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Welcoming Remarks
by Lisa De Young Jastram

Good morning. It really is so good to see so many of you awake and present here this morning after a long weekend with late nights. We moved the time of this event to 9:00 after we learned that more than a few of you have early afternoon flights and appreciate the fact that you are here. We have planned to keep in a timeline to get you on your ways in a timely fashion.

When Nick asked me to lead this Sunday morning event, I thought back on Nashville and tried to imagine how I could do plan a service that was as meaningful s that one seemed to be. And that’s when I started thinking about all the things that have changed since then.. For instance, raise your hand if you are now a grandparent. (quite a few hands went up) Raise your hand if you are now retired. (Several hands went up). Raise you hand if you shared reading glasses this weekend. (LOTs of hands went up!) Raise your hand if you have two hip replacements. (Mine went up thinking I was the only one but someone else raised her hand, too!).

We are now in a different generational age for sure. But things around us have changed as well. When we last met in 2004, Dave and I rode in a Steve Sundberg’s rental car which had a GPS guidance system on it. This was the first time many of us had experienced that and I remember being really annoyed with the voice telling us “You have made an illegal turn. Recalculating. Recalculating.” Did not like that reality!

Facebook was first introduced that very year but did not affect any of us older folk til several years later. The first iPhone was not released until 2007. We were not texting or tweeting at that time. Harder to believe, the first iPad was released in 2010 as a frivolous limited use item. Can’t hardly live without it now.

Blogging was in existence by 2004 but not yet the worldwide phenomena that it has now become. This technology has changed the way in which we connect. In 2004, when many alumni walked in the room there in Nashville, I heard gasps of sadness as they realized for the first time how many of their colleagues had passed on. Today, many of you have already processed this information from reading about it on Facebook. In Nashville, I totally didn’t recognize some of my fellow students. Today, most of us have seen posts with photos as we follow our friends. We are more connected than ever. And yet… something is still missing.

Of course, there is nothing like a face to face meeting, a handshake, a hug, sharing a cup of coffee or singing and dancing together. But what I have learned about Facebook and social media, is that the story is often missing. When Donna French Dannemiller posted “Just coming out of a coma”, I panicked for a minute til she wrote a few hours later, it was just a really bad cold. When Rich Walker posted “So very happy”, I messaged him to ask why and the story was, he was newly engaged. I am always messaging Dave Worth to ask the rest of his story. I will not say why.

When I went through the worst time of my life, telling my story was a vital part of getting through. Our son Eric passed out in the shower and was burned by the hot water pelting him. Burns on 35% of his body. He and I spent the next 3 months in the ICU in the burn unit. I wrote my story every day on a blog site. It helped me deal with what was happening and those who were reading really understood what was going on.

The terrible events at ASIJ were headlines and emails and rumors until Janet Calcote Simmons posted her story on her blog. Suddenly, it was terribly, nauseatingly real. I finally truly understood the horror of what had happened right under our own noses.

So, today, I thought we would have a sharing of stories to represent all of our stories that have not been told. Every person I asked to share their story gave an enthusiastic yes! This is how we connect. Once I figured this out, I was affirmed a few nights later watching the TV show, Perception. In this show, the lead character, Professor Daniel Pierce, is a brilliant schizophrenic professor of neurology. The show always starts and ends with a classroom lecture. This is what he said:

Think of your life as a story. Actually, you already do. FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) show us that following a story, a narrative with a beginning, middle and end, causes our brains to release cortisol and oxytocin. These chemicals give us the uniquely human ability to connect with someone even a total stranger, and empathize. In other words, stories are what we use to find meaning in our lives.