The path less traveled

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Graduation Home-school Commencement Address 2020

The times we live in…

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Today’s graduates are so far, in their circumstance, perhaps the most unique class to ever graduate. You become adults in a world isolated from each other due to a global pandemic with a new vocabulary, “the new normal” and “social distancing.”  You graduate as the Federal Reserve prints money at a breathtaking rate. During a time of nation wide riots. As unemployment surpasses any other period in modern history. When many youth are turning to Socialism to find solutions to societal problems, with out an understanding of where they turn, instead of faith. When the media seems to be at war with the truth. During concerns of rising tensions between the U.S. and China. At a time when we question not if, but when is it appropriate to abandon Liberty in the name of safety. And you graduate during a time plagued with locusts devouring crops and giant killer wasps consuming vital honey bees populations.

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Innovation and the Future

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But that’s not all, you graduate during a time of incredible innovation. As a private-commercial rocket, for the first time, takes astronauts to the international space station. Electric cars are becoming normal and some cars are even beginning to drive themselves. We have near instant access to more data, in the palm of our hand, then any library. You can escape to wherever you desire with virtual reality or special effects. Graduates, you stand at the edge of the next great technological leap forward. According to Forbes Magazine, in the near future you may see Artificial Intelligent Mobile Apps; Practical Augmented Reality may transform how you experience things every day, hour, minute, or even second; You may see real-time Language Translation powered by voice recognition and AI; And the continued advancement of the digital cloud.

As with every frontier, there will be important discussions and societal decisions to make. Today, you have an opportunity to make the choice, to be part of the effort, to determine the future. In the book “the fourth turning,” it states that “today’s graduates will be the foot soldiers for tomorrows battles, be them moral, physical, mental, or spiritual.” Do you Enlist?

Similarly, Robert Frost wrote “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

When faced with a similar turning event, one man stood vigil on an unknowing historic night, watching for the sign that indicated an imminent threat to his fellow colonists. Of this event, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote:

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march

By land or sea from the town to-night,

Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch

Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—

One if by land, and two if by sea;

And I on the opposite shore will be,

Ready to ride and spread the alarm

Through every Middlesex village and farm,

For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”

Then he said “Good night!” and with muffled oar

Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,

Just as the moon rose over the bay,

Where swinging wide at her moorings lay

The Somerset, British man-of-war:

A phantom ship, with each mast and spar

Across the moon, like a prison-bar,

And a huge black hulk, that was magnified

By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street

Wanders and watches with eager ears,

Till in the silence around him he hears

The muster of men at the barrack door,

The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,

And the measured tread of the grenadiers

Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed to the tower of the church,

Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,

To the belfry-chamber overhead,

And startled the pigeons from their perch

On the sombre rafters, that round him made

Masses and moving shapes of shade,—

By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,

To the highest window in the wall,

Where he paused to listen and look down

A moment on the roofs of the town,

And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,

In their night-encampment on the hill,

Wrapped in silence so deep and still

That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,

The watchful night-wind, as it went

Creeping along from tent to tent,

And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”

A moment only he feels the spell

Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread

Of the lonely belfry and the dead;

For suddenly all his thoughts are bent

On a shadowy something far away,

Where the river widens to meet the bay,—

A line of black, that bends and floats

On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,

Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,

On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.

Now he patted his horse’s side,

Now gazed on the landscape far and near,

Then impetuous stamped the earth,

And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;

But mostly he watched with eager search

The belfry-tower of the old North Church,

As it rose above the graves on the hill,

Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.

And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height,

A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!

He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,

But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight

A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,

A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,

And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark

Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:

That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,

The fate of a nation was riding that night;

And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,

Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

He has left the village and mounted the steep,

And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,

Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;

And under the alders, that skirt its edge,

Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,

Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock

When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.

He heard the crowing of the cock,

And the barking of the farmer’s dog,

And felt the damp of the river-fog,

That rises when the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,

When he galloped into Lexington.

He saw the gilded weathercock

Swim in the moonlight as he passed,

And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,

Gaze at him with a spectral glare,

As if they already stood aghast

At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,

When be came to the bridge in Concord town.

He heard the bleating of the flock,

And the twitter of birds among the trees,

And felt the breath of the morning breeze

Blowing over the meadows brown.

And one was safe and asleep in his bed

Who at the bridge would be first to fall,

Who that day would be lying dead,

Pierced by a British musket-ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read,

How the British Regulars fired and fled,—

How the farmers gave them ball for ball,

From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,

Chasing the red-coats down the lane,

Then crossing the fields to emerge again

Under the trees at the turn of the road,

And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;

And so through the night went his cry of alarm

To every Middlesex village and farm,—

A cry of defiance, and not of fear,

A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,

And a word that shall echo forevermore!

For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,

Through all our history, to the last,

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,

The people will waken and listen to hear

The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,

And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

Paul Revere’s Ride
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – 1807-1882
This poem is in the public domain.

Change the world!

At the end of the song “Ride of Paul Revere” by Up with People, the bard asks:

“I wonder if, two hundred years ahead, (Ride! Ride!)
If they will ride, or if they'll stay in bed, (Ride! Ride!)
When faith and freedom within them die,
And when they hear that midnight cry
And the hoof-beats cross the moonlit sky,
Will they ride with Paul Revere?”
My question and challenge to you today. As you begin to take your place in the world, and turning events challenge the norm, will you stay in bed – choosing the path well traveled? Or, will you awake to the warning call and eagerly join the cause? Or will you be the one, out at night, vigilantly, impatiently, watching for the signs in the tower, take the path less traveled,

and ride like Paul Revere?

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