On the End of a Semester

Posted on Friday, May 11th, 2007 at 11:10 am

Permalink

My dad once said to me that you never do anything knowingly, for the last time, without some feelings of sadness.  At the time I questioned that.  I thought that I would walk out of High School with nothing but glad feelings, but he was right, there was a bittersweetness there. At the end of my need for PE classes in college I realized that I would never again have to perform the “dreaded twelve minute run.” I should have been elated, but somehow I realized that I had let those moments go by without really capturing them.  Days gone without even thinking about how grand life really is. These times in our lives when we do or see things for the last time remind us that we are mortal and that our days are numbered.

I suppose that is why the end of the school year, every year, brings me a little sense of melancholy.  It is wonderful to see these students who have worked so hard graduate, move on to take a place in the world and minister; but it is also sad to see them, many of whom have become good friends, leave.

I went to Sunday School in the same building from the time I was an infant until I was twenty-four years old.  There came a time when it was apparent that the day had arrived to tear the old building down (it had been called “the old building” for as long as I could remember).

One day, a few days before the demolition trucks were to arrive I spent a quiet afternoon just wandering around that old building thinking about the times that I had spent there.  The wonderful times with family, the great times at church (this was before the books came out teaching us that church was terrible and making children go was near unto a hate crime), and the fun times at VBS (the non-fundamentalists will have to find a translator for that one).  How often I remember ending some service as a child and the entire group singing the song “God be with you ‘till we meet again.” That song seemed stuck in my mind as a reminder of what that building was all about: the kindness of God and the timeliness of life. I had used the building for juggling practice (it had high ceilings), learning to ride a unicycle (wood floors are much kinder than concrete), and teaching Sunday School (how is that for a combination?).  After I had been knocking around in the building for a few hours a friend of mine came over and said “What are you doing, kicking out some old memories?” I said that I was actually grabbing hold of a few, though I hadn’t realized exactly what I was doing.

I guess that is what we run through life doing, kicking out the memories that we don’t like and keeping the ones that we want forever.  Then at some point, brain chemicals, time or death robs us of those memories and we move on.  We eventually move on to a land were there is no need for memory because everything is always perfect and wonderful.  We remember, after all, to relive a better, more wonderful time.  There is coming a day and a city where there will be no end to semesters, no lives lost, no buildings torn down and no friends moving away.  A city in which we will never need to sing “God Be With You Till We Meet Again.” Until then, . . .