TOUCHSTONES

William College Reunion
Alumni Memorial Service

June 9, 2002

Never in a thousand years did I imagine myself standing her in this place this morning. Certainly not 25 years ago when I was a student here and had never met a woman minister much less thought about being one. But time has a way of taking us places that lie beyond our wildest dreams and imaginings. Something those places are deeply satisfying and sometimes not. Sometimes those journeys are true and pure and sometimes they are not. Along the way part of who we truly are falls away like pebbles strewn along a path. Other parts are revealed, having had all the grime and dirt washed away.

On the bureau in my bedroom there is an eclectic collection of stones. Some are inherently beautiful or interesting and some are very plain. But all carry memories of a particular person or place or moment. One stone feels particularly wonderful when you pick it up and slide your hand over the curve along the smooth surface. Another, hard and crumbly, is from the Holy Land- given to me by a beloved friend. A third stone was found by my son on the bottom of a lake where we go in the summer. To pick up each stone (there are probably ten or twelve of them) is to remember – if even for just a brief moment- something that is true of those places and people and moments and who I was then with them. These small seemingly insignificant pieces of hardened earth are touchstones for me.

According to Webster, a touchstone is a type of black stone that was used to test the purity of gold or silver. You rubber the metal across the surface of a touchstone and if it left the right kind of streak you would know that it was pure gold or silver. A touchstone is also a test for determining genuineness or value. So it is that the touchstones of our lives awaken within us what we know to be true and pure and genuine. By passing our lives over these touchstones we see more clearly they truth of our living and our dying.

A beautiful piece of music can be a touchstone.

A book or poem can be a touchstone.

A prayer, a piece of sculpture

A beautiful sunset or mountain top vista

The sound of a friend’s laughter

All potential touchstones.

Suddenly we are transported beyond the ordinary to catch glimpses of what, over time and tested against the touchstones of our hearts, is true and just and peasing.

Reunions hold many kinds of touchstones. We yearn for one weekend to touch down in the lives we shared in this place 10, 25, 50 years ago. Together we remember our shared stories, our shared memories, our shared aspirations and dreams. For some of us Williams was a window into a wider world where we have spent our adult life. Here we first learned to love organic chemistry or American literature or political science and began to imagine spending our lives exploring the richness of the world contained in these disciplines. It was here that we fell in love and it was here that our hearts were broken. It was here that our hearts and minds were awakened to the ineffable complexity and mystery of life. Here we began to understand the wider world that existed beyond the world of our childhoods. So we spend the weekend remembering with the people who can help us remember best, those who were here with us. When we throw our arms around a roommate, a true touchstone, we are greeting not only him but also the part of ourselves and our lives that live in him and through him and through our shared memories. Fred Beuchner, a poet and writer and sometimes pastor writes,

“When you remember me it means you have carried something of who I am with you and I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart.”

We walk around the campus with our partners and children and grandchildren telling them Williams stories. Here is Wood House where mommy lived. Every night we ate dinner in this dining room. I ran the student dining service. On Thursday nights we had these fancy dinners, guest meals. I remember one night…. And so it goes classmates, professors, buildings, field, all touchstones to be held, pondered, mused over.

We cannot gather this weekend without also remembering beloved classmates who are no longer here. Some have lived long and full lives and so we come to this place to bid a fond farewell. Some have died in the midst of the fullness of their lives and so we mourn a life cut short. Some have died having just crossed the threshold of adulthood and so we mourn what was and might have been and no will never be. We remember. We mourn. And we give thanks.

This Memorial Service stands in the shadow of September 11 th. Although the rubble has been cleared away in Lower Manhattan much of it still remains in our collective consciousness. On that Tuesday morning (we can all probably remember exactly where we were when we heard the news,) something terrible happened and suddenly we were thrown out of the carefully landscaped territory of our daily routines into a world marked by airplanes falling from the sky, building burning, anthrax attacks and vague unspecific but terrible threats to our domestic security. For some of us the landscape has changed dramatically. For others it is far more subtle. For all of us the land on which we stand has shifted. Deep deep within us the shift is occurring. Stone that were once the foundations on which our living rested have become nothing more than rubble.

When we hear the Kaddish read in a few minutes we will be remembering and mourning not only our lost friends and classmates but also parts of ourselves of our sense of security and identity and innocence that died on September 11 th. The great temptation is to try and go on as before whatever the cost in freedom and civil liberties without self questioning or self criticism or public debate. But if we are willing to sit among the rubble picking up the stones and examining them, rubbing stone against stone, looking for the streak of truth and genuineness to be indelibly etched on the touchstone of our hearts we will find those pieces from the rubble that continue to be true and just and pure and beautiful.

Moses has gathered the people together for one last time. The elders, the officials, the men, women, and children are all there. Moses looked out over the crowd that he had led for the last forty years. We they wandered around the wilderness they have grownup, gotten married, had children and grandchildren. They know what it is to have their dreams deferred and their hopes die. They have watched loved ones die. Moses stands before them ready to give his farewell address. What is it that he most want to tell his beloved beleaguered people as they stand facing their future, ready to cross the Jordan and enter the promised land. On this day of solemn commitment Moses begins by turning the people around so that together they face the past. Moses begins by rehearsing the story of their shared history, their shared hopes and dreams.

Their slavery in Egypt – a touchstone.

Their passing through the waters – another touchstone

Their receiving the great commandments at Mount Sinai – one of the greatest touchstones.
Even the story of the golden calf and the broken tablets – a difficulttouchstone

Over the years, along the way the Israelites have from time to time moved away from the clarity of the commitment that they made to God at the base of Mount Sinai. Moses invited them to touch down once more in that time of their shared life to remember the slavery, the freedom, the promise and to bring the truth from the living of those days that passes the test when rubber against the touchstone of time to bring that truth to the living of these days. And then and only then he turns them around again to face their future, polished touchstone in hand and heart and says: I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse: choose life that you and your descendants may live. It is only by looking back and holding their lives up against the touchstones of their history that they are prepared to choose life once again.

In the book “Children of War” a journalist tells the story of children in Ireland, Cambodia, and the Middle East who have lived their whole lives in countries fighting wars. We wonders what the effect of such constant and serious conflict might be on the lives of young innocent children. In the book he describes his encounter with a young boy he met in a Cambodian refugee camp on the Thai border. This young boy had seen his mother shot by the Khmer Rouge and his father starve to death. As his father was dying he turned to his son and said, “Never forget we. Never forget your mother. Live to revenge our deaths.” The young boy promised to revenge his parents’ deaths. And so the journalist asks him, “Will you go back to Cambodia and find the people who did this to your parent and revenge their death?” And the young boy says, “No I will revenge my parents death by going on and living the best life that I can live.

Choose life that you and your descendants might live.

We honor the lives of our classmates who have died when we choose life. We come back to the touchstone that is our Williams College experience to remember who we were then so we can more clearly see who we are now as we turn to face our future and who it is we are to be. We test our living against the touchstone of time we find here to see what it is we can put down at last and what it is we should pick up once again.

Choose life that you and your descendants may live. Amen.

The Rev. Elizabeth Wieman ‘77