The title of this month’s article was also the theme of my Baccalaureate sermon to our graduating students at Oxford College. In many ways they, like so many of us, have carried a lot in life already. More than just the pandemic, many of them have dealt with significant life challenges before arriving at our doorstep in August 2020. Then they contended with a first-year college experience like no class had endured in recent history. 

To help them think about words and concepts to hold on to and hopefully integrate into their lives, our community distilled our values to six that felt most poignant based on the past and even more so on what was ahead (as best as we could imagine!). 

Those six principles, as we called them, are: accountability, belonging, care, identity, learning, and presence. We designed T-shirts to help us remember how they get lived out. A few of the phrases or mantras printed on the shirts were: Be Kind. Don’t Be a Jerk. You are Enough. You Belong Here.

In my Baccalaureate sermon I added a new one – What Will You Carry? Something for them to think about as they leave Oxford and move on to the Atlanta campus of Emory University. I then shared with them the following story to help make my point:

A former student of mine, Sara, once shared with me about one of her formative experiences from college. It is something she still carries with her today a decade after graduating from Wofford College in South Carolina. During her senior year for her Interim or J-term, Sara proposed her own project to volunteer at a charitable hospital and learn more about her culture.  Sara was born in Egypt and her parents’ history was there, but she hadn’t lived there except for a time when she was too small to remember it.

She was there just before the spring of 2011, and when she arrived, things were just beginning to bubble up as all hell would break loose soon after she returned to the United States. It was the start of what we now refer to as the Arab Spring. 

Sara comes from a Coptic Orthodox Christian background and in the Coptic Christian Church Christmas is celebrated later than in the Western Church, in January actually. She arrived just in time to celebrate the holiday with other Coptic Christians. But not long before she arrived, a bomb exploded on New Year’s Eve outside a prominent Coptic Church in Alexandria; 23 people were killed instantly and more than 90 were seriously injured. This was an act of terrorism that was meant to spark increased sectarian tension. Six days later, Sara – fearful of something like this happening again on Christmas – still decided to attend church just like other Coptic Christians across the country.

And something quite strange happened that evening. Something that didn’t usually happen on Christmas Eve. Thousands of Muslims throughout Egypt also attended Christmas services across the country and at church after church (including the one where Sara worshipped), they formed human chains of protection around the buildings so their Christian brothers and sisters could observe their Christmas Eve Mass in safety. The next week, the people of the church where Sara attended services, formed a human chain outside of the Mosque, granting the people who had come to pray, the same kind of safety.    

Sara told me that she was changed forever. She went to Egypt because of what she had been carrying with her – her family’s history and story, her college experience dedicated to service in the community. “And then,” she said, “This was a moment I would always carry with me, that formed me and shaped me.” She had never experienced such a powerful act of human love like that, an act that at the time re-invigorated interfaith relationships throughout Egypt and inspired her own values. Today, in her medical practice and in her community along the coast of South Carolina, Sara carries this experience with her as she treats patients and works for good in the community.

We all carry many things with us. In fact, the most important things we carry are usually not things, they are people. They are experiences like the one Sara had. This was the point I tried to make to our students, encouraging them to think about who and what experiences they will carry with them because of their two years at Oxford College. 

The point, for them and for us, is to slow down long enough to reflect on this and discover how meaning is made and honored when we do. 

As another one of our T-shirt mantras proclaims, Be Here. Now.

The Rev. Dr. Lyn Pace is a United Methodist minister and college chaplain who lives in Oxford, Georgia with his spouse and nine-year-old.