Graduation Speech: Secret to Success, Pt. 2

 Verda Tetteh. Remember that name. Verda Tetteh is near the top of my ‘most likely to know success in her life’. She unlocked the secret as a high school senior.

 Ms. Tetteh is a child of an immigrant family, from Ghana. She worked her way through the pandemic year at a grocery store while achieving the highest of academic honors at her school. Oh, by the way, she also received admission to Harvard. Yet, admirable as are these achievements, the part of Ms. Tetteh’s character that impresses me most is what she did with the $40,000.00 award from her school for her excellent record.

 After listening to the graduation day speeches about ‘being selfless and being bold’, she made an unscheduled trip back to the graduation day microphone.  She proceeded to ask that the school change the game for someone else’s life by taking back her $40,000.00 award and granting it to someone in greater economic need.

 One news outlet reported her remarks and what followed: “’I am so very grateful for this, but I also know that I am not the one who needs this the most,’ she said. Out on the grass, her classmates rose from their folding chairs to cheer. It was her second standing ovation that day.”  (https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/06/08/verda-tetteh-scholarship-graduation/)

 I would have been one of those rising to cheer her too. Ms. Tetteh’s selfless and bold act, one could argue, was poor personal financial planning. But it is great life-planning, learning as a young adult that keeping what we need while being generous with that we do not need, or that someone else needs more.

 As Leslie Barnor, Verda’s stepfather explained, “’We are a Christian family….We believe we don’t need to have so much before you give to others.’” That’s the secret, friends.

 I don’t know what God has in mind for Ms. Tetteh’s path going forward, but I hope her story will be one that her generation will repeat often and widely.  The future of our society is much brighter because of visionary immigrants like Ms. Tetteh, people who truly understand that making someone else’s dream possible is the secret to success in life.

Graduation Speech: The Secret to Success

 There are two types of people in the world.  The difference between them lies in how each type responds to a problem. As you enter the next stage of your lives, there are many parts of your life you cannot control, many aspects of your future you cannot choose.  But everyone chooses which one of these two types of people we will be. Everyone chooses how they define success.

Whether it is building a cohesive family, a profitable business, or a socially valuable non-profit, one characteristic is common to the people who are more likely to find satisfaction in their relationships and ventures. When it is all said and done, do you find the adventures you experience on life’s journey satisfying, worth your time, helpful to the people you care about and love?

There are two types of people in the world. The first type sees a problem and thinks, “I need to fix this problem, or find someone who can help me fix it.” The second type sees a problem and thinks, “Boy, that’s a real problem. Someone (else) should do something about it! It’s not my job.”(Or ‘I don’t care’; or ‘I am too busy’; or ‘I don’t know how’; or ‘I don’t know who to call.’ And on and on.)

The type of person I would hire for my business or bring alongside on a new project are the people whom I know to be the first type.  The volunteers who make our church possible are the people who ‘find a need and fill it’, to borrow a phrase. The people who made the law firm I managed for many years successful were those who saw what needed to happen to make our clients successful and wouldn’t stop trying until that occurred.

Sure, you can get through life, even make a good living, by being the second type. You can join the crowds who see a problem and complain that ‘someone’ doesn’t fix it. But that just makes you grumpy; not happy.

Or you can decide that you will be the one with the heart of a servant. At the end of your life, you will have the satisfaction, the joy, of knowing that you made a difference.  Be ‘Mr. Fix-it’; ‘Ms. Problem-solver.’

Choose to succeed.

Building Memorials

 Memorials don't just happen. Someone does the hard work of sacrificial living; someone else lives, doing the hard work of remembering the sacrifice. The rest, as they say, is history.

The women of the South who may have started Decoration Day, the predecessor to what we now call Memorial Day, decorated the graves of those who died during the Civil War. Notably, they decorated the graves of the soldiers from both the North and the South.  What they were memorializing was not the battle but the sacrifice. Certainly, the soldiers did not set out to die.  They set out to offer their lives as a sacrifice for the cause in which each "side" believed. 

Memorials don't just happen. They require a sacrificial act and an act of remembering, a demonstration of gratitude.

The religious life is all about creating memorials. God sacrifices; people remember. People sacrifice for God and neighbor; God and people remember.

Think about how you want your life to be memorialized.  It is not too late to start living your life in a way which will cause people to remember you as a person who sacrificed something for some cause, someone you love, some One you believe in. It may not require you to die, but it will require you to sacrifice.

Live your life in such a way that someone will want to do the hard work of remembering you for your sacrificial living; for a life that that is pleasing to God, to your family and friends, to your country, and to those who may never know your name but will remember your sacrifice.

Use this Memorial Day weekend to do the hard work of remembering those who sacrificed for you. But also use it as a time to ponder how you want to be remembered.

Memorials don't just happen.  People, like you, need to build them.

Talking to the Basil

 We were sitting on our friends’ warm porch on a cool night when Jill noticed the basil plants growing in a nearby planter.  She spoke admiringly of the plants and expressed her love for all things basil, so our friend offered to send some leaves home with her.

 As we were preparing to leave after a pleasing evening of conversation and dining, our host gathered her scissors, leaned over the basil, and said, ‘Sorry basil!’. My pastoral mode kicked in and I felt compelled to reassure her, “It’s all right. That’s why the basil exists.” “Really?” “Oh yes, it lives to die,” I said confidently. Circle of life, right?  Snip. Snip.

 But that night I began to wonder if my pastoral counsel was sound. I was studying Romans 8:22, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”  What is the basil giving birth to that causes it to groan with birth pangs?

