Ceremony

The weekend of May 16th I drove to Pennsylvania to attend the graduation from Bucknell University of my goddaughter, Alexandra. The actual graduation ceremony was on Sunday morning, but they had events all weekend. Arriving on Saturday afternoon, I was able to attend the casual Grill (i.e., dinner), with Alexandra and her parents, followed by the interreligious Baccalaureate Service, followed by the traditional candle-lighting ceremony. At the dinner I was most impressed by all the young ladies (including my goddaughter) wearing strapless dresses – not evening gowns, you understand, but casual-nice dresses , evidently the latest fashion trend, of which I had been oblivious – and by the fact that the buffet offered chunks of fillet mignon. The piece I had was overdone...always an unfortunate thing to do a good steak...but still, it was fillet mignon. For hundreds of parents and other guests (siblings, grandparents, people like me). Perhaps even more than the beautiful, almost stereotypical campus, and the hefty price tag I knew Alexandra's parents had paid for her education, this told me Bucknell was not a poor school.

Not being a religious person I wasn't particularly eager to attend the Baccalaureate Service (after I learned that that was what a Baccalaureate Service was, having never been exposed to that definition of "baccalaureate,") but it proved to be very moving, to a large extent because of the music. For one thing there were bell ringers! It gives me unmitigated joy to listen to bell-ringers, and the Rooke Chapel Ringers, under the direction of one William Payn, up there in his long silver-white pony tail, were spectacularly good. The first piece they did was called Radiance, and I was impressed to note that it was by Dr. Payn. Looking online I see that he's produced quite a few handbell compositions. He's also arranged a collection of Disney tunes, e.g., Whistle While You Work, Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah, for handbells, which I'd love to hear.

But part of the pleasure of a handbell performance is watching the performers. The concentration is intense, but these young people also seemed to be really enjoying themselves, particularly during their second piece, Bizet's Farandole (a farandole being a festive "community" dance traditionally performed in France). I am not someone who uses the word joy lightly, but this music, and the intense, occasionally grinning young people performing it with such gusto, gave me joy.

And most of those young people were also in the Rooke Chapel Chorus, which also performed! They just set down their bells and moved to the other side of the stage when it was time to sing, which they did beautifully. I felt compelled to compliment Dr. Payn on both groups' performances when I saw him at the later candle-lighting ceremony, and hoped he would convey my praise to the young performers, since I know praise, with applause, is the gods' own nectar to performers.

Early in the Baccalaureate program there was a Call to Prayer, by representatives of the Christian, Jewish, Muslim and ? faiths. The question mark has to do with the drum performance; I wasn't clear what faith that represented. But the Kyrie performed by a young woman named Kerry Flanigan was absolutely gorgeous. It was like listening to a Gregorian chant of one voice; I was transfixed. And likewise the call to prayer by the young, black Muslim Zafrullah Kamar, was very powerful. Most such calls that I've heard have sounded thin and nasally, but young Kamar had a deep, resonant voice, which gave great emotional and, yes, spiritual, heft to the haunting chant, which is longer than the snippets we're accustomed to hearing on news programs reporting the latest terrorist attack somewhere in the Middle East.

The candle-lighting ceremony is usually held in the main Quad, but due to the high possibility of rain, it was held in the Field House, admittedly a less atmospheric environment. If nothing else, the impact of the bagpipes was completely lost – they just became a vague, faintly irritating screeching behind all the crowd noise – which, since I love bagpipes, I thought a real shame. We sat through a bunch of speeches (including a spirited one by the president of the class, aka my goddaughter), then they turned out the lights, and the graduating seniors, who had lined up around the vast room, passed the flame from one candle to another. It was truly impressive to see, and I would think, to be a part of.

When I graduated from college I took part in no ceremonies at all. For one thing, I graduated in the middle of the year, and while I could certainly have attended the official ceremony in June, at that time in my life I simply had no interest in doing so. I was six years older than most of my classmates – most of my friends were professors, or my roommates – having started to college full-time at the age of 25, after having been on my own for several years, even having been through a marriage. I don't really regret missing any of that stuff but for the young, fresh-faced kids I was looking at at Bucknell, these ceremonies, these rites of passage, will surely provide deeply satisfying memories. And they certainly will for their proud parents.