Graduation 2008 - The Abbey Christian Brothers' Grammar School

Bidding Prayers
Walking Away
We pray for our families and all who have nurtured us to this stage in our lives.
We thank you for their guidance and love. May they be richly rewarded.
Lord hear us
We pray for our teachers and all the staff here at the Abbey who have encouraged us in our
studies over the past seven years. May they be richly rewarded.
Lord hear us
We pray for all of us as we prepare for our A Levels. Help us to achieve our full potential while
at the same time keep us aware of the needs of others at this stressful time.
Lord hear us
We pray for your blessing in the future. May we not be afraid to take risks – it is by taking
chances that we learn how to be brave.
Lord hear us
We pray that we may never be afraid to admit that things are not as perfect as we would like
them to be – it is this fragile thread that binds us to each other.
Lord hear us
We pray for those whom we have loved and lost – especially those who have died over the
past seven years. May they know the peace of eternal life.
Lord hear us
It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day --
A sunny day with the leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled -- since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away
Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.
That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature’s give-and-take -- the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.
I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show --
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.
Cecil Day-Lewis wrote this poem for his first-born son, Sean.
C. Day Lewis, Poet Laureate England, b.1904 Co. Laois, Ireland
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