 Basil exists to bring healing through its leaves. Basil exists to bring flavor out in meals. Basil exists to add its pleasing scents to our garden walks. What more could it be waiting to be, to experience?

 It is waiting for a time when the children of God will be redeemed, in their new bodies, and for them to become the stewards of creation we were supposed to be from the beginning.  That will be a time when the New Earth is revealed, in all of God’s glory; when the plants grow in habitats protected from unnatural changes; when the rivers ramble and the fish swim without worry of pollution; when indeed all creation experiences the perfect climate for each and all to flourish; then we will know what all the groaning was about.

 Until then we can talk to the basil. We can try to understand what it is telling us. We can use it and enjoy it for all the purposes God intended it to fulfill.  We can promise the basil that we will protect it, that we will be good midwives for that new birth for which it groans.  We can invite the Spirit of God to reveal what the basil is trying to tell us.

 Now I am going to stop and smell the basil.

"Up, Up, Up"

 Up, up, up. And then you see the sun. 

 One of my favorite travel moments, especially if we have taken off when the clouds are producing rain, is when that moment when the airplane finally breaks through the thick moisture and we are surrounded instead by sparkling, eternal, bright blue.

 How you experience life is a matter of which side of the clouds you are on. Beneath the clouds you feel their weight holding you down.  Rise above them and you feel the freedom of flight, the joy of being held aloft on God’s pillow mattress. Then the clouds are pillows inviting you to skydive onto them, a playground of white cushions and blue spaces.

 Hope is the knowledge that carries the dying up.  Here is what we know: just as Jesus’ body was taken up, hidden by a cloud, so it shall be for our bodies when Jesus comes again to fly us home. (Acts 1:9, 11)

 Up, up, up. And then we shall see the Son.

 (Inspired by the movie Clouds.  Written for a friend who is in hospice, awaiting her rise above the clouds.)

We'll go up, up, up
But I'll fly a little higher
Go up in the clouds because the view is a little nicer
Up here my dear
It won't be long now, it won't be long now.

Zach Sobiech, Clouds

 

Mystic Sweet Communion With Myra

 Myra (Kleis) Berry defied every stereotype of “mother-in-law”. We developed a unique relationship defined by our shared love of God, Jill, and our families.  And we loved playing hymns on the piano, quoting Bible verses which the hymns brought to mind. We were soulmates. On the night she died, I turned on my streaming music service which played Amazing Grace, followed by When the Roll is Called Up Yonder.  Now who do you suppose selected that song sequence? Thanks for the confirmation, Myra.

 I keep in my Bible a card which Myra sent to me ten years before her death.  It bears the signature of “Space & Mare”, nicknames for my parents-in-laws.  Beneath her signature she wrote Romans 5:1-2. She read her Bible through, cover to cover, many times. I believe she made me a custodian of these verses so that I could send the words as reminders to her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, whom she loves so dearly, about the source of her abiding faith: Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 

 This Mother’s Day weekend, as the ‘Berry Women’ gather together to remember the Grand Ol’ Mare, they will, I hope, connect through the Spirit with Myra, gaining some mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won. (For the record, I am singing our favorite hymn lyric with Myra right now.)

 If Mother’s Day offers us anything, it offers a chance to recast memories in words that heal, in words that help our mothers abide with us, as Myra could sing from memory until her new birth day:

 Abide with me: fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide! When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Hold thou Thy cross before my closing eyes; Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies: Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee; in life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

 Thank you for the love, Myra. I love you too. I’ll be there soon. Say hello to everyone for me.  

Billy

Nancy and the Pink Cat

 Many moons ago, Nancy and Bert were very close friends of mine.  We shared pursuits we valued. As the moons rolled by my connections to them loosened, but Nancy and Bert remained close. They shared beverages appropriate to the time of day, swapped stories, exchanged book reviews.

 After years of scheduled and unscheduled meetings and meals Nancy stopped responding to Bert’s invitations. Age and all that goes with it were catching up to Nancy. And then Nancy died. Quietly. And now Bert missed her friend, creating a space in her spirit that needed to be filled by someone, by Nancy, by Nancy’s spirit.

 As Bert mourned her friend’s loss, she recalled a book she had read about trying to connect through ‘signs’ with those who have gone to be with the Lord. Because Nancy was a lover of cats, Bert thought the perfect sign she should ask for was a cat. Not just any cat, a pink cat. Not a Pink Panther type sighting, but a real, live, cat that purrs and cuddles. So, she started looking for the pink cat, for a sign of, or from, Nancy, that friends they would remain during the time of bodily separation.

 One day, while out on errand with her husband, Tom, they made an unscheduled stop at the home of a friend.  Bert and Tom were greeted by the friend and then a black and white cat appears. As it sidles up toward Bert, giving her a cat-hug, the cat twists its body revealing that one side of its fur is completely…you know what’s coming…pink.

 Bert, stunned, calls out, “Tom, a pink cat! It’s a pink cat!” Tom smiles, knowingly. The cat owner, not in on the ‘sign,’ is not quite sure what all the fuss is about. She calmy explains that the cat must have rolled in the children’s pink sidewalk chalk.

 What won’t the Spirit do to be the Comforter we are promised? Of course, to gain that comfort, one must first ask for it, and then look for it, and then receive it, joyfully. Nancy is not here. But she is not ‘gone’.  Thanks to the pink cat, Bert can again see Nancy laughing her unique laugh, enjoying the moment of revelation, as she awaits their re-gathering.