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Commencement is a foundational part of 天美视频鈥檚 annual rhythm, full of ritual, symbolism, beauty, and depth to help mark the meaningful, transformational work to which these students have committed themselves鈥攁nd to welcome them into the next phase of their journey as alumni. This cohort in particular faced unique challenges due to the pandemic, shifting much of their final coursework and internships online. Through many obstacles they persevered to not only cross the finish line, but complete their degrees with great courage and determination.

鈥淐ommencement marks a season of endings and beginnings. It is a time of gratitude for the grace of God during the journey, and for the courage to persist in the midst of struggle. This moment affirms and celebrates a renewed call to life鈥檚 adventure and service,鈥� said Dr. J. Derek McNeil, President of 天美视频.

This year鈥檚 ceremony will feature student voices Bina Ellefsen (MA in Counseling Psychology), Emma Groppe (MA in Theology & Culture), and Milli Haase (Master of Divinity). The ceremony will also feature special music from Jodi Bagge, a graduating MA in Counseling Psychology student.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, only graduating students and one guest may gather in person for the celebration of the 60 students who are completing their time as students at 天美视频. While we are unable to invite our community to join us in person, you can join us live via our .

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鈥淚f each of us can change something in the lives of others simply by how we walk with them, talk to them, or breathe on each other, what then is the meaning of this for you? How will you walk? How will you talk? How will you breathe in the middle of this viral pandemic and racial tsunami?鈥�

鈥淲e need you to bring who you are – bring your story – to change our classroom, our dialogue, our blindnesses our fears, our courage, in just directions, to eradicate the hate.鈥�

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For those of you that know me well you know that I am blunt sometimes to a fault. I am realistic and often speak of lament. I don’t always choose it and yet sometimes words of grief and protest just seem to pour out of me. That is who I am and that is how my voice shows up in spaces where I’m given permission to express it. So while I attempted to write words that uplift and encourage, I couldn’t help but pay attention to the reality of the world going on around us.

The pain in mourning, neglect and suffering, despair and utter devastation. Some of us in this graduating cohort came to 天美视频 in the midst of the 2016 presidential election cycle, the results of which caused many of us to question our national moral integrity for the very first time. Some of us in this graduating cohort came to this school two weeks following the shocking events that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia. We struggled to stay present during orientation in our first days of classes. We watched Hurricane Harvey devastate the Houston area with Hurricane Maria soon to follow.

We have survived more than our fair share in these last few years. Dozens of unfortunate mass shootings such as those that occurred in Las Vegas, Parkland, and El Paso. We have witnessed the launch of the #metoo movement and the heartbreaking but necessary acknowledgment of systemic sexual violence against women. We have observed countless acts of political corruption from travel bans and family separation and kids in cages to intentional government shutdowns, numerous accounts of fraud, attacks against marginalized communities and an unfaltering rise and domestic hate groups and extreme nationalism.

We’ve witnessed the environment cry out in distress not only from the hurricanes but also earthquakes, wildfires, a rising sea level and other signs of global warming. NFL players have taken knees while police brutality and police murder continue to befall the black community and America’s correction system remains functioning by design. We are facing a growing opioid epidemic and uptick in abuse statistics, continued threats against basic human rights, national voter suppression and a staggering mental health crisis. I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention that many of us in this graduating cohort survived a brazen incidence of abuse of power and cultural trauma inflicted within the four walls of this very institution, the likes of which have not only had a profound impact on all of us as individuals but had a ripple effect on the overall culture of the school.

We are a peculiar bunch, aren’t we. We began our pursuit towards a master’s degree during one national crisis after another. Now we are officially ending in the midst of a global pandemic and mass civil unrest. It seems as if we have been invited to embody the school’s creed – text soul and culture 鈥� for such a time as this. The actor and fallen national hero Chadwick Boseman talked about purpose when he addressed the 2018 graduating class of Howard University. He said, 鈥淧urpose crosses disciplines, purpose is an essential element of you. It is the reason you are on the planet at this particular time in history. Your very existence is wrapped up in the things you are here to fulfill.鈥�

To the graduating class of the 天美视频 of Theology and Psychology, I say thank you. It has been a privilege and an honor to learn from you, be challenged by you, and encouraged by you. Given all of what we’ve been through both collectively and individually these past few years, I can emphatically affirm that I wouldn’t have made it without each one of you. You helped me grow up. Thank you for providing me the opportunity to discover more of my purpose, and I’m hopeful that each one of you is able to declare the same.

Now to the family, dear friends, and colleagues that have joined us here today, I leave you with two reminders: one, the resistance is much larger than police brutality and police murder, much larger. And two, with the presidential election just 36 days away I implore you to be an empathetic witness and vote on behalf of the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. Remember, however, that voting will not fix every problem. In fact, the right to vote comes with many problems of its own, but it’s definitely a strong starting place. Peace.

