let them be born in wonder
on philosophy, departures, and reunions
In 10 days, I am graduating the first cohort from the Humanities program at my school. I taught these 28 kids for four years in a row and went to Europe with 17 of them. To say that I have never before been as close to a group of students would be a dramatic understatement. Last Wednesday evening, we celebrated Humanities Night to honor students in each of the four grade levels. This is what I had to say about the seniors at night’s end. I think it stands alone fairly well as a post.
I’ve thought a lot about what I want to say to you as a collective group tonight. Just know that whatever I say in the next few minutes falls woefully short of my heart for you, of how much I love you, of how grateful I am that we spent the last four years in a classroom exploring worlds both ancient and modern together. Listening to your senior presentations over the past few weeks has been simultaneously enlivening and gut-wrenching. It is both in mild despair and with exceeding gratitude that I imagine walking into the building next fall without any of you here: mild despair because I will miss you all so dreadfully; gratitude, both for the time we were given together and for the fact that God has equipped each of you for the next step in your life. You were the guinea pig group, the pioneers in this program, and you always will be that. But you are ready for what’s next, and for that I am thankful.
Both Aristotle and Plato, our old friends, believed that all philosophy begins in the experience of wonder. The first motto of this program was a Latin phrase that in English means, “Let them be born in wonder.” Life has a nasty habit of removing our sense of wonder at the beauty and mystery of this world. Theologian David Bentley Hart warns that “as we age. . . we lose our sense of the intimate otherness of things; we allow habit to displace awe, inevitability to banish delight; we grow into adulthood and put away childish things.” I wanted you all to be able to retain your sense of wide-eyed wonder in the midst of the world that God spoke into existence. I wanted you to be able to feel awe at a creation like Michelangelo’s Pieta or Dante’s Divine Comedy, not just because they are difficult to create and beautiful but first of all because they exist, because the men who created them believed in Mary’s suffering, in Christ’s shattered body, in the eternal nature of each soul and the eternal stakes at play in this life and out of their wonder over these realities they created stunning works of art.
The modern attitude is one of cynicism and cheap dismissal of beauty. Last month, many of us had a tour guide at the Vatican who clearly had neither love nor joy in beholding the wonders laid out in front of him. All he could see was power and crass sensuality. He was a warning to me. I hope he was to you, too. So many of us are afraid to open ourselves up in genuine love, affection, and adoration because we are worried we will be mocked by our more worldly-wise peers if we do. One of the great joys of that trip for me was the openness, honesty, and lack of reserve with which we were able to talk about serious spiritual matters.
My benediction for each of you, as you move forward from this place, is to reject the cynical, dismissive lie with every fiber of your being. Be joyful. Be open. Be affectionate. Be, even, a little silly. Be like a child. Live in wonder.
For the past four years, I have talked to you about time. I have shown you pictures, read you passages, told you stories—all in an effort to try to convince you and then reinforce to you that this life goes quickly. It was but the blink of an eye ago that we all gathered for the first day of Honors Humanities I in the Orchestra Room. Now, we are here. In two weeks, you will walk across another stage and receive a piece of paper that serves as your exit ticket from this institution.
But, as I have also been at pains to remind you, do not resent time because it passes quickly. Do not try to hold onto it like a miser. Let it go. Open your hand. Receive the daily manna that awaits you each morning. Trust that God’s mercies are renewed each day. Walk in your temporality, your mortality, feel its weight, and allow it to prepare you for your eternal, immortal future. Know that, as much as we might miss each other, as much as we might treasure the memories and experiences we shared, more awaits.
I will close our time tonight by reading a final prayer of blessing over you, but before I do that I want to remind you of the precious truth that because of Christ we never have to finally say goodbye to each other. I want to make a final plea to those of you who are not believers in Christ to turn to him and join me someday for a final, ultimate reunion. Because of Christ, we can trust that someday, hopefully a long time in the future, we will see each other again and finally face to face, we will know each other in full, and we will walk eternally together in the final purpose for which we were all created. We will be united, as another old friend of ours, Dante, writes in the presence of the “Love that moves the sun and the other stars.” Love moves us forward. Love prepares us for heaven where all we will know is love. And I love each one of you. I look forward to the day when we live in love together with no more parting.