Why I love Baccalaureate
Posted on 23. Jun, 2010 by kchristieh in education, religion
The night before my oldest child graduated from La Canada High School, our family attended the community-wide Baccalaureate ceremony at our local Catholic church, St. Bede the Venerable. The ecumenical ceremony included prayers, music, a featured speaker, and student speakers of different faiths. I’d never attended such a service, but I really appreciated having a chance to:
- Take time out to reflect upon what matters in life;
- Reflect upon how our children can make our world a better place;
- Appreciate the faith journeys of students of different faiths;
- Find our common ground;
- Gather together as a community of Seniors and their families. Graduation is so crowded, and so rushed afterwards. My best conversations with fellow parents, some of whom I’d met when our kids attended preschool together, occurred at Baccalaureate.
When I spoke to the organizer, she said that she’d tried to get student speakers from more faiths, but that some religious communities either didn’t have any teens they thought would speak or chose not to participate. I offered to help identify students that might be inspirational speakers when she organizes next year’s ceremony.
I’m all for separation of church and state, but I think that was adequately satisfied by holding this off-campus and making it completely optional. Also, because it was ecumenical, it wasn’t pushing one faith over another. I didn’t count, but I think about 1/3 of the students from the graduating class attended.
I meant to blog about this earlier, but I’ve been very busy. I finally did, however, because not only did I see a Facebook thread discussing it, but I hosted friends from Pakistan this morning who spoke about how they organize a big event after Ramadan to bring Christians and Muslims together. We’re so fortunate to live in a country where getting along is a blessing, and not critical for survival.
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