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2020 Graduates: No matter where you’re at, to each of you.

February darkness
March curveballs
April strikes
May day is June deaths
July outrage
August outrage
Coronavirus quarantine shutdown
Rolls of toilet paper plundered

Lynchings
Ahmaud Arbury
George Floyd
Breonna Taylor
Ray Lewis
[name?]
Tony McDade
Manuel Ellis
Elijah McLane
Jacob Blake
And too many to name

Black lives matter
Immigrants and fire, pandemic exploits
Smoke that meth or September opiates
Or whatever is your choice
Drug ambition that’s our situation
Protest that shit or don’t
We鈥檒l be sitting by
Listing by preaching by
What we be for the least of these

Out my kitchen window
Birds pitching endless fits
Violent callous society
Looting politely
News flash the Dow won’t crash
Number 45 all [chomped?] aglow
While those birds billow
Why are you burning my world
Through summer scorched skin it begins
Old evil powers seem to win
I push hard to go through
To be she who shows thoroughly
Hopes more than you’ll ever know

Trauma don’t discriminate
You and me might dissociate
Workaholics high functioning healers
But emotions inherently
Bodily relationships
Inherently bodily believers
An engagement with our bodies
The wounds persisting trauma
For our communal body persisting

Didn’t know if we would be
Reckless pain or drowned in superfluous glee
Opposite ends collide
Etched with a shroud to cloud
Barbed words from furious skies

Liars lied in the name of
Freedom a gender reveal
In the name of freedom
Two sons for planet earth
Or when you give birth
The earth order to conceal
Not reveal its brown as blackness
Immigrants valueless and
Justice is racist supremacist

I implore you resist
Less we divest
Don’t betray these your brothers sisters
The one you don’t know
Because they’re telling us get off my neck
In the land of the free where you aren’t free
Cast off the chaff
Will you finally see?
Grief doesn’t end it
Begins again repeats again and again

We are off a truly modest
Grad ambition
Paid position
Agency my agency or yours
We are change agents

Hungry mouths
Minds wound
Pump jumped up on
Literary academic disillusion
Stories for glory stories
With glory in the ripping red blood
Coming from black brown yellow red
Some white
But don’t forget
It’s red blood spilling

I’m not checking
You we get to begin in the midst of protest
Offer honor containment
Trust rest it’s us the someone in a system
That continues to perpetrate injustices
We are the someone who didn’t see
It’s us who need to see

We must have a sense of justice
Sense of radical decency
This will no longer stand
Not for us, I propose
You chose to love those in agony
I know for you and me will be witnessing
I reckon it’s the now not yet
Because all ashes aren’t beauty yet

Enter madness
People not because we are heroes
But we have tasted enough healing
I’m believing treacherous terrain
Hold faith hope love
Its refrain a hope
It doesn’t rush us to a resurrection life
Complacent a hope that says
I will remain adjacent

Notorious RBG and Chadwick鈥檚 best
With John Lewis imbue us
To fight for things we care about
Do it in a while leading a way
So others will join us
So you be more change
But don’t leave any more
We can’t bear that anymore

Let’s bring our faces bodies
Comfort together side-by-side
Besides this is the work of the spirit
On our behalf all the time
And hope does not put us to shame
Because God’s love has been poured into our hearts
Through the Holy Spirit
Who has been given to us

So will you put yourself in the narrative
Forgive live bold
Free wild fight
With insight
Stand in margins
Don’t give up even
When you mess up

And I’ll leave it with Dr. Allender
Take seriously the story that God
Has given you to live
It’s no mere phase
Let your story set us
Ablaze

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We are gathered here in our caps and gowns to signal that we have accomplished, what we first arrived at 2501 Elliott Avenue to do. However, I would urge you to remember that there was so much more in your heart than a degree when you began.

I wonder what it was that motivated you to enroll or to even begin seeking a graduate program. Maybe even what the program sought in you. For most of us, I would guess that you saw something in the world you are not okay with. For me, that was the injustice of sexual violence that women and children face all too often.

But I would wager that there was something, or many things, that you knew at the deepest level of your being were not the way that they were supposed to be. There was a passion inside of you that had hope for a different way, a better way, And however it was that you encountered 天美视频, you saw sparks of that hope alive and moving.

You saw people who have gone before doing work that was shifting those same tides, and so you chose to be a part of the movement. At the beginning of every school year there’s a Fall Vespers service and in this service the story of 天美视频 is told including how it was started by folks who were just foolish enough to believe that they could have an impact and create change. Paul Steinke would end the speech by welcoming us beautiful fools into the fold of hope and change seekers that had come before us, and I would venture to guess that your journey at 天美视频 probably wasn’t exactly what you had imagined when you first began, as life never is.

