long, proud lines of youth, The

Lutheran, The, Jun 1999 by Wangerin, Walter Jr

Graduates carry our legacies and our hopes

Last night I listened to several high school jazz bands in concert-listened and lost myself in music. One young woman rose and caused her tenor sax to moan. She blew the long notes of unspeakable sorrow, then nodded her head, and the trombones swelled behind her. So young, that woman! When did she learn loss? Or was it the skill of her instrument to make her seem so old?

A pale young man-lean, long, sprawling and indifferent-played on an amplified bass a music nothing like his body. The slouching fellow kept hitting skitterish runs. Off-rhythm, a muted pluck to the string, variations, variations: He kept topping himself with new variations till the band was grinning-and he allowed himself the ghost of a grin as well.

Another young man made the piano buck and jump under apiece he'd written. Thick glasses made him seem too thoughtful for love, but he whispered the loveliest tunes to the high keys.

I could scarcely breathe in that company-one moaning for dreams departed, one indifferent, one as spectacled as a stunned philosopher. Yet they are only high school students, so good, so good and so completely common. Our remarkable children.

In the month of high school graduations, consider the real abundance of our communities: youth, as bountiful and bright as fish in the sea. Watch them, now at the edge of maturity, flashing with talent and swimming with boundless confidence. The mark of God is faith and hope and love for the future. The mark of God upon any community is its youth, as smooth and beautiful as salmon.

Last week I saw a track meet for area high schools. saw a young woman run the 200 with such intensity her face became a blade in the wind. Her legs drove down as evenly as pistons. At the half I didn't think she could go faster. She did. Twenty yards from the finish, she lunged, peppered the ground and gathered speed. Oh, how the salmon can swim! What drives the young to such extremities?

This month we went to a high school theatrical production and rejoiced in a convocation of talents. Students acted, students sang, students danced, students played in the orchestra, students had built an intelligent set, students with happy courtesy conducted us to our seats. What moved me the most was the open, communal joy with which they worked together. They liked each other! Faith and hope and love. Community. The future-- and the mark of God.

This year.I've watched with what audacity young men and women can drive and leap and plunge on the basketball court. These are bodies the Greeks would call divine. They perform dangerous maneuvers with an easy unconcern, as a fish might flick its tail.

And the mind: There are students here whose science projects cross the disciplines, using physical principles with such precision that it takes a computer to calculate the tolerances.

And the hand: I saw a gown one seamstress designed and sewed, so elegant with a long, imperial line, that I thought the job must have been easy. But then she showed me the inseam and the perfect regularity of her stitching. She explained how exact her measurements had to be to keep the gown from falling wrong. I learned the value of the hidden dart. I learned how expert is this student. The hand: I know a young man who can fit an entire house with plumbing. This sort of knowledge is too wonderful for me. But the man is just a boy.

And poetry. And the visual arts.

And I have almost cried at the limpid beauty of the flag corps of the marching bands on a smoky autumn evening.

And one or two of these will have the courage to rise up before an auditorium of faces, and then to magnify their youthful voices in a speech. Valedictorians! With unspeakable courage they will-these men-boys, these women-girls-graciously thank their teachers and perhaps their parents for support. They will urge their classmates, the strong and the outbound salmon, to test a deeper water, swimming farther and harder than ever before. They will sound so wise. They will make me want to weep again because they are so young. And so old.

And then they will graduate.

In long, proud lines the youth of our communities will graduate. We who populate the auditorium behind them will applaud as they climb the stage to receive the signs of their present (and passing) achievement. And once they've taken the paper, they'll keep climbing. Out of the auditorium. Out of their youth, into their futures.

And ours.

They carry us with them-our hearts, our hopes, our training, our legacies, our regeneration, our lives. For they are the future of our communities.

My compatriot elders, why should we fear? The abundance of God is among us.

Put faith in a woman who can pluck strings as if they were rosaries, and trust in the son whose teeth are keys of pianos. Tomorrow they shall be the citizens beside us.

Wangerin, a faculty member at Valparaiso [Ind.] University, an ELCA pastor, author and Lutheran Vespers speaker, is The Lutheran 's regular columnist.