Scripture: First John 3 & 4
By Gillian Kraus-Neale
About 9 months ago, at the start of my senior year of high school, I received my very first assignment as a senior English student: write a college essay. Okay, so… how does one simply “write a college essay?” My teacher put it rather bluntly: “Write an essay about how great you are without sounding narcissistic, and try to make it convincing.” Yeah, now I understood. You could tell because I stared at a blank screen for forty-five minutes. Thus, I began my long, fleeting senior year journey and my quest for college-entrance nirvana.
But the essay-writing process (all six or so of them) did more than vex me; it made me think about what was important to me, which is, I suppose, the point: to get high-schoolers at the very end of their childhood to really think about who they are, or at least who they might become. What I discovered- well, it was more of an illumination than a discovery, for I have always known this—one of the things that makes me who I am, that is most important to me in my life thus far, is you, my community, my family.
One prompt made this slightly easier to put into words:find a meaningful quote and apply it to my life, or explain what it means to me. I may have evaded the point to a certain degree, but nonetheless, it led me to speak of you, and of a few other things you may find interesting. My essay begins like this:
A shining pewter angel hung near the top of ourChristmas tree this year. She had been a gift from a family member, a companion angel to one that we already had from a previous year. Both angels, like their retail-store compatriots, bore powerful quotes from well-know women– female movers and shakers of our time– but the words on the one that was catching the moonlight as I began my college essays seemed more appropriate to me.
The quote inscribed on the abstract, glistening angel was by Mother Teresa. Like most of the things she had said during her lifetime it was useful for many occasions, proverbial and heartfelt,and completely appropriate for a living saint: “We can do no great things- only small things with great love.”
I know a small thing that was done with great love. Her name is Angelina, and I am her godmother. Angelina, new and beautiful like all babies, is a very special little girl. Not even a year old,Angelina is already completely set apart from most children, and “most people”; Angelina has two fathers. I worry about her, incessantly. In a diverse and turbulent city like Miami, the range of people and their views is endless, right-wingers, left-wingers, and gray areas alike. I worry about the cruelties of a tender childhood, children who can’t know better raised to shun and hate by their parents, adults shunning and hating as though they were children. I wonder what kind of world we– her fathers, her other godmother, the community in which we live,and myself – are bringing this child into.
The community of which I speak is the church my mother pastors, my family since I was eighteen months old. (That’s YOU,Riviera.) I was there for our transformation from the gray to the white. It was a long and difficult process for the congregation to become what they are now, and it shaped who I am.
It is true, part of that person is full-fledged liberal, wary of republicans and cautious of how and to whom I introduce myself, but I like to think that that aspect of me, although it was forged in my Miami life and my small but fierce church family,does not define who I am. I like to think of myself as someone who finds that the greatest thing I can do does in fact seem small and simple to me. I can’t fight for Angelina her whole life, and I cannot possibly protect her from a world that is often cruel without sacrificing that same world that is many times open and loving, nor canI do anything to alter that world. Nor do I want to. Sheltering Angelina from the world that she lives in would rob her of something more precious than anything we can give her ourselves: herself. Without the toils and snares of childhood, without the recovery and failure and triumphs she will endure, Angelina will not receive the same chance that my fellow classmates and I did to mature into the independent,strong, loving and fruitful people I believe we will be in time. And what a chance it is: as my mother said recently when speaking to my class at my Baccalaureate ceremony, the class of 2005 is one marked by loss. Our freshman year was clouded by 9/11, and the years to follow by a mysterious and unavailing war across the ocean, as we watched scandals unfold at home and abroad, as differences deepened between classmates while support and opposition to the decisions of the preceding generation fluctuated. My mother wondered in her speech what kind of world her generation was leaving us to inherit. She couldn’t change the world for me, and I cannot change the world for Angelina.But I can be part of that world, just as my mother is, just as Riviera’s for me. The small thing that I will do for Angelina for the rest of my life, the same small thing I have been doing all my life, the same small thing that has been and will be done for me, is love her. My church is a small thing done with great love. Angelina is a small thing done with great love- even I am a small thing, but I am full of hope for Angelina’s future, of love for her and her fathers and the community in which we live, and even tolerance for a world that has not and likely never will make up its mind about Angelina and her fathers.
“Little children, let us love, not in word or speech,but in truth and action.” Little children, sons and daughters of a patchwork world, your sons and daughters, this tiny three-member class of 2005 of Riviera Presbyterian church, thank you, our community of faith, for being steadfast and loving, in action and truth, all the days of our childhood, and all the days of our lives.
I know, as I am sure my fellow seniors know, that a promise to this church to continue as we have learned is not necessary.We do not need to promise that we will never forget you, Riviera, as we grow older and (hopefully) wiser. We do not need to promise you that we will be loving and kind when we go out into the this wide, terrifying and awe-inspiring world, because we can do nothing else, after having been saturated with the values that make us true members of this church and the world our whole lives. To break that commitment would let not only you down, but ourselves, as we would be negating all that we have become under your guidance.
In closing, I leave you with this prayer, written by the medieval theologian, Julian of Norwich, for whom I am named:
Life is a precious thing to me,
And a little thing
And the world is a little thing…
But it is in God’s ever keeping
It is in God’s ever loving
It is in God’s ever making
How should anything be amiss?
Yes, all shall be well
And all will be well
And thou shalt see thyself
That all manner of thing shall be well.