Graduation

Yesterday I walked across the stage and received my BA for the second time. That morning I had been digging in the dirt with my Sunday School class, making a little place for us by a pile of rocks on the church yard. It’s hard to explain, so I will have to post a picture. Anyway, I am not writing about the children, but about graduation. I had quite a bit of dirt on my hands from Sunday School, and it occurred to me that rather than wash it off for the ceremony, I should keep it on as a symbol not only for the past year’s work in my thesis, but as a symbol of who I have become here through my education. I have learned not only to value people and earth, but practical and informed ways of expressing this. I really think that one of the best things for humans is gardening. We learn so many things about self, God and other from the soil. We are formed when we enter into relationship with the earth. Thus with a great amount of honor, none of which was apparent to anyone but those I expressly told, I took my degree with well caked hands.

Today a group of us began the project of making the community garden. The day began at 10am and did not end until after 5pm. There is such a sense of community when people gather to accomplish a task. Tomorrow I and a few others will be joining the maintenance crew in the morning to bring al l the sod we dug up to bare places on campus. We cut 5 22’ x 22’ squares into the North Eastern corner of campus. It has made a huge pile of sod, and revealed a rich dark clay, just waiting for plants of all types. Having done a bit of gardening in the soil at Providence (which mainly consists of a daily struggle against weeds, mosquitoes and hard clay) the weight of the responsibility of what we were doing hit me hard. We have dug into the earth. We have committed ourselves to its care and the care of what we plant into it. We will be bringing life into the world and be responsible to nurture it. Somehow this seems like a very weighty responsibility. It is one, however, which I long for and am honored to have.


As I cleared away the sod I realized that it was today and not Sunday which was my graduation ceremony. Having completed the theoretical requirements for my degree, I have moved from abstraction to practice. David Johnson, the Provost, came out at 10:30 thinking there would be some formal dedication. It is interesting to me how we continually separate action and thought, especially in spiritual matters. I wanted to hand him a shovel and tell him to “pray” to “dedicate” by beginning the work. I wanted to tell him to join the rest of us in bringing into being an idea. What could be closer to living our image of God than creating a garden? Perhaps it is our distaste for getting our hands dirty which is our curse. Hell is living in a world of abstractions, never engaging life. Today we entered into a relationship with a bit of soil. Today I began the actual work of my degree.