Commencement

Several years ago, at a high school commencement exercise in Washington, D.C., one of the senior girls delivered a closing prayer which she had written. The young woman began to read her prayer at that time when the people’s thoughts turn to the parking lot. But, as the prayer unfolded, the confusion and the shifting at the edge of the crowd quickly subsided and a miraculous silence settled over the arena. It lasted until the last word of the prayer was uttered. Here is a portion of that prayer:

Dear God, grant us one thing before we leave the sheltered reassurance of our childhood. Show us life. Not an empty, shallow world of shallow people and shallow dreams, but real life…For we have known the bliss of childhood as well as the passion of adolescence. We have heard the cry of babies, and we have seen the fear of death on a soldier’s face. We want to change the world, but we don’t know how.…