I just finished re-reading a commencement address given by my husband, Mr. Terry, in 1994. It was a brilliant address, and one of three brilliant addresses he gave at St. Meinrad College where he taught for 28 years. I am sure Terry was one of the most devoted teachers who ever lived. He taught history from beginning to end - from all over the world. Give him a date - he'll tell you what was going on with great style and great enthusiasm.
What impressed me about the commencement address - and for a writer of some experience, I can say that re- reads can be as dull as wall paper paste - was the speech was more alive to me now than it was when I listened in the audience fifteen years ago.
Terry spoke of obedience and all its connections to the human life and condition. He spoke of it lovingly and with the kind of understanding that makes us thrill at being human and able to choose this beloved behavior for ourselves and for our children.
When I was a girl, I lived for a year in a cloistered convent. There was a safety there that was so embracing and so all consuming, it was difficult for me at times to leave the grounds of the convent. I almost stayed. I'm glad I didn't, but in the year I spent there, I also felt the same attraction to the way of life that obedience offers that Terry talked about in his address.
What is obedience? Obedience is the willful act of compliance to some authority that is larger than self. In his address, Terry talks about the authority of God. He goes on to say that obedience is not something that is easily maintained or easily acquired. It is learned. It is loved. It is truly human because only we, as humans, can fully and rightfully choose that which is good and form those who learn from us.
With children, the object is to form them. To teach a child what it means to be in the world and comply with what is good in the world is the duty of a good parent. But the world isn't helping with a strong politically correct notion that everything is relative and relevant, and nothing is really true or false, and therefore everything is choice because there is really no such thing as absolute truth or good or bad... This is utterly confusing to most adults, and you can imagine what this ridiculous idea is doing to our children.
And to make matters worse, too often the latest trends in "parenting" tell us that we must allow the child his choice in almost every matter, to never say no to a child. Right, and then the parent spends the next twenty five years with an unruly emotional disaster simply because the child has no formation - nothing to stand on. He has not experienced obedience or the will formed to be obedient. He has nothing higher than himself to give his life to.
Obedience is a loathsome word to some - a cold, heartless, hateful word that is crushing to the child and puts a witch hat on the parent. But in an afternoon of play watching two distinctively different women preside over their children - and seeing one family focus on obedience and the other on self centered choice, it was easy to see that the obedient children had much more fun because they knew their limits and complied with something larger than themselves - their mom. The choice children spent the whole afternoon arguing with their mother and bursting into tears when they didn't get their way. Needless to say, the obedience bearing adult took home happy contented children, and the other mother needed a stiff drink and wore the witch hat home.
Forming a child means allowing the parent the freedom to say "yes" and "no." Formation means to put ideas into categories - good, bad, neutral - for the child - as a gift. Telling a child what is good, what is not so good, what he should believe and how he should behave everywhere is a gift as well. Love, after all, comes not from self indulgence or self aggrandizement; it comes from meekness and selflessness. Obedience allows the human to defer to another, to open the hearts to another, to allow another.
Obedience to what? That's for the parent to discover and bring to his child. This is where the word "parent" comes into play for real. In my nearly forty years of marriage to Mr. Terry, I have to admit that what we wanted for our children was always obvious to each other and to our children. We not only wanted, we expected children who had manners, were respectful, were truthful, conscientious, took the higher road at all costs and understood what that meant.
Children look up to parents. They want formation. They want to know what their parents think is true and false. They want to know. In the commencement speech fifteen years ago, Mr. Terry told the young graduates the truth and reminded them that this is what they had been hearing from childhood, and to continue listening for it as adults.
In reading those words again, I am reminded what makes love so active. I thank my husband for those words all over again. It rejuvenates my desire to do my best at school, to offer our little children a larger picture of goodness, and a reason to see that obedience is the ticket to a life well lived.
The commencement address can be found by typing Terence Lyden into the Internet.
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