Get a Life

Rev. Mark Stringer

First Unitarian Church of Des Moines

6/2/02

 

Reading

From Clarissa Pinkola Estes in her book "Women Who Run with the Wolves"

 

"The ways and means of living with the instinctive nature are many, and the answers change as you change and as the world changes, so it cannot be said: 'Do this and this in this particular order and all will be well.'  But, over my lifetime as I've met wolves, I have tried to puzzle out how they live, for the most part, in such harmony.  So, for peaceable purposes, I would suggest you begin right now with anything on this list.  For those who are struggling, it may help greatly to begin with number ten.

GENERAL WOLF RULES FOR LIFE:

1. Eat

2. Rest

3. Rove in between

4. Render loyalty

5. Love the children

6. Cavil in moonlight

7. Tune your ears

8. Attend to the bones

9. Make love

10. Howl often"

 

Sermon

 

My wife Susan taught kindergarten last year for a Catholic school in Chicago.  Early in June, the twenty-five five and six year olds that she had spent the year with were treated to a graduation ceremony, complete with pomp and circumstance and mini-diplomas.  As I took my folding chair seat in the school gymnasium, along with the assorted family members of the tiny graduates, I asked myself the question many of us must have been asking that day: “Why on earth would there be a graduation ceremony for kindergarteners?”

 

As I sat through the festivities--hearing the graduates cheerfully sing in unison about how they had learned how to tie their shoes and handle glue, seeing how proud the families members present were of the next generation beginning their march toward adulthood--my heart softened to the joy of the day.  This event that had seemed so silly earlier that morning suddenly made sense to me.  In fact, I began to think that every June we should all get to graduate once again, to celebrate the fact that we have made it through another year of living, another year of this educational experience that is our very lives.   After all, we never really stop being students, do we?  We never really stop taking exams, or learning from our teachers and peers, or trying to enjoy our occasional hours of recess.  Sure, some of us sometimes neglect our homework, and some of us still can’t get our locker open, and some of us are tardy to class a little more than we would like to admit.  But here we are nonetheless.  So I say, we should have a graduation.  There is no need for a lengthy ceremony.  In fact, I wouldn’t want to sit through many of those.   As many of you know, just one year ago, I celebrated my own graduation from seminary.  The ceremony droned on for over two hours.  Speaker after speaker strode up to the podium to fill their appointed three-minute slots with ten minutes of commentary.  And you know, a year later, I can’t remember any of it.

 

Much like sermons, commencement addresses are one of the more curious branches of the public speaking tree.   In a five to ten minute speech, the speaker is expected to dive deeply into the wealth of her knowledge and the world’s wisdom, to offer those gathered a nugget of truth…or something.  Not an easy task, for sure.

 

Of course, there was no commencement address for Susan’s kindergarteners, though it might have been interesting to hear Barney the purple dinosaur or that guy from Blues Clues offering some words of wisdom for the soon-to-be-first-graders.  Perhaps the most appropriate address could have been given by Tinky-winky or one of his tele-tubbie pals…for they don’t speak.  Tinky-Winky could have just stood on the stage and mimed some expression of joy or love or fear.  Any of those emotions seem appropriate at a graduation. 

 

A few weeks ago I attended my sister’s graduation from the University of Illinois at Chicago.  The ceremony was complete with all the congratulatory remarks that one comes to expect from these occasions.  Ruminations about how hard all the graduates have worked, talk of how they are the future, pretty standard fare, and pretty boring.  As proud and excited as I was for my sister, again, I think I might have better appreciated a speech from Tinky-Winky.

 

Children’s author Dr. Suess delivered one of the best graduation speeches I have read…and one of the shortest, too.  At the 1977 Lake Forest College commencement Dr. Suess, gave the following address:

 

“My uncle ordered popovers from the restaurant’s bill of fare.

And when they were served, he regarded them with a penetrating stare.

Then he spoke great words of wisdom as he sat there on that chair:

‘To eat these things,” said my uncle, “you must exercise great care.

You may swallow down what’s solid.  But you must spit out the air.’

And, as you partake of the world’s bill of fare,

That’s darned good advice to follow.

Do a lot of spitting out of the hot air.

And be careful what you swallow.”[1]

 

The “General Wolf Rules for Life” that I asked Sally to read would make for a fine graduation speech too, I think.  Short, to the point, and a good reminder that we all must howl now and then.

 

But on this morning, this 2^nd of June 2002, this morning that I declare to be our shared graduation day from another year of living, I have an additional commencement address that I would like to read. It was delivered at Villanova University by novelist and essayist Anna Quindlen. I have resisted the impulse to tamper with her speech, for I think it is best shared as it was originally written.  My college roommate sent it to me a few years back, not long after his wife suffered a miscarriage.  He told me that it meant a lot to him and I have savored its solid wisdom as well, finding it to be short on hot air.   May it serve you well this day, too, as you prepare for your graduation from another day of living.

 

 

Quindlen writes:

“I have no specialized field of interest or expertise, which puts me at a disadvantage, talking to you today. I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know.

 

Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the first. Don't ever forget what a friend once wrote Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator decided not to run for re-election because he'd been diagnosed with cancer: "No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time in the office." Don't ever forget the words my father sent me on a postcard last year: "If you win the rat race, you're still a rat." Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned down in the driveway of the Dakota: "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans."

 

You walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life.  Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul. People don't talk about the soul very much anymore.  It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit.  But a resume is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results and they're not so good.

 

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the center of the universe.  I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.  I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cutout. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.  I would be rotten, or at best mediocre at my job, if those other things were not true. You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are.  So here's what I wanted to tell you today: get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?

 

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a red tailed hawk circles over the water gap or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger.  Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work.  Each time you look at your diploma, remember that you are still a student, learning how to best treasure your connection to others.  Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Kiss your Mom.  Hug your Dad. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted.

 

Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.

 

It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of our kids’ eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of live. I learned to live many years ago. Something really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my druthers, it would never have been changed at all.  And what I learned from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson of all. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and to try to give some of it back because I believed in it completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy.  And think of life as a terminal illness because if you do you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived. Well, you can learn all those things, out there, if you get a real life, a full life, a professional life, yes, but another life, too, a life of love and laughs and a connection to other human beings. Just keep your eyes and ears open. Here you could learn in the classroom. There the classroom is everywhere. The exam comes at the very end. No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time at the office.

 

I found one of my best teachers on the boardwalk at Coney Island maybe 15 years ago. It was December, and I was doing a story about how the homeless survive in the winter months. He and I sat on the edge of the wooden supports, dangling our feet over the side, and he told me about his schedule, panhandling the boulevard when the summer crowds were gone, sleeping in a church when the temperature went below freezing, hiding from the police amidst the Tilt a Whirl and the Cyclone and some of the other seasonal rides. But he told me that most of the time he stayed on the boardwalk, facing the water, just the way we were sitting now even when it got cold and he had to wear his newspapers after he read them.

 

And I asked him why. Why didn't he go to one of the shelters? Why didn't he check himself into the hospital for detox? And he just stared out at the ocean and said, "Look at the view, young lady. Look at the view." And every day, in some little way, I try to do what he said. I try to look at the view. And that's the last thing I have to tell you today, words of wisdom from a man with not a dime in his pocket, no place to go, nowhere to be.

Look at the view. You'll never be disappointed.”

 

Happy graduation every one.  Here’s to the days ahead, and all the graduations to follow.