'In my end is my beginning'

I sat swallowed in a golden chair two weeks ago at our campus coffeehouse. Beside me, my husband was writing his last undergraduate paper ever, a paper written appropriately enough on the subject of eschatology. He had taken all the books back to the campus library. It was the end of the world.

My husband’s graduation Saturday brought three sets of twins into our home. Now we have the twin diplomas, shining in their gilt navy cases, the twin college-insignia coasters, and the twin black leather Bibles we received at our respective baccalaureates. “The sword of the Spirit,” they say when they hand you the Bible. “The Word of God.”

The re-event jogged my memory. At about this time two years ago I was dizzy with departure. My roommate and I kept a large, cheap photograph of the poet T.S. Eliot on the wall in our dorm room that year. Mr. Eliot seemed an appropriate oracle to pin there, as his words from the poem “East Coker” circled around in our heads quite often: “In my end is my beginning.”

We knew, at the time, which things would soon end for us: 20 page papers, the proximity of our friendships, the cafeteria ice cream machine. But we did not know what exactly was about to start. I cast Mr. Eliot’s words back at him: “In my end is my beginning. The beginning of what?”

One of our most beloved literature professors delivered the baccalaureate address this year. He took for his text Hebrews 12:2: “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. …” Jesus, he said, is not only the author of life; He is the author of your life. Great themes may emerge in your life. You may become a major character in the story of a person you have never met yet. You may encounter someone who is searching for his or her author. You may introduce him or her to the God who gives life meaning. You may teach people that life, just as Dante painted it, is a comedy: It begins in pain. It ends not in nothingness but in bliss.

At each of our graduations, Jonathan and I snapped a photograph of ourselves wearing lugubrious frowns. Because before you have a beginning you have to have an end. And leaving a place you have loved is never easy, especially when you can’t see the future.

As Jonathan said in his graduation speech Saturday:

“For some of us the only certain part of our path is walking across this stage. No matter where God leads us, no matter where we plant our roots, let’s be places of safety and warmth in a despairing world. Let’s be an army—not an army against men, but an army against abuse, sickness, depression, loneliness, hatred, and darkness. Let’s be a place where coffee is brewing, where good books are on the shelves, where this beautiful world and the people who inhabit it are not criticized, belittled, and mocked but wondered at.”

So here goes another story. That is enough of a beginning for me.