Gregory Peterson

A Season to Gather and Scatter

by GREGORY PETERSON, Professor of Music and College Organist

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 There is a time for everything, a season for every purpose under heaven: a season to be born and a season to die; a season to plant and a season to harvest; a season to hurt and a season to heal; a season to tear down and a season to build up; a season to cry and a season to laugh; a season to mourn and a season to dance; a season to scatter stones and a season to gather them; a season for holding close and a season for holding back; a season to seek and a season to lose; a season to keep and a season to throw away; a season to tear and a season to mend; a season to be silent and a season to speak; a season to love and a season to hate; a season for hostilities and a season for peace.

The writer of Ecclesiastes uses contrary pairs, a literary device using opposites to represent the totality and variety we experience in the world, our country, communities, and daily living. Some of these seasons are long, and others too short. Lately, it seems, the seasons for death and mourning, hurting, crying, tearing apart, hating, and hostilities continue holding sway over us. We long for, and need seasons of planting and harvesting, building up, laughing, dancing, and mending. We long for a lengthy season of love, and of peace. As I look back over my 40-year affiliation with Luther College – from student, to alumnus, to faculty member soon to be emeritus – I’m in a season of remembering, which means there must also be a season of forgetting. I wonder about how much we really remember, and perhaps, how much more we forget. However, it is more than reminiscing. We are turning over the reins to the next generation, one that will continue to tear down and build up; keep and throw away; gather and scatter. I purposefully changed Ecclesiastes’ order of those last two pairs of verbs. We need to do a lot more gathering, so that we may continue to scatter well-educated, intellectually curious, creative, empathetic, global citizens into a world desperately in need of them, as we have been doing for the past 161 years. Quoting Professor Emeritus Wilfred Bunge, “Because it is a community of faith and learning, Luther College directs all intellectual development to [a]…vision of service. Shaping a responsible life through learning is central to its purpose” (Luther College: Who We Are, 2002). Thus, we have thousands of alumni making a difference in teaching and learning, medicine and the sciences, including the building of hospitals and medical communities, ministry, social services and the well-being of all, the arts, music, and much more, serving the common good. This is a hallmark of Luther College and Lutheran higher education in general. In this, our community must be singular. It is fundamental to who we are and what we do.

Perhaps forgetting is passive, but remembering is not, or at least shouldn’t be. As a Lutheran, I am drawn to the Greek word anamnesis (Attic Greek), a key concept in liturgical theology – recalling [God’s deeds], but with action. It can mean entering into…a mystery or wonder. The liturgy is action: taking, blessing, breaking, sharing. Do this to remember…so, in remembering we act. (Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy, 1945) An April 17 article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune titled “Code-red moment” highlighting the national enrollment decline in higher education, declines in Minnesota institutions, and most specifically St. Cloud State University, drew this editorial response from Robbyn Wacker, president of St. Cloud State: “Instead of pointing out that the enrollment trends that were predicted a decade ago have materialized, let’s shift our perspective to what is going right. Let’s start hearing more stories about what is happening…to address these shifts in higher education, and what we are doing to address new and pressing needs in our communities and around the world. Let’s stop looking in the rearview mirror and focus on what’s next” (Star Tribune, April 21, 2022). This is our challenge, one that can and will be met, hopefully by not just forgetting and throwing away, or through pithy labels, or flavors of the day, but with doubled down zeal on who we are, where we’ve been, what we’ve done, and all that is good, with a commitment to the particularities of this place yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Gregory Peterson

A dear friend of mine, the poet and mystic Susan Palo Cherwien (19532021), who we lost too early to cancer last December, in one of her most-often sung hymns, inspires with these words:

Rise, remember well the future

God has called us to receive; present by God’s loving nurture,

Spirited then let us live.

Alleluia, alleluia;

Spirit, grace by whom we live.1 May it be so. Soli Deo Gloria!

Notes

1. Evangelical Lutheran Worship, 548