Happiest Place on Earth

Happiest Place on Earth

Friday, June 28, 2019

Why Did We Do It This Way?


I’m desperately trying to wrap up thoughts on high school graduation before we move full force into the next stage of life around here.  To be honest, the thoughts are lingering, and I’m OK with that, because if there’s one thing raising babies to adulthood has taught me, it’s that time moves faster than we imagine.

If you’ve followed our family for long, you know we have lived a mobile life.  I have a whole lot of thoughts on that, too, but something else I’ve learned is that if thinking doesn’t lead to action, it eventually becomes pointless.  This is not a popular idea for someone who loves philosophy.  Whatever.  I live with the tension.

But as I sit here, this morning, pondering the unusual graduation my oldest two children just experienced, I want to flesh it out a bit further.  There were some well-intentioned (I hope) questions surrounding this event, much like there have been some questions surrounding their entire lives.  I want to be clear that I don’t feel like I owe anyone an explanation to the question, “Why did you do it this way?”  Except maybe me.  Can you owe yourself an explanation? 

Here’s the bottom line.  When we packed up a U-Haul trailer full of trophies and pictures and memorabilia and proceeded to cart it across the country for a total of three graduation parties, it made sense, because we’ve been carting these kids around the country since 2001 (when we first moved Seth, age 14 months, and Grace, age 4 weeks from Michigan to Colorado).  For as many drawbacks as have come with this mobile life (and there have been many), there is also one undeniable advantage: They have people everywhere!

Road Trip Stage One: We started where we are.  We have been here in Massachusetts for a little over 10 months now.  Moving frequently has taught me that every move is different, and some places become home more quickly than others (also, some never do, and that’s OK too).  I can’t speak for my whole family, but some of us have had conversations about how strangely easy this move felt.  We’ve had moments when we’re standing in the ocean and wondering why it doesn’t seem weird that we live on the coast.  But it doesn’t… seem weird…  It seems right.  I love the people here.  I love the people at our local church, who have welcomed us with open arms.  I love the people at BU.  I love the people at other local churches who have invited me to have coffee and preach from their pulpits.  If you know me or have read me, you know my ultimate dream lies about 2700 miles west of here, but I also like it here enough to stay.  It did not take long to feel like home.  But that was a long aside to the point.  We started where we are.  There’s really nothing else to do, friends.  We have to start where we are.  This was a literal statement, but it’s also a figurative one.  Living in community with the people you are actually with is something of a lost art these days.  The people here make it easy.  This was the only appropriate place to first break cake and pizza together for a celebration that culminated right here.

Yet there is also something incredibly beautiful about the connectedness we have that allows us to hold onto all the people we have ever known and loved.[i]  So, Road Trip Stage Two brought us “home” to family.  I struggled to imagine what graduation would look like for Seth and Grace without extended family.  It was unreasonable to expect people to travel so far.  And so, when my parents graciously offered to host an open house, there was no compelling reason to say no.  In fact, I was quite relieved (in part because this allowed so many more people to share in the celebration, but also in part because I was finishing up year one of my PhD program, and this took a little bit of planning pressure off me).  The group of people who showed up there was eclectic and incredibly appropriate.  I expected grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins (although some of them still had to make quite a trek), but the really fun part (at least for me) was watching the friends show up.  And it wasn’t just Seth and Grace’s friends.  It was also my parents’ friends (some I have known my whole life and some I had never before met) and my friends.   There is something strangely binding about sharing spaces intergenerationally for cyclical celebrations and about enduring, childhood friendships.  There were two particularly powerful moments for me that solidified my gladness regarding this second party.  The first was when we were setting up.  I was fairly absorbed in my own tasks, when I turned and saw Grace placing her quizzing trophies in exactly the same place mine sat twenty-two years ago at my own open house.  She had no way to know she was repeating history.  The second was when my dearest remaining high school friend showed up, and as we sat and chatted for awhile I was struck by how we had done this before.  Life events are so strangely and beautifully interconnected.

And then, finally, Road Trip Stage Three took us to the place Seth and Grace will always remember as their childhood home.  This is where we held the actual graduation ceremony, along with their baptism.  Even more than the “trophy-mobile…” this may have been the most perplexing piece of our week long rite of passage.  Why did we do it this way?  The answer is complicated (much like life), and believe me, we put a lot of thought into how to best engage in this sacramental act in a way that was genuine, orthodox, reasonable, responsible, and fully reliant on Gods work through the sacrament of baptism.  I feel like there are people who make judgment calls on the way others worship based solely in rubrics, facts, and figures, and as a liturgist I have to admit that I kind of “get it.”  But narrative matters, too.  A lot.  And so, when I looked out on the people who had gathered and realized that this was, indeed, the village who raised these kids, I knew we made the right call.  I said it then, and I will defend it again and again, if I ever have to: I’m not sure there have ever been two children who belonged more fully to the church than Seth and Grace Michaels.  Clearly, I think there’s a “most right” order in which to do things, but I also have to remember that I haven’t always known everything (and I still don’t, and I expect I never will), and we can only do the very best we can do in any given moment.  That Seth and Grace were baptized in the presence of the community that loved and nurtured them in life and faith is significant.  It’s surely not the only way this could have gone down, but it was right.  And it was also confirmation of God’s grace upon grace upon grace which manifests itself in ways we understand and ways we don’t.

So… skip ahead a couple weeks to orientation at Olivet.  I regret that I wasn’t there, but Phil sent some pictures that further reinforced some of my thinking on initiation rites and the unique path my children (now entering adulthood) have taken.  There was an event at orientation during which all of the incoming Freshmen were given ONU sweatshirts to put on, as they crossed a stage.  Much like I would tell you my kids belonged to the church long before there was an official seal of initiation, I would also have to admit to you that Olivet has called to them for over a decade, and they have belonged there, too.  But as I was looking through these pictures, I noticed something that physically embodied this belonging theory of mine.  Kid after kid is crossing that stage and pulling on that sweatshirt over their clothing, marking themselves as a Freshman at Olivet, literally covering over a part of who they were before this moment.  And then I look at the pictures of my kids, and they are pulling on their sweatshirts right over their Olivet t-shirts.[ii]  And honestly, I laughed… and then I cried… as I thought to myself about the layers upon layers of personhood that have been consistent for them, even in a really jarring, itinerant life. 

If part of following God’s call means dragging your kids all over the country for the ride, then you’d better be willing to drag them all over the country for the party, too.  And diligently check to see just how faithfully God is layering on the grace.

L.  

 
            


[i] Realist me admits there is also a negative side to this, but that’s a conversation for another day.
[ii] They might not be the only kids to whom this applies.  I only have so many pictures.