Offered by Rachel Herzig

Change.
It’s not easy.
Not for most of us anyway.
And yet
the Class 2005 has,
during their four college years,
lived not only the usual transitions of young adulthood,
but also massive,
unprecedented,
change
on campus, in Lewiston-Auburn, in the United States, and throughout the world.
Change brings a core challenge,
a spiritual challenge:
How will we face the new,
especially when it is not what we wanted?
Will we run away —
run to avoidance
to denial
to aggression?
Or will we move
toward change
toward uncertainty,
toward our own fear and dismay?
In other words,
will we close
our hearts,
our minds
our souls
in an effort —
futile really —
to protect ourselves?
Or
will we instead
open
Working to love
and
to understand
more deeply
Working to give
and
to receive
more thoroughly
Will we ourselves
become the world
in which we want to live?
Of these options,
the Class of 2005
has chosen the courageous,
the daring,
course.
The course filled with grace.
And the class gathers here today
to give thanks for this,
And for the education,
which has helped to enable it.
They also gather,
perhaps even more importantly,
to give thanks
To
and for
you.
Their
parents,
grandparents,
siblings,
aunts,
uncles,
teachers — in many guises —
and friends
who give
and have given
so much
to support the members of the Class of 2005
in becoming
the people they wish to be.
So let us now,
together,
observe a few moments of silence
In thanksgiving
for one another
and in the hope
that we will,
all of us,
continue to meet
the changing tides
of our time
with the holy work
of ever widening
hearts
and minds.

Amen.