Baccalaureate Address

Dale Seefeldt: A Time to Remember

Dr. Laurenson, esteemed teachers, staff, parents; honored members of the Class of 2011:

Mrs. Seefeldt and I are delighted to be back at Woodstock to celebrate the end of a great school year and the graduation of a distinguished group of students. Thank you for the opportunity to be here…and for the honor of being invited! I know all of you will understand if I address my remarks primarily to the members of the graduating class.

In 1965, near the end of my first year in college, a rock group called the Byrds—yes, we did have rock music back then—came out with a hit song protesting the Vietnam War. The title was "Turn, Turn, Turn." They took the words of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, our text, adding the line, "I swear it's not too late," after the final verse about war and peace?a word pair that had also attracted the attention of Leo Tolstoy. So if it helps you listen, we are talking about rock music!

But these are originally the words of Solomon, the king of Israel known for his wisdom and for the prosperity his people enjoyed. Part of what he has to say is summed up in his first couplet: "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens." Here you can see the parallelism that is essential to Hebrew poetry—the same idea repeated in different words, slightly rephrased, or two ideas related because they are opposites, as in the next fourteen lines. As soon as you recognize this structure, you begin to understand what the poet is doing. He's talking about the whole of human life— "everything…every activity under the heavens." In fact, his first pair of contrasts sets parentheses around all human life, beginning with birth and ending with death—nothing is left out. The following pairs are similarly—and stunningly—broad. They make you respond and readily agree because they are fundamentally human and true for just about anyone: "a time to plant and a time to uproot" (gardeners do it all the time); "a time to tear down and a time to build" (we can look out the window and see that, no matter where we live!); "a time to weep and a time to laugh" (just look around you at the graduation ceremonies tomorrow!). You'll notice there's even a time to keep silent—an important lesson! In another place Solomon says, "Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent!" This is a strategy worth considering as you start college! So the poet is saying that each of these very different activities has an appointed time.

This sounds reasonable, but when the list is ended, he has something more to add: God is the One who appoints the time. Verse eleven completes the thought of verse one: "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end." In other words, there is a time for everything that happens to you, and you can have confidence that God designed your "times" to be beautiful—even if you can't understand how they all fit together just yet. Having a sense of these "times" helps us be ready for the bad times as well as the good—they, too, are part of the rhythm of life. With God in the picture, life makes sense. Without Him in the picture, it is hard to find purpose and meaning in what happens to us. In fact, this is Solomon's underlying thesis throughout his book. In chapter twelve he advises, "Remember your creator in the days of your youth." Along with the planting and uprooting that is happening to you, along with the mourning and dancing, the weeping and laughing that tomorrow brings, you have come to a time when it is also important to remember. First of all, remember where you came from. Remember the parents who brought you here. Remember your home, your family, your land. I'm reminded of the joyful words that burst out from Jaishankar Prasad at India's independence:

This is a time to remember. Look back, remember where you came from. But look around you too, remember where you are now. Remember what you have learned here, how you have grown. Remember your teachers and your friends. Remember whom you have loved, what you have shared. In short, remember this School. It's a rather nebulous idea, in some ways—a school. You never really know where the learning will take place. It may happen while you're sitting in a circle around a stove, going over math homework with friends. It may happen at the lunch table, when someone puts a clever turn on words and ideas that you have been thinking about too. It may happen when you're doing research on your own and you stumble across one of the world's "great ideas." It may happen when you're bored and flip ahead a hundred pages to see what else is in the textbook—or any other book, for that matter. It may happen when someone you thought you knew stands up and tells the student body all the reasons why they would make a good governor, or committee chair, or StuCo President—and you hear and think, yeah, they're right, they would make a good one…or you think, actually, I could do that too! Learning may happen in the dorm, on Hansen Field…in the gym…on the road up to school…or even…in a classroom! Remember where you are now!

