鈥淎s we send you forth, I have two charges for you: I鈥檓 charging you to a changed relationship with us, but I’m also charging you to a changed voice. Your voice is very different than when you first walked into the building. You didn鈥檛 know how your voice was going to change, you didn鈥檛 even know you had a voice, you didn鈥檛 even know what your voice was to be raised up for. And so, this is what I charge you to do: don鈥檛 you dare let anyone remove that voice from you.鈥�

reflects on the past four years of her tenure at 天美视频 and the profound change she herself has experienced. In her charge, she calls the class to sit with those they serve by cultivating a resurrection from the dead that they did not see coming. She recounts the resurrection story in John 20, translating as she reads from the original Greek, and emphasizes Mary鈥檚 charge to a different voice and relationship, something each student should also embrace upon leaving 天美视频.

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I want to know what happens next. I want to be certain that what I鈥檝e chosen, and what im choosing is going to pay off, is the right thing to do. Part of me absolutely wants this path to be level and free of pot-holes.

And I get to listen to this part a lot because this part is very loud.

But a quieter and more pervasive voice tells me to take a breath and step. Not knowing if the ground will truly rise up to meet me, because it might not. And still, I choose to step.

The poet John O鈥橠onahue says: 鈥淚 would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.鈥�

When the path is not level, when I find more ambiguity than certitude, when I lose my words, I turn towards poetry. Maybe you don鈥檛 know that you know poetry, but frankly our days are full of the stuff. A knowing beyond and below words. How do we begin to express birdsong, or the taste of a lovers tears? The color and light behind the eyes. A shift in barometric pressure right before a storm. How the leaves turn belly-up in the wind. Let alone a God who is present in all of these.

Our Bodies know. Words can help us remember and integrate the shock and shook of surprise but they cannot fully express the knowing our bodies carry. Poetry gets us closer, poetry changes the way we listen, because poetry is not based on the absolutes that fear would have us reach for.

Theologian Yvonne Gabares says 鈥減oetry orients us in the language of relatedness, which is intuitive and approximate and inclusive.鈥� Poetry roots me in my story so I can begin to wonder about yours. With that in mind, and to honor this sacred time of not knowing, or at least not knowing that we know.

I wrote something like a benediction, and if any of this resonates within you, then it is meant for you too. It鈥檚 called, 鈥淪ighting.鈥�

God鈥檚 gaze on you, now, is absolute favor
God鈥檚 gaze on you is honor
Her gaze is love without exception
And maybe right now you feel this with more particularity
God鈥檚 gaze on you is delight
And if you鈥檙e like me, it鈥檚 hard to stay in this awareness
If you鈥檙e like me you want some-one鈥檚 gaze, you want someone to tell you that you are the chosen one
You want
You want to hear from someone farther along this road, that not only is this the right road, but also you are uniquely gifted for the journey, the work you are about to do, and you are about to do great things
I have to tell you, no one chose you
Someone did not choose you

The world did not choose you to save it
You fell in love
You fell in love
The world in all its beauty and pain is where you met God

And you fell in love and decided to stay
You chose yourself
You chose to finally turn toward you
To consider what you鈥檝e done
What you鈥檝e left undone
You鈥檝e chosen to begin to find the parts of you that hid so long ago
What courage you had to stay alive
What courage you have to be found
You have seen what harm can do
And you have harmed
And you won鈥檛 let harm be the end of the story because you smashed the form
And from the pieces you are making something new
No the world did not choose you, to save it, to seek reconciliation, healing, you chose
You chose to wonder at its strange stories through your own
To put your blood and sweat and groaning to the world
To this work of earth
To this work that asks you to stay close to you, even as you move out into the world
You chose you
You could have slept through it all, and maybe you did a little
But you chose to wake, and to keep waking, and you chose to wake in your bodies
You chose to reclaim your shapes for yourself
You chose to make some noise
You chose it all
As you choose now
In the words of the poet, 鈥渨hat will you do with your one wild and precious life.鈥�

God鈥檚 gaze on you, anticipation.
And you, you bold and bent people, you are loved.

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Adventure is in my bones. Adventure drives me, calls me, pulls me, invites me. Adventure is that which climbs heights and yet descends into the abyss. Adventure is stepping into the wild unknown.

Adventure is what has brought me here.

Another word for this adventure, is hope. And just like adventure, hope is risk. Hope traverses the highest heights and the lowest lows. Hope takes courage. To quote Dan Allender, hope will kill you.

