That's what you will hear for a long time after you leave this room. Shortly, you will pick up your diplomas from Mr. Clark. Maybe you will also receive valuable acknowledgment of the honor from your fans in the form of either cash or pre-paid cards. Oh, and don't forget the cute Hallmark or ecards from all the relatives you don't know. Seriously, graduating from high school is a very worthy accomplishment. But one day soon, you'll wake up and realize not much has changed. Bummer.

Is this graduation experience similar to the long anticipated birthday marking something that seems most significant – driving age? Remember, after nagging to go to take the test, you got your license, drove your chaperone home and then you had nowhere to go. No gas, no insurance, no money. How many trips to the grocery store could you volunteer to drive? You perhaps became designated chauffeur for your younger siblings and their friends. Ugh.

How many 'significant' dates have we all anticipated only to find that we are the same person, have the same hair, the same clothes, the same appearance and the same 'fill in the blank' after the arrival of that date?

After the congratulations that you will hear today, the question that will naturally follow will be, "Now what are you going to do?" You patiently explain one more time.

Out you go into the real world away from Principia, the school of regulations and perhaps, what seem archaic standards. Oh, that Christian Science! You'll be away from your familiar comfort zone, into a new arena where you will be the little fish in the big world pond. (This year you experienced big fish, little pond.) Most of you will go to college. Some of you will go into the work world. Most of you want to be rich and famous, or at least rich. Some of you don't want to return home, while others are eager to return. (Your folks will always think of you as their baby, so get over that humiliation and regard it as a blessing. Not everyone has someone who cares.)

But wait, you say, I'm an adult now. I can think for myself, go where I want, do what I want, stay up late, be with my friends. I'm out of high school, educated. No rules or regulations. I'm free to be me!

You are absolutely correct! You are free to be you. But what is that me? What must we understand about these transition times that we face growing up?

You have heard for the last year and probably longer that you are God's perfect idea. (If you have not had the occasion to prove that fact, you ought to be grateful for the demonstration of protection. If on the other hand you have proven your perfection to be true, you can be grateful for that. So everyone has cause to be grateful.) But really, you are nuts! What? You are nuts!

We all are nuts – a type of seed. Each of us is a seed, a nut. (Go ahead roll your eyes. Ah, metaphors!) Every seed comes as a complete package. Seed – that's you, that's me. Like a seed, each of us, long before we come into this so-called mortal experience, is already complete in every category – health, wisdom, beauty, coordination, joy, intelligence, integrity, etc. The 'me' that you are is already a perfect design, a perfect being in God's law.

The seed within itself is the pure thought emanating from divine Mind, Mrs. Eddy tells us in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (508:14-16). Each of us has the right and privilege to claim this fact of completeness. The more we claim it, the more we realize that we already have it. Quite often, we pray about a situation, get a great idea, you know, the lightning bolt, but because the physical picture hasn't changed, we think that we have failed. That's the very time to claim victory. Every good thought is a healing thought.

In the seed world, until we get dirty, soiled, well grounded, we don't grow. (I'm going to push this metaphor to many extremes, so bear with me. There will be many puns intended.) The ground can be quite hard – even to the point of rock hard. In the Texas Hill Country where we live, there are very hostile areas of cliffs and many steep slopes, trees and shrubs take root and thrive amidst boulders, stones and cactus.

Jesus gives us the parable of the seed sown on different types of ground –

Behold, a sower went forth to sow; And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. (Matt. 13:38).

Our sturdy example is in Christ Jesus.

Mrs. Eddy tells us in Science and Health, "The life of Christ Jesus was not miraculous, but it was indigenous to his spirituality, – the good soil wherein the seed of Truth springs up and bears much fruit. Christ's Christianity is the chain of scientific being reappearing in all ages, maintaining its obvious correspondence with the Scriptures and uniting all periods in the design of God" (270:315).

His life was the good soil. It must mean that our lives provide our growth medium as we follow the Christ. We are part of the chain, a link, of his reappearing.

After planting, a seed rests underground in the dark soil for a long time. I remember back to my days in first grade or kindergarten when we planted bean seeds to watch what would happen. Some of my friends dug up their seeds every day to see how they were doing. Of course the seeds were not doing well because they were disturbed from their natural surroundings. What are the seeds doing there in the dark? Forming and putting down roots in order to collect food and strength. In solitude and in the dark they are growing.

After the roots are established, a plant is strong enough to break through the soil covering. As small sprouts we are tested, sometimes trampled on, pruned and perhaps eaten, but our roots are still there maintaining our identities. Actually with many plants, if you cut off the top, the roots spread and get stronger.

You've maybe heard the story about the man who planted asparagus in his garden. After many years of caring for the area there was still no asparagus. He needed the space for a new driveway so paved over the garden. He noticed a short time later that the asphalt was breaking up. Upon close inspection, he found that the asparagus was poking up though the drive. It took time, but the law of patience within those seeds was much stronger than the man's patience.

As we plants crack open and grow from our shells of completeness what do we find? We find that we're not alone. There are other sprouts having a similar experiences. No one interferes, takes away, nor limits our growth as each of us is individual, unique.

Now what? It is time to fulfill purpose. To bear fruit. Each of us has special talents to nurture, enhance and share with others. You've heard the Biblical parable of the mustard seed, that as tiny as it is, it grows into a tree for the birds to use. Do we sometimes shrink back from making the commitment to be with others, afraid of failure, of not being included, of being alone or of being odd? Remember, the 'me' that you are, is already a perfect design, a perfect being in God's law and cannot fail. Your roots take care of that support.

