Monday Morning Musing: Of Pentecost & Processions

May 24, 2021

Columbus, OH

On Saturday the Trinity Lutheran Seminary community gathered to celebrate our 2021 graduates. With some COVID precautions still in place, we processed...first into worship on Saturday morning, where we were reminded that calling together the winds from the four corners of the earth would involve our whole selves and then into commencement itself....each of us robed in what we had accomplished.

I was reminded of my own commencement from TLS, sixteen years ago and of my college commencement on a hot August Alabama day. I was reminded of my high school graduation, too and how each of these ceremonies urged us on to the next new thing.

Here is a poem entitled Academic Procession by William Jay Smith. It's a light look at a weighty occasion.

Academic Procession

Conversant with a day no longer ours,

the cool fact, the deed done,

they walk now in sunlight through spring flowers

in unison.

Ah, they walk down the choral paths in spring,

and theirs is the world to bear;

like old encensers lilacs fling