Whoopi Redux

What follows is my reaction to Whoopi Goldberg's commencement address to my son's graduating class, the Montclair State University class of 2007, as recounted in my weekly "Only Human'' column:

Be the person you want to be" pretty much sums up Whoopi Goldberg's advice to my son Joshua. Ms. Goldberg was the commencement speaker at the Montclair State University graduation ceremony May 18 where Josh got his B.A.

Now, one does not expect a great deal of depth from college commencement speakers, no Kierkegaardian exploration of the existential issues of the human soul. Nevertheless, "Be the person you want to be" seems to me a tad on the shallow side as far as life advice goes.
What if the person you want to be is a selfish, greedy, SOB? Or worse? One imagines that Stalin and Pol Pot slept very well at night.
Now Whoopi did say that being the person you want to be may mean that you stand alone in this world, and it also means asking for help sometimes. Of course, if the person you want to be is someone who stands alone, who are you going to ask for help?

By a strange coincidence, that very night I met somebody who has become precisely the person he wants to be. I had been invited to a get-together of people I graduated from high school with and met somebody I hadn't talked to in maybe 30 years. In high school, this person and I didn't travel in the same circles. He was one of the jocks and I was one of those guys who tried to avoid getting towel-slapped in the gym showers.

I didn't recognize the guy, but a friend introduced us. This friend is of the "let 'em mix it up" school of social intercourse. She introduced us by saying that I was a minister and that the jock was an atheist. I hadn't had enough beer to rise to the bait, although I did say something about agnosticism being more intellectually honest than atheism.

Not a minute later, somebody made a comment about two women making love, and I stole a line from an old Seinfeld episode: "Not that there's anything wrong with that!" This old jock stopped laughing, looked me in the eye and said: "Do you have boys?" There was an edge in his voice, an accusation.
"I have four sons," I said.
"And if one of them were gay, would that be OK with you?" he wanted to know.
"It would be fine," I said.
Just then, the guy's wife sidled up to him.
"Now let's just talk about nice things, OK?" she said, and I walked away.

Now, honest to God, I don't know how things like this happen, how I became a magnet for weird conversations and strange people. On so many levels, his question made no sense to me: If one of my sons was gay, would I stop loving him? Would I disown him? Bundle him and send him off to a quack for some bogus "cure"?

Even at its best, "being who you want to be" turns out not to be the best advice. Too often, being who you want to be means settling for who you turn out to be, comfortable with your prejudices, fatalistic about the world. Some of us believe that who we want to be is inextricably tied up with who we are called to be by God, or, if we can't quite get that far, then who we are called to be by those who love us in flesh and blood. And who we are called to be may be, in the short run, a lot harder and more painful than who we want to be.

For we are called to be better than we imagine, more loving and more courageous, more forgiving and just than we ever thought we had it in us to be. But the kind of peace and joy at the end of that process is a far sight more deeper and more powerful than settling in for the siege that life often turns into.

Whoopi did say one profound thing. "Life," she said, "is a party." Indeed it is. But it seems to me that it is a party where the invitation is "Come As You Are" and you show up that way, but at the end of the night, you leave with a new heart and a great deal of soul.