[When I was pastor of the Wabash Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) I wrote this article on July 7, 1993, for the church newsletter. I wish so much that someone had given me a message like this when I graduated from high school and college—and to be honest, from seminary and graduate school. As we move from one stage of life into another, we are all “graduates,” and as such are subject to the seduction of success as defined by a competitive, materialistic, and shallow society. It’s amazing to see how Jesus, the One we are to follow, was splendidly indifferent to “success” as his own Jewish culture and the Roman Empire defined it.]
In commenting on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus, Eugene Peterson writes the following regarding that Divine Center from which we live:
There we live by faith and failure, by faith and forgiveness, by faith and mercy, by faith and freedom. We do not live successfully. Success imprisons. Success is an unbiblical burden stupidly assumed by prideful persons who reject the risks and perils of faith, preferring to appear right rather than to be human. (Eugene Peterson, Traveling Light, p. 106)
In the recent weeks I have had two occasions to rethink our society’s stress on success and my own fascination with being successful. The first occasion was the high school graduations within our community. I found myself, along with many others, wishing the graduates “all the happiness and success in the world.” But then I began to wonder what we mean by “success.” Because of some unique opportunities in my life (from serving as a page in the United States Senate in the early 1960s to rubbing elbows with some great minds in academia), I have witnessed many “successful” people in our world. And my observation is the same as Peterson’s—some of the most enslaved and least joyful persons I have ever known have been great successes in the eyes of the world. So, I wonder if I should wish the young people of our day “all the success in the world.”
The second occasion I have had to rethink our preoccupation with success came in an interview on the TV program “Good Morning America.” The interview was with an author who has explored the transformations possible when people enter their 50s. He said that instead of being a period when everything comes together, this part of one’s life actually can be quite turbulent. During these years as we begin to face our own mortality discovering we have more past than future, we begin to reexamine our lives and rethink our values. Those in midlife may come to very different definitions of success from what they cherished in earlier decades. Basically, during this middle-age crisis, we begin to ask ourselves about the purpose of our lives, and we begin to see how ethically bankrupt many of the definitions of success and the “good life” are which our world expects and offers. And perhaps above all, we begin to realize how lacking we really are in our freedom to choose the course of our lives and the content of our days.
Some at this point in life simply stagnate (which is the first step toward a deeper despair so common to many at the end of life). Others foolishly attempt to become what they were in the past, trying to recapture years which they never fully lived. But others choose to begin life over as they rethink the foundation on which they have lived thus far. And they experience a freedom, a joy, and a gusto as they begin to live and love with an abandon which makes sense only to those who know what abundant life is all about.
So, I guess I would like to reword my blessing to those graduates. I want to say to them, to myself, and perhaps to all of you, since we are all “graduates” as we pass from one stage in life to the next, the following: I wish you the joy and courage of living the journey that corresponds to the uniqueness of your own life and heart. I wish God to be your Eternal Companion on that journey. I wish for you all the graces of love and trust, forgiveness and compassion, integrity and humility, community and celebration. I wish for you the liberating discovery of St. Francis regarding himself when he said, “I am who I am in the heart of God–nothing more and nothing less.” I wish you the peace of being centered in a God who desires exactly what you need to become whole. And I wish you the ability to trust that God with thanksgiving and praise all the days of your life, straight into the arms of eternity.
That’s what I wish I had said. “All the happiness and success in the world” is a paltry blessing compared to the freedom of living from the Center when God is the Center.
