time
of transition. The past is being left behind and the future is not
known. We say goodbye to friends, not knowing when or if we will
see them again. We realize we have played our last game with our
teammates. A walk to Benade Hall for the eleven-hundredth time gives
us pause to notice the tile on its roof for the first time. The
fragrance of the boxwoods as we walk past them soothes us somehow.
The familiar faces we see in the hallways are already missed in
advance of our farewell. Routine details of day-to-day living become
meaningful rituals as the last day approaches. We have feelings
that we did not expect to have. Unannounced, a new sense of beauty
has imbued your experience of this place and all that it has come
to mean.
Your teachers know these glimpses of beauty. That is a large part
of why they do what they do. Their own memories of what is beautiful
called them to teach in hopes of helping others see something similar.
They know that when we learn to understand something in a way that
truly moves us, it will remain with us, informing our careers, the
person we choose to marry and what we will hope to teach our children.
Institutions and nations do the same. Plato and other ancient philosophers
attributed the origin of different cultures to Divine Revelation
that provided them each with their code of law. It was believed
as long as people upheld their ideals, strictly, without change
or deviation, their lives were happy and full of purpose. But as
innovations were allowed to creep in and societies become lax in
their observations, they dissolved or were destroyed. Therefore,
they surrounded themselves with beautiful art and architecture to
serve as living memory of what they were and could become, lest
they forget.
As you leave this time and place for all of the exciting possibilities
that await you, there will be times in your futures when something
that has seemed common about your time in school will reveal its
beauty to you. A yet unknown memory of something quietly stored
within you while you went about your lives here will someday combine
with a new experience and spark a new insight within you. In those
moments, you will remember what was good about your time here. And
it will help you remember who you are and what you can become.
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