Sometimes we get confused about being obedient to God's law in our exuberance of expressive sprouting. God's law seems so restrictive at times. We think that we can grow it alone especially as adult plants. Don't we have the choice to grow as we would like? Yes, to a degree we do.

Mrs. Eddy has an appropriate response in the textbook [Science and Health] to such experimentation. "Existence continues to be a belief of corporeal sense until the Science of being is reached. Error brings its own self-destruction both here and hereafter, for mortal mind creates its own physical conditions" (77:5–9). And, "When advanced to spiritual being and the understanding of God, man can no longer commune with matter; neither can he return to it, any more than a tree can return to its seed" (76:12–15). And, "Human birth, growth, maturity, and decay are as the grass springing from the soil with beautiful green blades, afterwards to wither and return to its native nothingness. This mortal seeming is temporal; it never merges into immortal being, but finally disappears, and immortal man, spiritual and eternal, is found to be the real man" (190:14–20). Is that the kind of plant we want to be? One that dies, is nothing, leaves nothing?

It seems that we have many human restrictions that bind us involuntarily. Why? The passage of laws result from person or persons making bad choices, most often the minority affecting the majority, no matter whether it is the world's law or Principia's rules. Remember, adulthood is an age solely determined by law, not behavior. Human law is legislated and imposed on humanity as result of error, fault, injury, perhaps in the name of enlightened understanding, but its base is unstable. It changes with time, custom, education and fashion. The whole scope of mortal law includes many types – health, disease, age, dietary, heredity, intelligence quotas (IQ), even religious. Do we want to be a part of that mortal type of law? Do we want to mingle with the tares?

What we need to know from our earthly experiences is that they are our opportunities for growth and expansion, to help others, to be certified seed wheat, and most important, to grow within the protection of God's Law.

Here is a farming story that my mother has told about separating the tares from the wheat in order to have the right profitable seed. She said:

"I would like to share with you an experience which I had as a young girl growing up on a farm in Michigan. My father and uncle owned a farm together and one of the annual crops was 'Certified Seed Wheat.' . . . It was not wheat to be used for making flour, but rather for the purpose of providing 'Seed Wheat.' It had to meet strict government standards to be of a 'Certified' quality. In other words it had to be pure wheat, no tares.

"Long before the harvest one could easily tell if the tares were thistles, or weeds. The tares, which were not identifiable until the harvest, were really other grains, such as barley or oats. The seed heads had to mature – be ready for harvest – for the identification of the pure wheat head.

"Each summer, just before the harvest, my father and uncle would gather up all the 'kid' help and the hired help to rove the wheat fields. This meant we would walk through the fields, at arms length to look for the tares and pull them out to be destroyed. This was probably a lark for us, or maybe it was winning a trip to the swimming hole at the river. But the result for my father was a higher price for the wheat and perhaps a satisfied feeling of having improved the next man's wheat crop.

"As I have investigated the meaning of 'tares' in Jesus' days of agriculture, I have found that the 'tares' that he referred to were 'bearded darnal' which was indistinguishable from the wheat while growing. When fully grown, however, the ears were longer and darker. The grain is said to be bitter and if used in quantity the darnal was said to have been poisonous."

Mrs. Eddy again comes to the rescue with a redeeming paragraph:

"The temporal and unreal never touch the eternal and real. The mutable and imperfect never touch the immutable and perfect. The inharmonious and self-destructive never touch the harmonious and self-existent. These opposite qualities are the tares and wheat, which never really mingle, though (to mortal sight) they grow side by side until the harvest; then, Science separates the wheat from the tares, through the realization of God as ever present and of man as reflecting the divine likeness" (Science and Health, 300:13–22).

I love the never touch, never touch, never touch. Error, evil cannot touch our true identities. We grow from our mistakes. We are never damaged by them. As seeds we follow our divine timeline outlined in Science and Health: "The new idea, conceived and born of Truth and Love, is clad in white garments. Its beginning will be meek, its growth sturdy, and its maturity undecaying" (463:14–16). It would seem obvious, to make the right choices in the first place would save and protect us most. We all have the courage and roots to make those right choices.

When a friend changes jobs or moves, my husband and I often use the description that they have "re-potted." When a plant grows in a pot, after a period of time it becomes root bound – the roots crowd each other that there is no longer any growth, but stagnation. So for the plant to grow and flourish, it must be re-potted to a larger pot. It is nothing to fear, but it is freedom and release. With this graduation experience, you are re-potting.

Principia has been a wonderful growing medium and pot for you. With your strong roots, you are ready to move on. You might feel quite uncomfortable in your new pot for awhile. Remember? The 'me' that you are, is already a perfect design, a perfect being in God's Law. So you have everything that you need now for the next step, the courage and wisdom to make good decisions. But most of all, you have the love and protection of the Master Gardener, God.

I'll let Mrs. Eddy have the last word from Unity of Good, "Our present understanding is but 'the seed within itself,' for it is divine Science, 'bearing fruit after its kind.' Sooner or later the whole human race will learn that, in proportion as the spotless selfhood of God is understood, human nature will be renovated, and man will receive a higher selfhood, derived from God, and the redemption of mortals from sin, sickness, and death be established on everlasting foundations" (6:1–9).