At Friday's graduation ceremony 337 young men marched over the ground in formation like schools of camouflaged and anonymous fish that turned like one body, then shifted and broke into groups. After five jumps, countless drills and hours of PT they stood at attention on Frayer Field ready to graduate from Airborne School.

All the parents sat on the edge of the bleachers as we waited for the moment when we would be called forward to pin Airborne wings on our sons. Ruby Harris, the 74-year-old Grandmother sitting next to me wondered out loud: "How will we find them?" I had been mulling that over myself. Then the Command Master Sergeant said: "If you do not know where your soldier is, see me." I moved quickly to the podium and made my inquiry. The Master Sargent boomed, "Private Barton, hold up your hand". Up out of the sea of green leaped one white hand. I walked across the sand with my eyes fixed as other names were called and other hands shot up. Then I pinned the wings that Chuck had earned onto his uniform. Monday he will leave Fort Benning for Fort Bragg and a new life.

After the ceremony we talked about life, vocation, commitment and cost. Chuck told me about the young men who gave up in Basic Training, didn't fit at Advanced Infantry Training, or washed out of Airborne - and the ones who are moving on to Special Forces school along with him. I could hear his deepening understanding of his own vocation. He is discovering the value of serving something larger than oneself. He is experiencing the resonance that comes when you are doing what you are called to do.

The ocean of life is always larger than the tidal pool of our previous experience or imaginings. Most young men and women reach a point in their lives when they pass from the safe harbor of home into the open seas of life. And then they must choose which current to seek and by what star they will steer.

Although my son's transition is front and center for me at this moment I know from my own life that there are many points of choosing in life. One does not need to be a young man or woman to be faced with questions of vocation or the need to clarify allegiances.

When Jesus walked on the beach in Galilee and called Andrew and the others to follow him, he promised that they would fish for people. He called them from the work at hand into the work of the heart. And His offer must have resonated deep within them for they dropped what they were doing and they followed him. "Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you," Isaiah wrote. Simple fishermen stood in that rising light and saw themselves in a new context. They answered the call and became disciples.

We are all called. But the God who gave us particular gifts calls us to particular work. And the first piece of that work is discerning to what we are called.

In his book It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It, Robert Fulghum tells about a man named Alexander Papaderos, who grew up in a tiny Greek village on the island of Crete. When Papaderos was a young boy, the Nazis invaded his island, and hundreds of his fellow villagers were executed for daring to resist. Needless to say, the people of Crete held a special hatred in their hearts against the Germans.

But, following the war, Alexander had a vision of building an institute on the site of that massacre where the people of Crete and the people of Germany could come together in peace. He figured that if they could forgive each other and construct a creative relationship, then any people could. Papaderos succeeded.

The institute became a reality and Papaderos himself became a living legend. One summer, Robert Fulghum went there to attend a two-week seminar on Greek culture. In his book, He describes what occurred.

"At the last session on the last morning, Papaderos rose from his chair at the back of the room and walked to the front, where he stood in the bright Greek sunlight of an open window and looked out. We followed his gaze across the bay to the iron cross marking the German cemetery. He turned. And made the ritual gesture, asking: `Are there any questions?' "Quiet quilted the room. These two weeks had generated enough questions for a lifetime, but for now there was only silence. "`No questions?' Papaderos swept the room with his eyes. "So. I asked: `Dr. Papaderos, what is the meaning of life?' The usual laughter followed, and people stirred to go.

"But Papaderos held up his hand and stilled the room and looked at me for a long time, asking with his eyes if I was serious and seeing from my eyes that I was. " `I will answer your question.' "Taking his wallet out of his hip pocket, he fished into the leather billfold and brought out a very small round mirror, about the size of a quarter. And what he said went like this: `When I was a small child, during the war, we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day, on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place.

"`I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was not possible, so I kept only the largest piece. This one. And by scratching it on a stone I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine--in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find.

"`I kept the little mirror, and as I went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child's game, but a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of light. But light -- truth, understanding, knowledge, -- Light is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it.

"`I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world -- into the black places in the hearts of people -- and change some things in some of them. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life.'¹

Vocation comes from the word vocare, to be called. We are each called to reflect the light of Christ into the dark places of the world. We are called to do so in different ways for we are not Papaderos, nor Andrew or James or John. But we are called to reflect the light in our own ways in our own time. There is no shortage of darkness in the world, nor is there any shortage of opportunity to reflect the light of Christ into it. Papaderos and thousands of others before us have done their parts. Now it is our turn to find the shiny fragments close at hand and make something good of them.

In the name of Christ, the light of the world. AMEN