Graduations and Commencements

Graduation...

Commencement...

a time of taking measure and of new beginnings.

As you may have guessed, endings and beginnings are on my mind this month as my youngest child graduates from high school and prepares to start college in the fall. As parents, we measure each of the milestones we witnessed, marking each as "graduations" or intervals in our children's lives and our own. Now is the time for "commencement", a new beginning; stepping, running or leaping into the unknown and trusting the trajectory! May we all have the courage to let go and fly....

"Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,

and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable."

--Kahlil Gibran

May this be a season for your own commencement,
Pam