Lavender Graduation
Since Abigail asked me to speak I
have thought a good deal about what to say. I realized over the last few years
that my theme has essentially been the same. I want you all to recognize how
proud we are of you and what you have accomplished. And I want you to know that
we have no illusions about the resilience it has taken to reach today. I can cherry pick illustrations of progress,
but I cannot forget the obstacles that continue to crop up: tensions with
families, significant slights, the fear that is always present about whether or
not acceptance is real or feigned.
You are graduating and like
parents we would like to be sure you are safe so my inclination is to tell you
that there are more supportive resources out there than you may know about.
But I remember a poem by Maria Mazziotti Gillan:
Everything We Don’t Want Them to Know
At eleven, my granddaughter looks like my daughter did,
The slender body, that thin face, the grace
With which she moves. When she visits, she sits with my
daughter;
They have hot chocolate together
And talk. The way my granddaughter moves her hand, the
Concentration with which she does everything,
Knocks me back to the time when I sat with my daughter at
This table and we talked and I watched the grace
With which she moved her hands, the delicate way she lifted
The heavy hair back behind her ear.
My daughter is grown now, married in a fairy-tale wedding,
Divorced, something inside
Her broken, healing slowly. I look at my grand-daughter and
I want to save her, as I was not able
To save my daughter. Nothing is that simple, all our plans,
Carefully made, thrown into a cracked
pile by the way love betrays us.
I know that there are strong
communities of religious folk who are open and affirming. There are strong
communities of progressive thinkers who are not religious who are open and
affirming. I want to assure you that what you need can be found so you can navigate
the roiling waters of life after MIT. That is what I would like to say but two
recent bits of information crossed my path and made me think that I was being a
bit too sanguine. I understand that love sometimes betrays us.
The first bit of data that
challenged my thinking came from reading about Mary Bonauto, the talented Maine
resident who has argued the cause of marriage rights up to the Supreme Court.
Bonauto said that when she first started arguing the case she turned to her
religious community for support. She loved her religious community but she
realized that she would have to go elsewhere for support. That was over a decade
ago, and some things have evolved and changed in such communities, but it still
can be a crap shoot. I do not want to mislead you. Things we love can betray
us.
The second jarring note was sounded
by E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post writing about Senator Chris Coons of
Delaware who spoke to the Secular Coalition of America whose mission is “to
amplify the diverse and growing voice of the nontheistic community in the
United States.” He talked of his growing
unease with “rigid certainty” on questions related to religious truth and of
the pain and discomfort caused by outdated teachings and moral codes. But then
he went on to tell of his own experience as a Senator and a person of faith who
tried to speak to the progressive community at Yale Law School about his faith
commitments and was greeted by what he called “real bigotry.” For many
progressives, “accepting someone of expressed faith was one of the hardest
moments of tolerance and inclusion for them.” But the Senator is hard nosed and
as a result he pushed on and learned of
the origins of the experiences of these progressive folk who had personal “experiences
of deep pain and of alienation that had driven a big wedge between them and
religion.”
His conclusion was deceptively
simple: We must find ways of “getting past some of our misunderstandings of
each other.” And that I have concluded is the message I need to leave with you
today. Despite your accomplishments; despite our desire to protect you, we
cannot guarantee that the path tomorrow will be smooth, but we have confidence
in you and in your strength to overcome
adversity and to brush aside the betrayals of love and other experiences.
So while I would like to send you
forth with words of comfort and encouragement, I am going to have to tell you
that we need you to continue to be courageous and challenging of the status quo. We must find ways of “getting past some of our misunderstandings of each other.” It is tempting to turn inward, to wall ourselves off from a culture that causes
needless pain, but we must continue to engage and challenge that culture. That
is your charge. We have faith in you and we will be here to support you. Now, go with our blessings.