I didn鈥檛 intend to be a student at 天美视频. It wasn鈥檛 the place or the reason I packed everything I owned into my sedan and trekked across the country. I had set my course elsewhere, on an adventure to find…well, I wasn鈥檛 quite sure yet. I was following a pull and seeking the articulation of my hope. That鈥檚 why it was an adventure. But then several years ago I walked into our red brick building, first as a staff member and eventually a student. I submitted my graduate school application with fear and uncertainty; it was the feeling of trading perhaps a clearer vocational path elsewhere for a world of open-ended questions that I was meant to ask and discover. Where is God in the midst of heartache, evil, and trauma? Who am I and how does my existence impact the world? Asking these questions began a terrifying adventure into hope and desire that I could not deny.

Hope is the promise of the goodness of God. Hope is the dream that spurs you on. Hope is elated and excited and on top of the world. And hope is persistence; it is trusting that in the depths of the darkness, the light can be found. Hope invites you into death and also promises resurrection.

This past year, my final year at 天美视频, I had no further classes to complete but my focus was solely on the completion of my Integrative Project. This project which had been a part of me for years, growing and forming from within was ready to be birthed. And during this same year of birthing something new, I faced more personal deaths and endings than I could bear, including the sudden loss of my mother-in-law and the decision to end my time as a staff member. There were times where hope felt too distant to be real.

There is grief in the ending, any ending, but, in a very tangible and non-ethereal way, there is hope in what lies ahead. As we end our tenure at 天美视频, I鈥檓 reminded that every ending is a taste of both the reality of death but also the hope of resurrection.

We have explored the heartaches and griefs and traumas that scarred us and we have followed the calling of hope for who we are now and who we are yet to become.

The challenge for us is to acknowledge the scars left by the ending, while still leaning into healing and the hope for resurrection. We leave this place and our red brick building standing in that tension between the two.

Emily Dickinson writes:

鈥淗ope鈥� is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all

Hope, is your deep seated longing, an invitation to taste and see. It is the places that make your heart sing without ceasing. It is the dream within your soul that you are birthing to life, trusting in the promises of God to resurrect and renew. So for our hearts to begin to dream of redemption, to hope, opens our hearts to what is not and what will one day be. Today we stand in these caps and gowns, walk across this stage, and receive the degree that was born of this hope. We have each tasted hope, and know that the adventure stirring within us is now coming forth.

May it be so.

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I want to begin today by asking each of you鈥攁s you are willing and able鈥攖o turn your palms toward the ceiling right now and to look at them.

I invite you to consider the lines criss-crossing in unique patterns of creases and arches and loops, remembering these inscriptions in your flesh bear witness to the place where you began: in the holy darkness of another body, before you ever took in air and before the light ever saw you, that you and I come from somewhere and someone, and in some ways鈥攖hough not all鈥攚e are forever marked by where we came from.

These past four years at 天美视频 for me have involved tending to the marks that live below my skin鈥攖he ways my body holds memories, especially those painful memories that one could consider scars, or even wounds.

For me, these parts of myself have felt most unbearable to look at, let alone touch, let alone be seen or touched by anybody, even the most compassionate witnesses.

And yet for the past four years I have been invited to do that honoring and excruciating work with you, which to me often felt more like fumbling than any sort of transformation. Actually it often felt worse than fumbling. More like flailing, or failing, or falling.

But as I considered these marks over and over and over again, I started to feel that the very places I most feared or hated or denied within myself could not only survive being witnessed by myself and others, but could even begin to heal thanks to that holy witness, or to borrow Hannah Seppanen鈥檚 term, 鈥渨ithness.鈥�

天美视频 Graduates of 2019, I think about all of us dressed in black polyester gowns today, a sort of symbol that we shared something in common for a time. But it is just as true for me to say we remained and remain profoundly different in the ways we were and are marked, which means I find myself wanting to bless the worlds鈥攚orlds!鈥攜ou brought into this community. You shared your worlds with me and one another. Thank you.

And now, since we are being sent forth into bigger worlds again, I bless you. I bless those of you who will dance down the streets of Seattle tomorrow wearing rainbows and offering your beloveds a holy kiss. I bless those of you who will faithfully bear the memory of Jesus as womanist theologian Kelly Brown Douglas says, 鈥渂eing in the world as he was…entering into solidarity with the crucified class in any given context.鈥� I bless those of you who will sit in an office with someone who is bringing their world and their wounds into the open for the very first time.

And now, I am left wanting to offer one more blessing. Dr. Parker, this is your last commencement ceremony. We began our time at 天美视频 together, and we are ending our time together. I hope you know that forever, forever, as long as I live as a white American Christian woman I will be marked by your example as a black woman, a womanist New Testament scholar, a pastor, and a most cherished professor. I bless you and Victor on the road to Atlanta tomorrow, to the city where Katie Cannon earned her seminary degree, to a part of the country where your family is waiting for you, to a learning community that is already blessed because you are on your way to them. Thank you for everything here. Thank you.

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