Friendships and Departures

Of all the phenomena of a human life, few surpass friendship in importance. In fact, looking back from early in my eighth decade, I find that I most clearly remember the inner meaning and importance of the past in terms of friendships. Too infrequently as we age, it becomes difficult to open the heart as young people can do.

Starting tomorrow, students at Wyoming Catholic College enter the time-honored ritual of final examinations. Everything they have learned during the semester needs to be stirred back up, brought to mind in good order, and presented to the professor with coherence and insight to show that all this time and effort has not been wasted. For this year’s seniors, finals are indeed final, the last of the examinations they will face at Wyoming Catholic College. The occasion is bittersweet. Just beyond the last of these last tests comes Commencement, that term for new beginnings that we give to the end of this education, and the feelings of the week will be very much about the past four years.

Of all the phenomena of a human life, few surpass friendship in importance. In fact, looking back from early in my eighth decade, I find that I most clearly remember the inner meaning and importance of the past in terms of friendships. I know that it will be true here. Our graduates will leave Wyoming Catholic College with the experience of having worked through many things, intellectual and emotional, with a few other people whose souls in some deep, providential sense rhyme with theirs, whose insights have helped them truly understand themselves, whose suggestions give them direction, whose decisions inform and instruct their own. Too infrequently as we age, it becomes difficult to open the heart as young people can do. It is beautiful to see their love of each other, and it will be difficult to witness their departure.

Last week, my wife and I lost our friend and mentor Lyle Novinski, who headed the Art Department at the University of Dallas for decades and whose generosity and brilliance affected everyone who knew him. Though we have always kept in touch, we were closest to Lyle and Sybil 45 years ago when Virginia and I were newly married. They were guides and inspirations for us, and Lyle was for me a mentor in many ways, deeply kind, always with an edge of wit and a challenge to make something, to respond in some fresh, creative way to the great gifts of God. I do not know all he did, but among them he was a painter (we have one of his paintings in our home); he designed the interiors of churches, including stained glass windows, sculptures, and paintings; he helped make the campus of UD beautiful over decades of attention; he wrote poetry. He and Sybil raised their five children—each of whom we love and admire—with grace and humor. Over the years, living as far away as we often did, we sometimes lost touch with the latest shows and projects, but Lyle would send me poems, and my wife reminded me today of Lyle’s poems about his time in the Korean War, to which I never gave him an adequate response.

But death is just a commencement. Having just finished Dante’s Paradiso with the sophomores, I think of those souls in such bliss that the resources of language are inadequate to express it. I hope to see Lyle again. I hope to tell him that in his presence, when he pointed to something in a painting or mentioned a place in Greece or Italy, I often felt like what Dante describes himself as feeling when he sees the Celestial Rose—like a barbarian entering Rome and suddenly finding himself aware of a greatness he had not even suspected.

Republished with gracious permission from Wyoming Catholic College‘s weekly newsletter.

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The featured image is “The Farewell” (1878) by Harriet Backer, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.