"Maybe You Will Remember..."

GRADUATION THOUGHTS

(PFCTA Class 2011-2)

As you leave from this place and one another, maybe you could take these few thoughts with you.  Having been in a group such as this a time or two, I've no doubt that you will not long remember who spoke nor what was said.  By this time in your training you may feel like your brain hit a bad sector and just cannot absorb any more.

Someone once wrote,

Life is filled with froth and bubble,

Two things stand alone

Kindness in another’s trouble,

Courage in your own. 

We will get back to that in a moment.  However, let us take a moment or two to consider these few thoughts, thought that are along the lines of, maybe you will remember that...

1. Maybe you will remember that you were challenged to get more than a piece of paper...

"As in law school, the other students were disturbed. Hagbard began to understand: they are not here to learn, they are here to acquire a piece of paper that would make them eligible for certain jobs....”

[From The Illuminatus! Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, 1975]

You soon will have a piece of paper and for some it will all end tomorrow at noon as the square will be filled and you can move on to whatever else is ahead for you.  However, for others you were challenged and your learning will continue!

As William Yeats said,

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

[William Butler Yeats, 1865 to 1939]

2.  Maybe you will remember that one or more of the presenters lit your fire...

Most of you probably feel a bit overwhelmed with all of this in as much as your pail is filled to overflowing.

Whether obvious or not most all of the presenters you have heard are people of passion who on some level sought to light a fire not fill your pail! That is they are passionate or afflicted with passion about what they do and teach.  If you would not have taken one note or peered at one PowerPoint slide but listened to their heart you would have heard a certain passion not about who they are as a chaplain or other presenter but about what underlies their serving.

As someone once said,

If this does not light your fire, then your wood is wet

For some this experience confirmed your calling to serve those who serve us, for others it no doubt confirmed that this is not where you belong.  Wherever you serve may you be passionate about it.   Speaking of passion, we will look at it a bit more in a moment.  

3.  Maybe you will remember that you need to be possessed of a wish to know...

Hopefully as you leave it is with some sense of what you do not know but also some sense of what you wish to know.

The African proverb goes,

Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse.

As was said, this is the basic course.  May I suggest two sources for further study.

First, those you serve.  Make a study of those you serve.  Ask one of your charges this question, "What are the most important things I need to know about serving here?"

Second, most of the presenters could have given you much, much more and would be honored if you contacted them for further study.

As others have given to us from their experience, so too the instructor corps at the Academy gave to you so that you might give to others.

4.  Maybe you will remember that someone said to be invited into someone's world is an honor...

Plato said,

There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

Remember, every day you put on your department patch, that you have been granted a great honor.  May none of us seek the honor of the patch but may we enter into that honor by invitation.  When you are invited into the world of that patch, it means that you have been honored by being invited to belong to that department but you also belong to another group.

You belong to others who have been privileged to wear the patch.  Yes, it is the privilege of the patch.  Please do not take lightly that you wear the patch you wear, it is an honor granted to few.  Honor it and by honoring it, you honor those of us who also wear the patch with you.  Many will collect, some will trade, but few will be granted the opportunity or should I say privilege to wear the patch.

Do not presume upon the patch by taking what it means for granted.  There are three chaplain who I personally know who did just that--presumed upon the patch in one way or another and no longer wear the patch.

In being allowed to wear the patch you join those across this world who serve those of the patch.  They wear it with you and you with them. But also remember that you wear the patch not to be served but because you serve in important and essential ways--let no one denigrate your importance.

Finally remember that you enjoy the privilege of the patch not to be served bu to serve--serve in the good times but also in the dark places of life.

That leads to the next point...

5.  Maybe you will remember that you were warned that this indeed is a painful privilege...

The background of the word passion as it came to the English from other Latin based languages, means to suffer, to endure, to hurt, etc. For example we speak of Christ's death as The Passion.  Later in the 14th Century it came to mean strong emotion, desire.  In other words it historically has meant to endure hurt and suffering and much more recently has come to mean a strong emotional desire or attachment.

But there is more.  Your trainers were more than people of passion and resource, indeed they are people of compassion and they sought to light the fires of compassion within you.  Compassion draws from the earlier meaning of passion, that notion of suffering.  The word originates in the idea of "com" or "together" and as we saw suffer.  In other words compassion is together suffering.

There is a cost to compassion—for when we are compassed with the needs around us, we give and such giving is not without cost to our hearts.  However, remember…we do not suffer alone.  Because we do not suffer alone the cost is not to us alone.

Together we suffer with the God when we serve.  For those of Christian faith understand that our God is one who became flesh and dwelt among us and understands personally our compassion.  C. S. Lewis noted that when we suffer we join Christ in His Passion.

Together we suffer with those with whom we serve, our fellow chaplains.  

Together we suffer with those to whom we are called to serve.

Together we suffer with those of our families for they are not immune to what we do.  When the call volume is high, or God forbid you lose an officer, or there is a mass casualty event, the members of your family will suffer as those things exact a toll upon you. 

As you leave this place leave in the knowledge that in the dark places of life, God has prepared others to walk with you.  They may not be physically present with you but they none the less walk with you.

6.  Maybe you will remember that because of others you could come this way...

Your calling to serve is to join with those who have gone before you!  Maybe a question worth considering is this.  Am I honoring the others who have come this way?  Do I honor them and what they did, how they opened doors, by how I am living out their calling in my calling?

When going through such an academy as this, while in the military, I heard about the blue wall and that it would be difficult to gain entrance and acceptance.  You see in the military because of rank structure there is no cami wall.  I came to civilian law enforcement expecting the worse but found that where I live, others had broken down that wall of mistrust and skepticism.  You would know Dan’s name but not the others yet that is exactly what they did in one form or another.

Should joining in that tradition, not mean something?  Not require something of us?

Your calling is to join with those who are now serving! Others who with you wear the patch!

Your calling is to join with those who will serve, whose fires will be kindled and who will wear the patch.

Someday someone else will direct this academy, perhaps one of you.  

Someday someone else will stand in your stead in your department in the darkness of death and loss.  You may want to be the one but you will be gone and they will be there.  Be to them like those who preceded us, not the one who prepares the way, but the one who is the way maker who fashions a better way.  Be the model for those who follow.

CLOSE

7.  Maybe you will remember your re-commitment to serve...

A commitment to serve born of strong emotional desire, born of passion serves in the good times, but may not be there in the bad.  You will meet chaplains if you have not already done so who love the title, the uniform, the patch, the privilege, but never take a call out.  They are chaplains of passion--of emotional attachment.

However, remember that we started with,

Life is filled with froth and bubble,

Two things stand alone

Kindness in another’s trouble,

Courage in your own.

We who do this service--this ministry must come to a place of commitment born of the pain of compassion.

It is to be the commitment to serve--serve up kindness in another's trouble.

It is to be the commitment to serve, to serve up courage in our own--our own when...we are overwhelmed by our circumstance...our own when we are in times of great personal loss...our own when we are unrecognized in this life…when darkness clouds our day...when that call comes in the dark of night...when  that family event is disrupted...when your best efforts are questioned…when you give and give and go and go...when are treated unfairly…when--well you fill in the blank!

That is when the person who serves because of the commitment born of the pain of compassion courageously stays to the task.

No matter your place of service, may you be blessed with a commitment born of the pain of compassion, may you courageously stay to the task--stay to the painful privilege.  May you courageously give kindness in another's trouble.

AMEN!