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CommencementSunday, May 17, 2009
1 John 4:7-10
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Her graduation ceremony (for the artists) included a professor with a baseball cap instead of mortarboard and a ceramics student with a cute pig-puppet on his right hand. So the professor who handed him his degree also got a handful of puppet as they shook. Later at the Krannert Art Museum BFA exhibit, we saw that he had created a whole family of piglets parented by one very sleepy, very fat mama pig. Andi's exhibit entry was an eight-minute video displayed on a large wall with a bench in front. In very very slow motion, we watched young kids and moms and students participate in a "break" party which Andi offered to the campus on the quad every Saturday last fall from noon till 1. She brought a hammer and baseball bat. She also brought chairs, a file cabinet, lamps (without bulbs), and all kinds of other breakable objects, "to help people nurture their frustrated emotions." The speaker at her graduation ceremony spoke of artists, noting that they often get to "play in the space in front of the curve, even defining the curve." He remembered seeing the earth from space for the first time, realizing that "things are closer than they appear." He asked his listeners to embrace the potential for uncertainty in their worlds and believe in their capacity to make magic happen. Listening to him, I wanted to be an artist. One thing I can know for sure as Andi commences the rest of her life, one fact without uncertainty ... God loves her and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for her sins. Like he did for me. And for you. And that puts us all in front of the curve. Always. Forever. Commencing ... right now. I shout for joy, and join the earth in shouting, Lord ... with the harp, with the sound of singing, with trumpets. The sea resounds and everything in the sea; the world, and everything in the world. The rivers clap their hands, the mountains sing together for joy: you are the Lord; at last comes righteousness and peace. You are the Lord. |
Today our daughter Andi graduated from the University of Illinois with her BFA (Bachelor in Fine Arts). She won't be a "bachelor" for long; she and her fiancée Aki Tomita are getting married on June 20. Life after childhood is commencing in a hurry for Andi.