Lost in the Woods…Happily (I dedicate this Baccalaureate Speech to my grandmother Kay Lynch—for her will and spirit, compassion and wit—. She found her meaning in life in the palpable love she had for her many children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.)

I am grateful for the Center for Faith and Vocation, Marguerite Stanciu, the committee that puts together this event and the senior class officers and their support this year.

When Marguerite told me that you had nominated me to speak about my vocation, I was flabbergasted, overwhelmed, then deeply moved. My students—my students whom I love—had chosen me! Thank you for this incredible honor. Each of you has a singular, meaningful voice, vision and story bringing you here on the cusp of your graduation.

Those of you who have taken my poetry and memoir classes have done your share of opening your hearts on the page. I will try to open my heart here.

When I was four, my family divorced. The rooms filled with rage, tension, sadness. The world was unstable, and I had no language for this feeling . I needed to cry, I needed to question—My father was gone. My mother was different, even scary. My brothers were silent. From four until my twenties, I, too, was often silent: debilitatingly shy, paralyzed in school, in public. I disappeared into the woods. There I would walk among the trees and make up songs; this singing became my fortification, my cry, my rhythm, and ultimately my lifetime calling: poetry.

I loved and still love the sense of being alone amidst wildness, but my walks began from feeling emotionally lost, uprooted. At times we all walk in the woods— uncertain, powerless, searching——we can relate to Dante’s immortal words in the Inferno: “Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself / in dark woods, the right road lost.”

But here I am before you! I was not permanently lost—. As Thoreau writes: “Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are.” I had lost the reliable, stable world of my family, but I found my voice and stride and serenity in the woods; the songs I made there later became my poems.

Thus, I began as a poet from necessity; poetry furnished what I lacked-- a safe sustaining place, rich with beauty, surprise and rhythm—qualities that a walk in the woods has, too: the cadence of my breath and steps, the sudden glimpse of fox, herds of geranium galloping uphill.

Writing is an activity of the mind and imagination—a more fruitful way of getting lost. The words spill out, unfurl, the ink spreads and curls, drops and angles. Each letter a pleasing shape, each syllable a note of music. The words find their own form—they help me recognize what I am feeling. In writing this way, there is surprise, there is magic. And the body responds: the breathing slows and becomes more measured, the heart finds its rhythm (the one unaltered by self- consciousness, stress, hurt), and there is an ineluctable sensation of being intimately connected—with one’s self, with the universe, with the larger Mysteries of being alive.

You might have shared this sense— whether dancing, calculating, experimenting, or reading. The immersion that leads to wonder and self-forgetfulness is the key.

Still, life is not made entirely of such moments: it can’t be. We all feel lost at times, perplexed or in pain. It can be challenging to accept that “finding [yourself] / in dark woods, the right road lost” is essential to life and growth. These past four years, you may have found yourself in that uncomfortable place of un-knowing--on the brink of discovering your true field of study or realizing you’d been carrying an emotional burden alone too long, or understanding which friends really knew you….. Think about those experiences you’ve had in which you’ve felt lost.

Allow yourself to feel that bewilderment of existing amid the unfamiliar, the unpredictable —notice light angling on a leaf, stir in the undergrowth, possibility. Self-awareness is our compass. If you allow yourself to stay lost awhile, you can make rich discoveries, find roots, add depth, and blossom. You find out what you feel—really. What you need to say that you haven’t yet said—to someone else, or to yourself.

For years, I fought that unease; now I try to sit with it and see it as a sign indicating growth, possible renewal—. And I try to name the unease. I try to sing it—singing can give courage to one alone in the dark. Poetry fortifies me as prayer does—it is rooted deep inside, it tendrils toward light. It can slow us into appreciation and wonder …and acknowledges there are forces greater than the self.

Sometimes in the wilderness we are not alone; we have guides—Dante had his Virgil. When I was a child, my guide was an architect. Roy Sigvard Johnson designed houses that followed the lands’ contours—they were birds poised for flight, great ships yawing through seas of trees. When Roy and I walked through the woods, he taught me how to slow down and give myself over to the rhythms of the place; he taught me to notice-- he’d crouch low and show me a wet leaf where the glistening snail and its delicate tendrils curled. He’d point to the lichen creeping over a dead tree or hawks gliding noiselessly above.

Roy taught me about the beauty of using my senses—using them as a way to enter and be part of the world, to witness the interconnectedness of things—the burly bumblebee in the blossom, the wind riffling the skin of the lake….This noticing became my practice and a crucial part of my poetry——close observations of foxglove or tree bark gave me a language that helped articulate the pain, mystery, and beauty of my life . Whatever it is you need to express, or to make, or to navigate, your best guide helps you do that by teaching you to notice: to recognize the place you’re in.

