Fall Convocation 2008 - 2009                                                                September 6, 2008

Invocation

            In our latitude this is the season of harvests – when the sweet corn is at its sweetest, tomatoes are fairly exploding off the vines, and every one of a thousand raspberries offers a transcendental experience.  This is the time of in-gathering, barn-filling, hay-baling – when the rhythms of the land teach us gratitude and humility, as we draw strength from the bounty and the beauty in the midst of which we live.

            And yet, the rhythms of our life together in this place have us leaning against the harvest-tide.  We have noticed how much insight is to be gained by a step in an unexpected direction, or a turn to look where all the signs are not pointing.  So for us, of all things, this is the season of planting – of digging in, of cultivation and pruning, of staking and mulching.  For us this harvest-tide is all about seeds, breaking up the hard crust of too-settled soil and seeing again what we can grow together through the months of wind and snow and darkness and rain and budding – what we can grow together of community, of wisdom, of purpose, of hope.

            So we plant the seeds of justice, and compassion, and beauty, and commerce, and inspiration, and words – we commit them tenderly to this field of time, and water, and work and wait, to see what will grow through yet one more transit around the wise circle of the year.  We consecrate our tools of intellect and courage and diligence to this work of growing – for the sake of a harvest yet to come, a time when at last there will be, at last, more than enough justice and hope and compassion and joy to nourish the whole family of earth.

            So on this day we pause here, at the edge of the field of another year, to name our gratitude and to pledge our resolve.  We stand again at the beginning, and we say to the source of all the light we have, to the destination of all our labors:

See us again into the rhythms of this fresh season of time.
Stir in us the best of insight and ingenuity and inspiration.
Visit us with patience for waiting, impatience with carelessness,
and tenacity to persevere.
Give us courage for the telling of the truth.
Give us humility to name what remains unknown and undone.
Give us delight in the honoring of others, and joy in the honoring of life itself.
Bring us, together, to the fulfillment of this time.
For we pledge to these labors the fullness of ourselves – mind, heart, spirit, conscience, strength and imagination –

            In the name of all that is sacred to us.

Amen.
The Rev. Richard E.Spalding
Chaplain to the College

Benediction

We all need calm, quiet moments of reflection, whether sacred or profane, in consecrated spaces or within nature’s embrace, for in stillness and in silence the heart recognizes that grace is real, more real than rocks and trees and rivers, of greater substance than densest matter and more significant than complex equations or the studied observations of things.

For grace cannot be measured or apportioned. It is not politically or synthetically produced; grace is not bound by religious creeds or well crafted constitutions. Grace even eludes captivity from hardened prejudice and faulty perspectives.

Grace is wholly freely given gift. It emanates unexpectedly as invitation, always an event, an experience, an encounter.
At all times grace happens without force or expectation coming nonetheless as a challenge, because once accepted grace yields peace, a peace which is not the absence of aggression or the isolating sterility of indifference. Grace generates peace as abiding presence celebrating that which is blessed in us all and in all creation, opening us one to another, moving us to respond without deliberation, enabling us to listen before speaking.
Grace engenders a peace which words and weapons and wars can never manufacture, for grace and peace cultivate wonder and wonder ensures that every day is extraordinary and each person we encounter, special.

So, the good proclamation of this day, the “benediction” is simple: May grace and peace be with us all and those we love and too with those, whom together we must serve; here and wherever we may be, today, throughout this year, and in every year that comes.
Amen.

Fr. Gary C. Caster
Roman Catholic Chaplain