Before reading the list of those who have died in our class, I would like to share reflections on what I am seeing and feeling, having traveled 3000 miles to circle back in my life to formative beginnings.

In the words of a beloved Hebrew Bible teacher whose opening phrase was invariably, "We are all God's wounded and precious children," that is what I am seeing and feeling. I've broken two legs, there are many of us who have had failed marriages, but to those of you happily in second marriages, I am glad to see that you have given the lie to Benjamin Franklin's warning: "A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience."

At the fortieth reunion, I remarked that we all had stories, and what stories they are, and interestingly the more we heard, the more we observed that they begin to meld into one story. Each of us have had ups and downs, that have produced in us wisdom, and a recognition of life's preciousness and fragility.

The second thing I see and feel is an image of the gardener walking out among the roses and cucumbers and watermelons, and picking off the fruit placing them in his or her basket. Reunions are a circling back to beginnings, counterintuitively, enabling us to begin again. And what is it we are picking? Well, I think inclusion, first of all. There is a feeling of family here; you know, where no matter what you have done they still have to take you in, back in high school all the exclusions; shut out of this sport, that club, this clich, turned down for that date, and now, all that seems to matter so little. We are just so happy to see each other.

And so the next fruit is hopefully reconciliation and even forgiveness, forgiveness both specifically and in a more generalized sense. With the specifics to see that they have been repaired. A small example and Duane Castoldi forgive me, when we met the first thing he said was the new shirt and my knife, for back in the 7th grade, I was showing off a new knife and sliced his new shirt, without showing the appropriate apology. We both still remembered. And the generalized forgiveness, the little hurts, words we wish we could take back, attitudes of condescending or jealousy, now seem distant and even washed clean, and so circling back, we can move on, whereas before we were stymied.

Which brings us now to the memorial. We miss those absent from us and have been asking one another, what about him or her, where are they, what have they been doing? And then the shock of learning of those who are truly absent, that is deceased. Now a quick aside, as we read these names, if your name is read, please speak up it won't be the first time someone has been prematurely eulogized!

For those of you who live in proximity, these names will not come as shock. You no doubt have done your grief work, and celebrated in thanksgiving something of their gifts to us, but for the rest of us, we need some space to absorb and process these messages, messages that remind us that we too are mortal, that we men have on average ten more years to live, and you women sixteen more years. And so, another thing I see is you wives hovering a bit over your husbands, for we macho men have become the more fragile. Garrison Keeler's parting words: "Where the men are good looking and the women are strong " We men need to be protected from trying to do what we could at 35, and we also tear up more easily. I can be out walking and even just meeting a happy family can bring tears to my eyes. I've been know to blubber in sermons, whereas at 50 you couldn't pry out a tear.

For some there is the assurance of an individual immortality, and for others of us a belief that is something less than that occurs. But even if all you believe is that we are destined for the compost heap, meditate there a moment, and you will recognize that out of compost, life emerges, turgid, prolifigate, and in Thomas Berry's words "with greater diversity, complexity, and intersubjective communion" (or love).

And so now as you hear these names read, I hope we will all have a greater consciousness, that we are "All God's Wounded and Precious Children."