College wouldn’t be college if it wasn’t temporary. We all come to this place with a portion of four years to be equipped for the next stage of our lives. At convocation, we receive a prodding from the president: “don’t let these four years pass you by,” he gently warns. “While treading the paths of this campus, don’t forget that this is real life too. The rhythm you establish now will affect the way you spend the rest of your life.”
As each class graduates and progresses toward adulthood, have you ever reflected that you may never see some of these faces again? The senior cellist who studied political science next to you every Wednesday afternoon in the stacks is now working at a law firm in Alabama. You may have never learned his name, yet his absence reminds you that this space is liminal. How much more unsettling is it to think that soon you will leave behind the dear friends who sang hymns with you in the rain during finals week, the blushing baby from your congregation who plays peek-a-boo with you behind the church pews, and the professor who invites you over for periodic game nights?
Even home becomes a stepping-stone. You realize that it can function without you, that your family’s life tumbles along just the same with one less table setting. You feel displaced at first, maybe a bit nomadic, like a traveling salesman who perpetually lives out of his suitcase.
Although it may seem difficult to feel rooted in college knowing that nothing you establish will endure in the same way, I believe it is still possible to find a sense of rootedness during these four years.
But first, what is rootedness? Maybe it would be helpful to define what it is not. I recently read an excerpt from Incarnate by Michael Frost that used the image of an airport terminal to illustrate the rootlessness of our technology-obsessed society. Every traveler enters the terminal with the same intention: to get out of the terminal as quickly as possible. Rather than seeking human connection, the people in the terminal peer down into their microscopic realities, rooting themselves to a cloud of formless notification signals and TikTok videos.
I think the airport terminal represents a temptation that some may feel while at Grove City: college is nobody’s destination. So why bother learning the names of the dining hall staff? Why bother volunteering at the church nursery? Why bother investing so much time and effort in people and places you will soon leave behind?
Perhaps scripture can speak to the value of becoming more rooted individuals. John 15:4-5 instructs us to be rooted in Christ, the vine:
“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
This passage is relevant to the conversation of rootedness in two ways: first, it shows us that we cannot find fulfillment in any place or community unless we are first rooted to the giver of life himself. Second, it reveals that when we become rooted in Christ, we bear fruit for the kingdom of God. Thus, rootedness is central to the Christian calling – though we are sojourners in a waning world, we are also children invited to latch onto the eternal vine and become joyous partakers in the kingdom of God that is already at hand. In her poem Advent, Christina Rosetti beautifully captures the hope that emerges when we live in union with the true vine:
“We weep because the night is long,
We laugh for day shall rise,
We sing a slow contented song
And knock at Paradise.
Weeping we hold Him fast, Who wept
For us, we hold Him fast;
And will not let Him go except
He bless us first or last.”
College may be temporal, but the kingdom of God is not. When we hold fast to the true vine, the friendships we build, the church community we establish, and the attachment we develop to the land are not in vain. As we navigate the territory of the already-but-not-yet, it is possible to find assurance that what we cultivate during the fluctuating seasons of our lives does matter.
N.T. Wright, in his book Surprised by Hope, testifies to the eternal weight of even the most everyday endeavors:
“What you do in the present – by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself – will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether. They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.”
Those of us attending Grove City College have a unique opportunity to root ourselves these four years to the small, rural community in which God has placed us. So, I challenge all of us, including myself: let us abide in the true vine and allow the fruit of the kingdom to multiply.
