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A Graduation Ceremony for Faith and Character Based Program.

It's the day before Crimbo as I write this; Merry Crimbo, if you celebrate.
At long last, Blessington held its graduation ceremony for those of us who have completed the Faith and Character Based Program here.

It was a fairly simple ceremony, made more interesting by being called over to my wing's door by one of the FCBP/Chapel Orderlies this morn.
Through the crack of the door, he tells me, "Hey, (Jayel). I need someone who was in wing 4 to speak at graduation." So I was voluntold I was to speak.

I'm allergic to incoming surprises, of course, but I took it on gamely. I proceeded to take the morning to start reading a book by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Dr. Howard C. Cutler, titled The Art of Happiness: A Handbook For Living instead of writing out something inspirational for students still in the Faith and Character Based Program.

Wait, you're not going to prepare?

Sure, I'm prepared for this. I am far more prepared than I let on.
To give you a trace of how my mind works, there's this spray of index cards that I'm usually indexing data from or pulling information to at all times of day and night. As I got the gist of what I needed to speak on, I sprayed down three things to address to the cohort on their way through:

  • Impermanence / Change
  • Love Yourself to Love Others
  • That One Elective That Sends You To Madness (See Change)

Other cards read:

  • ~3-4 minutes
  • Don't bloviate
  • No, seriously, use the under-$10 words -- GET REFUNDS on the $20 and $50 ones.
  • See if you can get a refund on an opened package of "bloviate" :')

Excellent, my whole thing's written in my head; let's have lunch, count, play some Jobmania, try to read the December edition of News Inside, wait for graduation... oh hey, let's go.

No rehearsal, it's a live run, clear the range.
Apparently, what came out was so on brand for what our chaplain and our education coordinator wanted to say that they anchored onto it.

Love Yourself to Love Others

This is a point that sticks to me later on after I've said it. It's hard to love someone else when you don't love yourself; rather than phrasing it that way, I angled toward loving this self so that you can love others -- you have to have an understanding of love to act it out, after all.

Change

If the you of now is the same you as the you of five years ago, ten years ago, how do you progress in this program? I asked this question of the cohort, impressing that not only is change inevitable per my faith, but by that very token, everything is impermanent. Not only that, but we all experience the world in different ways. We have to work with those differences, because we are in this community of different people, people we may not have ever have gone out of our way to talk to when we were free, but you're all together in this community; learn to embrace those differences.

That ONE Elective

And yes, I brought up how some of the work will send these students through it. But, it too is impermanent, and it may well be a lesson that comes to us over and over until we have learned what we need to know from it. Work with it and see what it teaches.

Nerves

I also admitted I felt like I was out of my element, but plodded gamely onwards, to applause at the end.

It is finished.

So now I have officially finished this camp's Faith and Character Based Program and don't have to look back unless they come ask me to help for some reason.

Who knows? It might happen. :)