This is the season of graduation, and roadside roses. Did you know there’s a connection? (No, I’m not referring to a thorny future. Feeling too optimistic on this sunny June day.)

Roadside roses are my own personal metaphor for life’s overflowing blessings. This song expresses what I mean:

Roadside Roses

 

As if the scenery weren’t already sweet

The air is alive with wild rose

As if my life weren’t already complete

This mountain of gratitude grows.

           

Chor.   Roadside roses, how they scent the evening air

            How they decorate the brambles of the past

            Sometimes happiness becomes too much to bear

            Some blessings are impossible to grasp.

 

No need to analyze, no need to think

How these wild gardens came to be

No cause and effect, there is no link                                                                                 

But it feels like they’re blooming for me.

           

Chor.   Roadside roses, how they scent the evening air

            How they decorate the brambles of the past

            Sometimes happiness becomes too much to bear

            Some blessings seem too delicate to last.

 

Bridge: Don’t take it personal, but make sure you take

            The portion that Nature has served                                                                                        

Joy’s universal, and so’s the heartache

            Of having more than you deserve.

 

Chor.   Roadside roses, how they scent the evening air

            How they decorate the brambles of the past

            Sometimes happiness becomes too much to bear

             Some blessings are not meant for us to ask.

 

If I were to linger here and breathe this perfume

Sweeping my duties away

Would I feel entitled, would I start to assume

That I’ve earned the privilege to stay?

 

Chor.   Roadside roses, how they scent the evening air

            How they decorate the brambles of the past

            Sometimes happiness becomes too much to bear

            Some blessings are not meant for us to ask.

             Some blessings are impossible to grasp.

G. Wing, June 2013

Right?!

This weekend our little island’s little high school celebrates graduation, like hundreds of other schools around our state. What’s different about Lopez Island High: this year it has a graduating class of…FIVE. Five kids. And their graduation speaker is…the Governor of Washington.

Yep. Governor Jay Inslee. The guy who represents 7.17 million Washingtonians, journeying up from Olympia to send just five of them down the path of their future.

This strikes me as a Roadside Roses kind of ceremony. “What’s that, you say–I get all these congrats and best wishes and hugs and presents and…the attention of the Chief Executive too? And the press who will surely follow? Well, golly gee.”

And those roadside roses make a pretty nice bouquet too!

“Don’t take it personal–but make sure you take the portion that nature has served…”

…and don’t forget to say Thank You. Forget about the brambles of the past, grads. Off you go into the scented summer air…all five of you, held for one shining moment in the kind of focus ALL kids deserve but which you, by some delightful twist of fate, get to enjoy.