Pastoral Reflections
This Sunday morning we are recognizing our graduates, young women and men who are finishing one phase of life and entering another. I am amazed at the level of knowledge that they pursue—what I dealt with on a college level, they now do in high school or even junior high. It is mind-boggling!
But there is a concern, for any and all who “graduate” with this knowledge.
The poet W.B. Yeats said it this way:
Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.
Two comments:
The fire that Yeats refers to is ‘passion’, that heart lived and heart driven energy which allows folk of any age to approach the difficulty in life and accomplish the impossible. Our world is full of stories of people who did what others never dreamed of…and have made this world a better and richer place.
And yet, passion, without direction is like a flame out of control, which sometimes incinerates the wrong things along the way. People can sometimes get burned and their lives consumed. The need is to balance knowledge and passion in such a way that goodness and energy provide a powerful way to live.
These kids will need that combination, for they are facing a new, changing world in which it is easy to go astray. I believe we find that balance in God’s passionate story of Jesus, through which we can know God and be moved to new action in Jesus.
We will celebrate and pray for our grads, that this living faith will be abundantly supplied for them throughout all of life’s way.
CORAM DEO ddl