I loved my graduation from the University of Washington. Even back then, people were sometimes “too cool” to bother going to graduation, as if it doesn’t matter. And technically it doesn’t. You still get your diploma, of course. But our graduation was outside in Husky stadium with thousands of folks graduating that day with thousands more celebrating them.

The university’s symphony played Copland’s Fanfare of the Common Man as we walked in, which is some of the most majestic music in the world (imho). Walking in with the cheers and music, knowing my family was all there for the occasion helped me pause and take in the moment as something profound. It’s as if my brain woke up from the blur of finals, job searches, final experiments in the lab I worked in, and noticed that this was a moment to remember.

So, I have always remembered bits of that day with great fondness, including even the graduation speaker who assured us we wouldn’t remember him. He was Jim Lehrer of the PBS New Hour and thanks to the wonder of the internet, I found the speech this past week. Watching it, I realized how much I had forgotten about his speech. However, the part I cherished since 1998 was actually in the speech and this was his advice to keep learning, to keep reading and engaging in the world, and to keep taking risks.

I have always been an avid reader, so I knew I’d keep learning, reading, and trying to understand this world we live in.

However, I did forget the advice to keep taking risks.

As part of the speech, he said, “Take risks … be willing to put your mind and your spirit, your time and your energy, your stomach and your emotions on the line. To search for a safe place, to search for an end to a rainbow, is to search for a place that you will hate once you find it.”

No wonder I forgot that part of the speech. I suspect young folks don’t want to hear that chasing their rainbows and achieving their goals will not produce our little slice of nirvana. In stark terms, Jim Lehrer told us that achieving our individual goals is not ultimately a path of life.

Listening to the speech again, I wondered if he was a man of deep faith. Threads of the gospel seemed to pop out of his speech here and there. And I wondered if perhaps he was thinking of this gospel today as he prepared his speech. Afterall, we were thousands of mostly young folks, tipping from childhood into adulthood.

We were looking for jobs, moving away from home, needing to get our own health insurance and car insurance. Some of us were waiting for graduation to get married. It was all happening right then. And it was in that moment, I wonder if Jim Lehrer was telling us to hold onto the best strengths of childhood; the willingness to learn, take risks, and change form, like a pile of clay under the potter’s hands, is a mark of humility.

I was once in a group ski lesson with a man who had clearly spent a lot of time learning how to ski old-fashioned straight skis very well. The technique of skiing these straight skis generally involved keeping your legs tight together, top to bottom. Now, the new skis work best if you have your legs roughly hip-distance apart, like we normally stand. As we were standing there as a group, the instructor asked this man three times to practice this stance with his new shaped skis. And three times, this man kept his legs glued together as tight as they could be, asking each time (without changing) if he was getting it right. Eventually the instructor gave up and his student, who lacked any ability to change form, shooshed down the hill in a form that would have been considered perfect years before. This, of course, is fine. He could ski, but he missed out on the technological benefits of the skis under his feet.

This was a man who could have used the advice of Jesus and Jim Lehrer and from all the children in his life ever. What could he have done to unlock skiing nirvana by actually learning to ski his new skis well?

1. Admit that he didn’t know something. That even though he invested heavily in learning old ways, the new way he just didn’t know. It takes humility and risk to do that.
2. He could have asked better questions to help him understand.
3. He’d have to practice doing something he’d never done…in public…in a group lesson with all of us watching and hearing his feedback…after previously being so good, so proficient.

All of that takes risk, humility, curiosity, and hope that the world can indeed be better than it is, even if that hope is for a better ski experience. These are all skills that children demonstrate regularly that Jesus and Jim Lehrer would agree would serve us all well on an individual basis, but also on societal and world wide bases.

Without humility, curiosity, hope, and the willingness to take risks, the Kingdom of God would indeed struggle to become real in this world through our hands. God would find God’s way, but without these wonderful skills that our children have, we may not be the best conduits…just like my fellow student in my group ski lesson.  

Our kids are all back at school. Darcie is about to go back to school. They are all practicing risk, curiosity, hope, and humility! Wherever you are in life, where can you practice humility? Where do you need to admit you don’t know something or that you might be wrong? Where is hope for you? What do you need to risk to open up to God’s new thing in your life?

We all live in a world where the sands are shifting under our feet. Perhaps we share some of that reality is society, perhaps some of it is personal or in our families. To help us navigate, Jesus points us to the children, who do not look back or cling to how life has been, but look forward with all their marvelous skills to learn and have fun while doing it.

Let us remember, Jesus lived in a world of oppression and revolution.  The stakes were high and dangerous.  Our knee-jerk reactions are to grasp at how life has been or should be when things get hard. And yet Jesus tells us to be like our kids – be ready to learn, practice, change, grow, and be hopeful in the promises of God.    

So, kids, all these adults love you. We honor you. And we have a lot to learn from you, as you also get to learn from us. We are so blessed by you. AMEN.

AMEN