Parents are guides as well with their own bewilderments and struggles and talents and values. Consider what they’ve taught you. My mother became a single- parent , juggling jobs, attending night school, rushing us to the train station, worrying about money—this taught me persistence…but more importantly she listened to my voice and recognized my gift. After reading my poem, she’d say “How beautiful!” then note a certain phrase I could make more fluid, more precise.

My mother taught me about craft, and it was she who told me when I was a child, “if you want to be good at something, you need to practice it.” I write daily now— practice is part of a calling. And my mother remains my first reader, essentially helpful. After all, she has spent my lifetime listening to me. How to articulate the importance of that quality of listening that makes us feel known even in the midst of crisis?

There are other kinds of guides you might have with you in the woods—some you will never meet in person. When I was nine, I wore a t-shirt with poet Emily Dickinson’s portrait printed on it in blue; I’d don the shirt, tie my hair back, and study my resemblance to Emily in the mirror. I was communing with this magnificent poet over time and space! It was Emily who told me, about the powerful infinitude of imagination, “The Brain—is wider than the Sky—.”

There are many shapes a guide can take. Maybe a leaf in the wind taught you to dance or your grandfather’s death turned you toward medicine; maybe financial struggles compelled you to pursue a business degree or your first-grade teacher with the heart-shaped face inspired you to teach; maybe those who bullied you in junior high empowered you to go into social work; maybe your travels abroad ignited your desire to be a diplomat; maybe being the youngest child infused you with the desire to be a lawyer. Someone might have shown you kindness when you needed it, fueling your desire to be a counselor. Some teachers, like my college professor/poet Thomas Lux, simply acknowledge your gifts and in that acknowledgement you bloom.

You will know your best teachers as time passes—in 17 years, their words might surface unbidden just when you need them. And when you can’t imagine your life without a particular practice or activity or interest, you will realize you have found your calling…

*** How did I emerge from those childhood woods and wounds, shy, slightly stricken, clutching my journal of poems, and now, on the eve of your graduation, stand before you, who have your own stories, passions, confusions? That I can share my calling with you, dear students, that you have shared your calls feels nothing less than a miracle though our stories are filled with the signs and marks of difficult work.

These miracles arose from years of inhabiting my lostness, being willing to wander through the woods, and to listen to my guides. A miracle I was admitted to a prestigious grad school to study poetry—that I was recognized--though hadn’t I been writing and reading daily since the age of nine? A miracle that I walked into that first classroom as a TA, knees knocking, only to discover the passion I had for literature creeping into my voice, my shy self evaporating in the unsurpassable joy of sharing what I loved—though hadn’t words always empowered me? And finally—a miracle that I have my own family—a loving husband and lively, imaginative children one of whom is now four years old. A stable world. This, a true miracle-- as love always feels miraculous.

You might be thinking that you know what you’ll be doing for the rest of your life or you might think you have no idea or even where your path might begin. Don’t be surprised if you spend years at various jobs, circling, circling . Before you know your true calling, you might farm lettuce, cook for a psychiatric hospital, enter data, bus tables, clean teeth, braid hair—you might move at least eleven times—circling, circling. But imagine all you will see and feel while circling! Imagine what you might stumble upon…. Though there are no roadmaps for discovering the self, every hard-earned discovery makes up the map of your life. Of course, there are those blessed who have already found their way.

We’re never entirely free of bewilderment. Even I am still in the woods—raising two boys, finally sharing my voice with my father, trying to listen to his, feeling my way through poem after poem. Still, if you can find a way to walk with the ache of that uncertainty, you can remember there is guidance to be had. Those woods, after all, are not wholly dark—they are dappled with light.

Here at college haven’t you felt a little of that light? Here, you’ve had support for your creative and intellectual powers, and time to begin to find your voices. You have brought these voices to the page or to the classroom or to your dormitories – lamenting, celebrating, muddling through—the voices of your rich and complicated minds. And …how beautifully you’ve shared your stories, your idiosyncrasies, your torments, your celebrations. Your calls, students, have inspired and invigorated mine…. Your calls have added to the calls of all of us— teachers, advisors, families, friends. How lucky we are.

As you leave Butler, don’t leave your curiosity behind: continue to wonder, notice where you are and how you are, attend fully to your moments. Enter the new woods scared, dazed, thrilled—. Sometimes we do our truest, best work in the dark. Find what sustains you, breathe more than just a little—And think about what Oliver Sacks says: “I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”

If we remain sentient, we will always discover something surprising, something miraculous. Students, I will always want to know about your stories there.

Dante ends his “Inferno” with these words: “My guide and I went into that hidden tunnel / And following the path, we took no care / to rest , but climbed; he first, then I –so far / Through a round aperture/ Some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears / Where we came forth, and once more saw the stars.”

May you have such guidance and such beauty in your lives.