Graduation? Commencement? Is it an ending or just a beginning? No one can really ever tell for sure. You may know that you're ready to be done (done, done) with high school, but the next steps can be unsure and unsteady. It's not that easy to go back to being a freshman again. Your parents are re-living their own transitions from the bleachers. They graduated once too, went off to college, got married, and remember quite clearly the day you were born. It all seems so fast now for them. They know that college life is full of greater challenges than passing your courses, and that finding a job and creating a life in today's economy is growing increasingly difficult.

But the graduation speech lingers in the air. It's been written for the graduates, but it touches the parents, grandparents and gathered community. It seems like the ever chanting mantra - "Succeed, succeed, succeed." Hopefully, those sitting out there in the bleachers will have at least paid lip-service to telling you that "success isn't everything" because it really isn't, and if you decide that it is, you'll always compare yourself to the girl or boy in your graduating class who's face you'd most like to push into the punch bowl at your 20th high school reunion.

On posters with grand soaring eagles, you will be reminded that success is always within your grasp. "If you dream it, you can do it," and various other quips and quotes to motivate you to do everything to your "highest potential." But inspiration doesn't really fit on a 2' by 3' poster, does it? Values aren't learned or earned in a single teachable moment. Wisdom is conferred on those who've taken a lifetime to get there. The fruits of the spirit are not sprouted overnight. They require seasons of light and darkness, suffering through periods of dryness, and then enduring the deluge of rain. Growth takes time.

One of the definitions of living involves examining our growth, not our successes. A person is pronounced alive if the cells are still dividing; the brain is still functioning, the heart beating, the lungs breathing. I don't suppose we can do any of those things much "better than" someone else. They happen or they don't. But once any of us is pronounced dead, the last opportunity to use those cells, or challenge that brain, or feel the rhythm of life through the heart and lungs stops. The functional definition of "growing" may tell us that we can stop it whenever we like following our arrival into adulthood, but even if we're not getting taller or adding bulk to our muscular build, it is my opinion that if we quit using our mind to grow and our bodies to explore our world, then we have become the walking dead. The love that may have once caused us to be great explorers or fantastic friends will shrivel up and die right there on the vine.

If we go out in search of the truth that might help us during times of major life transition, I have to say that Jesus himself was a particularly motivating speaker. He got people excited about their futures. He told them about the kind of complete joy that was available to them. He recognized the gifts and strengths of each individual person without having to give out accolades to prove it. However, his wisdom required action on our parts. More than just cookie-cutter courage or rock-climbing determination, the focus of his advice for people seeking advice was to love God and to love one another. In fact, his advice was to love other people so much that when push comes to shove, we'd be willing to voluntarily lay down our lives for someone else.

Jesus loved us so much he called us his friends. He could have called us servants. He had the power. Many graduation speakers are in such a position of power and will address kids as kids who don't know anything yet because they don't have enough life experience. I suspect that many people looking at this preacher who is the age of Jesus two years into his ministry look at me and think that I'll be pretty good with a little experience. Jesus befriends us all, younger or older. Starting out on our journey or rounding another twist in the road, Jesus is walking there with us to encourage us to love and befriend each other at all stages through all periods of growth.

Jesus teaches that we are loved by God no matter what, but we are also appointed to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, and that if we bear this fruit, God will begin to give us whatever we ask. The problem is that when we forget that love, we starve out the possibility of bearing fruit by trying to do everything on our own. We are a success-driven culture, not a love-driven culture, and it's hard to show our constant love in the midst of the prevailing landscape. We ignore the last part altogether. How could God possibly give us everything that we ask? Was Jesus telling the truth?

Some biblical scholars connect Jesus to the prophets or the kingly line of David, but others have found reason to liken him to the sages that brought us the Proverbs and other texts of wisdom. This connection rings true to me. Jesus, like woman wisdom in Proverbs 8, recalls that there are things that open up to us when we are willing to learn and be instructed in the ways of God's truth. Wisdom is a great treasury - more so than can be written on the back of a cereal box. Wisdom is the dance of creation. Wisdom is the openness to growth, not just as children growing up in a family's traditions and values, but afterwards as those values are embraced or discarded throughout one's life. Wisdom is rooted in love and guided by the balance of justice. No greed, or self-righteousness, or arrogance is tolerated by Wisdom's guiding hand. Wisdom is God's delight, and whoever finds wisdom finds life and obtains favor from God. Wisdom is God's choicest fruit.

So as you reflect on your own life transitions - welcome the gift of love, because love brings to us that complete joy that Jesus promises, and welcome wisdom, the gift that takes us off the circular treadmill of success and puts us on the never-ending path of life.

I'll end today with a poem, prayer, quote - whatever it is that is attributed to Oriah Mountain Dreamer on the "Twisted Tree Press" website because I think it speaks wisdom about the kind of deepened awareness of our own lives that we need to be reminded of from time to time.

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.

I want to know what you ache for,

and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,

for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,

if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of future pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,

without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own,

if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you

to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic,

or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;

if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can be faithful and trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it's not pretty every day,

and if you can source your own life from God's presence.

I want too know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,

and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair,

weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn't interest me who you are, or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand in the center of

the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,

And if you truly like the company you keep in the quiet empty moments.