BY JANE RZEPKA,
SENIOR MINISTER,
CHURCH OF THE LARGER
FELLOWSHIP
I never did graduate from high school. I
didn’t mean to not graduate, it’s just
that there was something in my high
school about an Ohio history requirement,
and I was an exchange student in
Australia that year. It’s been decades,
and nobody has ever asked me if I’ve
graduated from high school—it hasn’t
stopped me from further graduations—
but I still half expect that someday
soon some big guys will show up at my
door and demand to see that high
school diploma.
The fact that I myself did not graduate
is the first of four reasons why I should
not offer advice to you who are graduating
or making transitions, even
though it’s part of my job as a minister.
The second reason why I should not
give advice is that I don‘t know what
you should do. I used to know what
everybody should do, but after some
years in the ministry, I have learned
that I don’t know what anybody should
do unless they all but tell me.
People who care about you will tell you
to major in math when you have the
heart of a poet; people will tell you to
welcome children into your life early or
late, when only you can know if and
when you want to be a parent; people
will try to tell you who to love and
where you should work and how you
should get the job in the first place.
Then people will tell you whether to
rent or save up for a house; they will
give you advice about direct deposit,
and house paint, and chimney sweeps
and appliance repair though what you
may want is a motorbike and a sunny
day, free of any address at all. And
when you are old, people who are concerned
about you will tell you not to
drive anymore, to live in a smaller
place, to get rid of a lot of your stuff, to
give away your money. And though
they love you all the while, they never
will quite know what it’s like to be
you, and neither do I. That’s why I
don’t know what you should do.
The third reason I shouldn’t give advice,
especially to graduates, is that
graduates have to sit through any number
of ceremonial advice-giving sessions
in the first place. Why do we pick
on graduates? Granted, their lives are
not settled. But whose life is really
settled? I constantly hear people exclaim,
“If you had told me a year ago
that this would be happening to me
now, I never would have believed it!”
Nobody’s life is settled for all time, I
am sure of that, and it’s the graduates
who already get a disproportionate
amount of unsolicited advice.
The fourth reason I
shouldn’t give advice to graduates and
those making other transitions is that
ministers talk too much to begin with.
Studies show that 42 percent of churchgoers
regularly fall asleep in church.
Among those who are able to stay
awake, more than one-third of those
questioned look at their watch in
church every Sunday, and 10 percent
shake their watch, thinking it must
have stopped. Even though you yourself
are reading this or listening to the
podcast, the point is well-taken. Everybody
knows that the clergy give too
much advice in the first place. Why
compound the problem?
I’ll tell you why. I’ll tell you why
someone who didn’t graduate from
high school, who doesn’t really know
what you should do, who knows you
get too much advice already, and
whose job makes her preach too much
to begin with, would offer advice nonetheless.
It’s because you hold such
promise. That’s why most people give
advice: they care about you and they
want things to go well for you.
It’s my particular business to fuss over
you about theological matters.
You may have heard about the Hasidic
tradition’s “two-pocket theology,” the
idea that religious people should always
have two pockets in every garment,
a slip of paper in each one. The
first piece of paper should say, “I am
but dust and ashes.” And the second
should say, “For me the universe was
made.” I want to make sure that as a
Unitarian Universalist, you keep both
slips of paper at the ready.
I want you to hear the message about
being dust and ashes, about not being
self-centered and arrogant. But equally
important is the companion theological
message: “For me the universe was
made,” the message about how empowered
you are, how terrific you are. And
so I offer this piece of advice:
“Remember that something inside you
is holy, and you are capable and strong,
and at the same time, you are interconnected
within the universe, and you are
small.”
There is much more advice to be given,
of course, and I can scarcely stop myself:
Along the lines of earning your
keep, about love, about finding a center
or a god or some life of the spirit, about
using your head to think things
through, about independence and connection. There are ethical rules you
need to have at the ready, and expressions
of joy, and committed acts. But
you know me—I’m not apt to offer
advice.
