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Family and friends of the Class of 2008, welcome to our Baccalaureate service. Several weeks ago, Mr. Britton asked me if I would deliver the Baccalaureate address this year. I was honored to be asked, and I stand before you this morning both humbled and terrified to share my thoughts with you.

I know that this is a big day for each of you, one towards which you have been working for many years. Believe me when I say that I hope it is a truly joyful and wonderful day for you and for your family – a day that you will treasure in your memory for many years to come.

In the reading that Sid delivered so well a few minutes you heard a passage from the Old Testament of the Bible that is familiar to many of us. It reminds us that certain aspects of life are timeless. Whether a person lived in 700 BCE or in the present time or in 2700 CE, the seasons of life are the same for each of us – “for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” You are experiencing the closing of an important season in your life – finishing high school, graduating, moving on to college or other pursuits. I am also experiencing a change in my life as I step away from school administration and back to full time teaching. These moments of change in our lives are important. They can mark a beginning, a fresh start, and an opportunity to remake ourselves.

Seasons change with time, and time is an interesting concept. It is the fourth dimension, not linear, but dimensional, relative in ways that Einstein’s theories don’t seem to fully explain. As the old saying goes, “time flies when you are having fun” – think about the prom just a few nights ago – that didn’t seem to last all that long, did it? But consider an 8th period class on a Friday in May – those 40 minutes have the potential to last a lifetime. It seems to me that we need to learn to exercise power over time so that we can savor the good times and extend them somehow as they occur. Some people do seem to have this ability. In baseball, researchers have studied the game’s legendary hitters to find the secrets of their success. It seems that these players have the ability to slow the game down, almost to view the pitcher in slow motion, so that it becomes easy to see the pitch, to choose the precise split second in which to start the swing. I invite you to try that today. Be so present in the moments that they go by more slowly. Savor them as they occur so that you can store them as memories for the future.

I would also encourage you to look for time this summer to reflect on the change of seasons in your life. Where were you headed as a 9th grader? Did you get there? What did it cost you? Was it worth it? Did you change direction on purpose? To go along with a friend or the crowd? Did you even have a direction in high school? Are you unclear about how far you have come because you never set a course along which you could measure your progress?

In the poem Ulysses that Parker read, we are encouraged to set forth again:

“Some work of noble note may yet be done… The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes…. Come my friends, Tis not too late to seek a newer world.”

Your “newer world” awaits. For most of you, it will take the form of a college campus at the end of the summer. Take some time this summer to think about who you are and what you value.

All across America in these weeks of June, young people your age are attending their high school graduations. These other students are complete strangers to you now. In the months and years ahead, they will be your college roommates, lab partners, sorority sisters, and fraternity brothers. Your future husband or wife, your colleagues at work, your neighbors, your boss.

How will you recognize them? How will you choose your friends and spouses from among these unknown folks? You will choose them out of your values and your goals, your habits of mind and heart, your dreams and interests. To recognize them you will need to know yourself – what you value, where you are going, who you are.

Take time this summer to reflect on these aspects of your character and personality so that you will be prepared in the fall to stay true to yourself and to the course you have chosen. Be prepared to make your college experience, your work experience, your friendships, your marriage what you want them to be, not what others would try to dictate to you.

As Tennyson says in his poem, Be “strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” Do not allow others to divert you from becoming the person you wish to be or to steer you away from the dreams you wish to pursue.

Perhaps a single word summarizes all of this – it is your character. It defines you as a person and has a huge impact on the life that you will lead. In the years ahead you will often find it necessary to compromise in order to get along with others. It’s OK to learn to sleep with the window open instead of closed if that is what your roommate really needs. It’s OK to take a summer job as a waiter when you really wanted that internship instead.

But it’s not OK to compromise your integrity in order to look cool or to get ahead by taking shortcuts. In fact, those who take shortcuts when it comes to honor, often find themselves – in that great Monopoly game of life – pulling one of those cards that says “Go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.”

Those kinds of shortcuts have a way of catching up with a person rather painfully. At this moment, more than ever before, you have the conscious choice to create your character so that it serves you well in your life as an adult.

Michael Thompson is a well-known child psychologist who has written several books and worked with many schools across the country. In one book about the experiences of children in schools, he writes:
“A competitive culture defines school for many children, parents, and educators. However, school is neither a race nor a competition. What is it then? School more closely resembles a long-distance hike, like the Appalachian Trail, which runs from Georgia to Maine, a long arduous trip that can take an experienced, determined hiker months to complete….Long distance hikers feel they have succeeded if they have experienced a great challenge, learned something new, bonded with some interesting hiking companions, developed wisdom and character, avoided a traumatic accident, had some amazing experiences – and finished the hike.”

This is what I wish for you in college and the years ahead – challenge, learning, relationships with others, wisdom and character, some amazing experiences. Perseverance, determination, patience, hard work, and a sense of humor will take you a very long way towards success in life. An easy life may be fun for awhile, but it will never produce the sense of satisfaction that comes from working hard, persevering in the face of adversity, and working with others for the common good.

When it is all said and done, whether it is the day you graduate from high school, the day you get married, the day you retire from your career, or the day you die, it is the people in your life and your influence on them that will be your greatest treasure. Many years ago, when I was in college, I came across a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her collection known as the Sonnets from the Portuguese. It goes like this:

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore –
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

The person you are, the influence you exert on others and they on you, the people in your life, the relationships you form – these are the treasures in life. As you stand poised on the brink of adulthood, choose the person you will be, claim a strong character and sense of honor for yourself that you might be a force for good in this world.

In the words of John McDonogh, written when he was a young man not much older than you are now – “Study in your course of life to do the greatest possible amount of good.” Each of you has unique talents and gifts to share with others; if you look for ways to use your gifts to help those around you, you will be amazed at the difference you can make in the quality of life for yourself as well as for others.

It has been a joy and a privilege to work with you and to get to know you over the last four years. The Class of 2008 is truly a wonderful and talented class. I have had the pleasure of watching many of you perform on the stage, on the athletic field, or in the pool. I have worked with some of you in leadership capacities. I have had many of you as students in calculus. Each of you has left your touch upon the palm with me, and so you will do with the others you encounter in the next stage of your life. As you begin this new season of life, as you “push off … to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars” I have the impulse to call down every blessing under heaven upon you.

So to you George Lucas fans – May the force be with you!

From my Irish grandmothers:

May the road rise up to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back.

In the beautiful words of the Old Testament:

May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May He make his face to shine upon you
And be gracious unto you.

And from one of my favorite hymns that has always seemed especially right for McDonogh students:

May God raise you up on eagle’s wings
Bear you on the breath of dawn
Make you to shine like the sun
And hold you in the palm of his hand.

Thank you and God bless you.