I taught ESL at Woodstock for ten years and learned constantly from my students. One of the first things I learned was that they were really smart—or they would never be surviving school in a different language! I learned that kimchi comes from heaven—no, really, it does—most people who eat it think Korea is heaven! (I love kimchi, but my wife does not love me when I eat it—something to do with powdered shrimp and garlic). I kept copies of many of the good papers students wrote. My favorite was by a Japanese girl a number of years back: "English is a Hard Language to Think." Her paper discussed—with intimate knowledge—what it is like to know what you think inside your own head and struggle to find the right words and phrases to express it clearly in someone else's language, so that it can enter their head. I wished I had read that paper long before I started teaching. I often got it out and read it over again at the beginning of a new semester or school year. Another favorite of mine was a well organized essay by a Vietnamese student about the advantages of letting ESL students be part of non-ESL classes rather than making them study separately in a class with other ESL students—that essay was so convincing that it helped us decide our policy as a school on this issue. Then there was the masterpiece written by an eighth-grade boy—again, arguing from intimate experience—a five-paragraph essay, with introduction, body and conclusion, presenting compelling logic in favor of doing away with after-school detention (This one did not shape school policy, however! In fact, it was written during—you guessed it—after-school detention. It was his best essay ever.). A school is a learning community, for teachers as much as for students. The mystery of learning is part of what makes it worth remembering.

School is also worth remembering because you have worked hard at it. For years you have diligently prepared for quizzes, tests, examinations, IGCSE's, AP's, SAT's, and any other alphabet soup that has been thrown at you. You have prepared for both internal and external examinations, for recitals, juries, and final concerts. You may be tempted to ask, was I an idiot for doing this? I don't think so. The hard reality is you live in a competitive world. One reason you have what you have is because you have worked hard for it. And what you don't have probably went to someone who worked even harder! Our school motto is palma non sine pulvere—no victory palms without the dust of struggle.

One final thing that makes school worth remembering is your own belief that what you are doing right now is good and worthwhile. You have invested your time, your effort, and your life where you saw value. The Woodstock School Creed ends with the sentence: "Thus, in all these ways, we will transmit this School greater, better, and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us." These words were not invented by Woodstock. They come from Plato's Academy in Athens. They remind us that we live not only for ourselves, but also for those who follow after. This will be true of your whole life. What will you do that is worth passing on to someone else? What have you done while here that you can point out to next year's new students and say, "I'm leaving that behind to help you"?

A time to remember! Look back, remember where you came from. Look around you, remember where you are now. And looking ahead, remember the One who appoints the "times" in your life. Saint Augustine prayed, "You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they can find peace in you." Bhakti poet Ravi Das expressed a similar thought through a series of vivid pictures:

Lord, you are sandalwood, we are water, your fragrance permeating every part. Lord, you are the cloud, we the enraptured peacock; like the partridge entranced with the moon.

Lord, you are the lamp, we just the wick, spreading light day and night.

French philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal said, "There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man that cannot be filled by any created being, but by God alone." Think again about Solomon's words: "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart." That's how we're wired. Even though we are very much creatures of this earth, we can't help but respond to God.

I have climbed to Darwa Top, the ridge above Dodital, and looked at Bandarpunch from there nine times. The mountain is immense, with its two peaks and many glaciers. You look at the long valley leading up to the south side and try to estimate how many days it would take to walk up it to the main glacier…and you give up. In the clear, bright morning air it looks as though you are right there, and yet you can also see that you are very small next to the gigantic rock faces, boulders, and fields of scree, the long, climbing valley, the towering snow-covered peaks. That's how we are before God—very small, unable to handle the scope on which He operates, but alive and aware of the beauty He has made.

Before he died, Jesus told his followers that he would be raised again on the third day. Yet when women arrived at the tomb with burial spices and found it empty, they seemed perplexed. They were told, "He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you!" And it says, "Then they remembered his words."

Sometimes you remember things better after they come together and make sense. The resurrection seemed impossible…until it happened. Then everything made sense. A little like falling in love…or graduating! A mystery until, suddenly, you're in the middle of it. On the eve of India's independence in 1947, Pandit Nehru spoke of India's approaching "tryst with destiny." His words were filled with a tender awe and joyful anticipation that spread to those who heard them:

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends…The appointed day has come—the day appointed by destiny.

Without detracting from what that night meant for modern India, you, too, are at the eve of independence. You have been plodding along step by step, from grade 9 to grade 10, from first semester to second, from Day Three to Day Four, from homework to exam, from IGCSE to AP—it all seemed gradual. But now you're at a watershed event. In one day you'll move from child to adult. The words "in school" will no longer apply to you. This is a time to remember. Remember where you came from—your parents, your home, your land. Remember where you are now—what you have learned and shared at this school. And remember your Creator, the one who appoints a time for everything that happens and makes everything beautiful.

One final word: when you leave this place, you, too, will not be forgotten. As you join the ranks of Woodstock's distinguished alumni, we will…remember you.