Speeches to college graduates

The College Graduate by lesliebyk

A guest blog by Paulette Watkins, Christian Science Practitioner, Elkhart, Indiana

Recently The Christian Science Monitor’s News and Briefs quoted from several speeches given to college graduates and they were all good. I found what Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden shared with the graduates from Broward College in Florida inspiring. She said:“Most people think of the famous ceiling of the Sistine Chapel when they hear the name Michelangelo. But interestingly enough, Michelangelo resisted painting – he considered himself a sculptor. It was as a sculptor that he shared these words: ‘I saw an angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.’ There is an angel in each of you. You might not see it today, but it’s there. The degree you’ve earned is your chisel, giving you the tools you need to help build the life you want to live. You all have something that makes you come alive. That’s your angel. Find it – and carve and carve – until you set it free.”

Mary Baker Eddy, the Founder of The Christian Science Monitor, refers to angels as, “…exalted thoughts…” and as “…God’s representatives.” She says further, “These upward-soaring beings never lead towards self, sin, or materiality, but guide to the divine Principle of all good, whither every real individuality, image, or likeness of God, gathers (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 299).”

Recently a thought came to me that “angels are hovering.” It brought comfort and healing to me and to others. I paid attention to it and it hovered for days. It helped me concentrate on the spiritual qualities such as kindness, goodness, unselfishness, love, health, etc. The spiritual ideas that come to everyone are the tools upon which we build a better life for ourselves and others and keep the “angel” in thought.

Mrs. Eddy had this to say about how to “…carve out grand and noble lives” and how to avoid the pit-fall of looking at the wrong model. She wrote: “Do you not hear from all mankind of the imperfect model? The world is holding it before your gaze continually. The result is that you are liable to follow those lower patterns, limit your life‐work, and adopt into your experience the angular outline and deformity of matter models” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 248).

As important as a diploma are the spiritual qualities of unselfishness, goodness, mercy,  justice, etc.,  that enable us to keep to the path that discovers a life that blesses others and achieves a good purpose. As Paul wrote in the Bible, Romans 8:28: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”