I know that I got far more than just an education in theology and biblical studies, but these last few months I found it difficult to ground myself, to find the directions forward or to even hold hope, and perhaps you have as well.

The world looks much different than it did when we started not just because we read Esther Meek, Martin Buber or the Septuagint in Greek, but also because we are in the midst of a global pandemic and an active civil rights movement. In the last nine days alone, we have been mourning the loss of a champion for women and LGBTQ folks rights as well as the denial of justice for Breonna Taylor. And while all these specific events are new, the underlying issues and systems are not, from racism, xenophobia, sexism, unequal access to healthcare, and homophobia, white supremacy, and the list could go on and on and on, and it would be foolish to think that we could reverse every evil, but it is possible to have an impact.

It’s necessary to enact change within our areas of influence. It can be easy to forget the work that we have done here or why we did it, especially in times such as these. For myself, I got my voice back. I got access to pieces of myself I hadn’t known or had lost along the way. I learned many new aspects and histories of Christianity that gave me a renewed connection to our creator and now I will go forth to make space for others to do that same work.

I don’t know what each of your unique paths look like but my friends, as we depart for separate vocations and paths, I pray that the God of the impossible would meet you in surprising ways when you feel more foolish than hopeful. May you always have strong community around you and in times of difficulty may you be able to feel the palpable presence of God so you know you are never alone in your work. In the times when you feel like you cannot go any further, may rest and peace find you, and when you emerge may your capacity be enlarged enough to keep going another day. And finally, may you have spacious breath that fills your lungs with ample oxygen to keep those embers of foolish hope that brought you here in the first place alive. May they burn enough to continue lighting your path and guiding your work in this beautifully broken world, because the world needs you.

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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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So the question arises: What next? Besides celebrating with loved ones (and maybe taking a nap), how do you mark the end of such a significant chapter and begin transitioning toward whatever鈥檚 ahead? We shared that question鈥擶hat should I do after graduation?鈥攚ith our alumni community, asking for advice, stories, and resources. Here are some of their answers:

Explore

• 鈥淎fter I graduated I gave myself two full months to live life before I started looking for a job. I road tripped and camped through Crater Lake, Grand Tetons, and Rocky Mountain National Parks for about two weeks and then traveled to Rome, Morocco, and Los Angeles. I did all of this because I wanted to revisit some significant places in my story and have a new adventure to reclaim the part of myself I set down as school took up so much time and space. I鈥檓 forever grateful I was able to do these things so I could get centered again, remember that the world is big and beautiful and full of possibility, and take that stance/mindset to step into my professional role as a therapist.鈥� 鈥揔rystina Ptasinski (MA in Counseling Psychology, 鈥�16)
• 鈥淎fter graduation, I went on a pilgrimage to Norway鈥攁 decision prompted by several classes I鈥檇 taken, including Multicultural Perspectives and Celtic Spirituality. My pilgrimage was to explore the (primary) land of my ethnic/ancestral roots. I knew that I had family scattered about Norway鈥攏ot many contacts, but enough info to risk going.鈥� 鈥揈ric Nicolaysen (Master of Divinity, 鈥�12)

Center

• 鈥淭wo things that were helpful for me: 1) Go to the doctor and get a full physical. Grad school can be stressful, and stress is tough on your body. Get a full picture of your physical health and make some plans to recover. 2) Take a lot of naps over the next few months. You have probably lost a lot of sleep over the last few years, and graduation in and of itself is wonderfully exhausting. Get some rest!鈥� 鈥揂shley Wright (MACP, 鈥�16)
• 鈥淚 think everybody should join me on a . Let鈥檚 get out of the city, inhale the ridiculous beauty of the Pacific Northwest, gain healing wisdom from Mother Earth, and reconnect with our own inner, still voices.鈥� 鈥揗ichelle Allen (MACP, 鈥�14)

Read?

• 鈥淭his one probably seems preposterous, since right now some of you might feel like you never want to look at a book again. But the summer after graduation, I listened to of the entire Harry Potter series (yes, audiobooks count) and it was exactly what I needed鈥攁 sweeping, fantastic story that managed to transcend my day-to-day life while still helping me feel more closely connected to the world around me.鈥� 鈥揃eau Denton (MACP, 鈥�17)
• If you鈥檙e looking for summer reading ideas, check out these faculty recommendations for incoming students on the Matriculate blog. Because every ending is really another beginning, right?

Whether you鈥檙e graduating next week or just looking forward to a couple months without classes, we hope the summer ahead is full of rest, connection, and the opportunity to grow more deeply into yourself. And in the meantime, we鈥檇 love to see you at Commencement next Saturday鈥攅ither in person at Town Hall or , where we鈥檒l be streaming the whole ceremony live.

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