We
are Saved by Love
[These were my remarks to the class of 2022 at their commencement on Saturday.]
It
is an especially tough time to be a 21 or 22-year-old. Frankly, it’s not the
easiest time to be a 58-year-old.
When
most of you arrived at SU, none of us could have anticipated the tumultuous
events of the past four years. As we welcomed you on August 23rd
2018, I spoke about our academic theme of Resilience stating:
The Liberal Arts
provide us with an array of viewpoints and historical perspectives so we can
better contextualize and understand the challenges we encounter in our lives.
In anticipation of the
myriad inevitabilities we all face, you are here to develop the tools to live
your lives as fully as you can, to respond to challenges with grit and poise,
and to lift up those around us whose resolve is spent.
I then spoke about the
need to be courageous:
Courage
and bravery are not the same thing. Often
the only difference between bravery and stupidity is who’s telling the tale.
Courage, on the other hand, is deep. It is built upon faith and wisdom, and
fundamentally, it is selfless. You are here to seek wisdom and to develop the
moral courage to become leaders of consequence, to become resilient, and to
cultivate resilience in those around you.
Little
did any of us know how this would be tested and proved again and again throughout
your matriculation.
A
global pandemic, an eruption of social unrest in response to systemic
inequities, an attack on our nation’s capital by bands of its own citizens, and
a major world power waging war on a neighboring democracy; senseless mass
shootings, climate change, continual assaults on the truth, and politicization
of fundamental moral principles. We are fraying, and we are afraid.
Now sounding prophetic, I recited this passage
from William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Second
Coming,” at your opening
convocation:
Turning and turning in
the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Written
a century ago, it sounds as if Yeats is describing this moment in history.
Maybe it would have rung as true a century before he wrote it, or even a
century before then.
Perhaps
Dickens’s description is evergreen, and it has always been the best of times
and the worst of times, but I am more optimistic for the future because of you.
I believe you are capable of relegating our worst times to the past.
I
believe this because I have seen what you are capable of doing;
I
believe this because I know what you have learned; and
I
believe this because I have witnessed your kindness, your compassion, your
passion, and your goodness countless times as we have journeyed together.
You
persevered when you were scattered across the nation and the globe unable to
return to campus.
You
added your voices to the millions who advocated for justice in its many forms
in your communities and on our campus. You listened to the smallest voices and
echoed them so all might hear.
You
took care of each other, you made sacrifices to keep each other safe and
healthy, and pushing against seemingly infinite resistance from the world
around us, you arrived at this spot. You have made our mission statement
manifest.
Those of you who know it, please join me.
Susquehanna University educates students for productive,
creative, and reflective lives of achievement, leadership, and service in a
diverse, dynamic, and interdependent world.
This is not a pithy slogan. It is the
foundation of global citizenship and the fruit of a liberal education. Over the
coming years, I hope you will reflect on how these lofty goals continue to unfold
in your own lives and how your unprecedented experiences at Susquehanna have cultivated
your capacity to live this mission to its fullest.
This is what our weary, hungry world needs – your
driven achievement, your selfless leadership, your committed service, and, most
of all, your moral courage.
Our democracy was biproduct of the Scottish
Enlightenment, which embraced the humanist spirit of the Western Enlightenment
that celebrated the nobility and worth of each individual and valued the respective
reason they possessed. The Scottish Enlightenment took this further by rejecting
authority that was not likewise governed by reason.
This balance of individual autonomy and
collective coherence has been critical to the survival of our republic and to
that of subsequent democracies around the world. Our future as a nation and as
a global community depends upon our ability to inclusively embrace all peoples,
to reconcile what is true, and to govern ourselves through reason for the
common good.
You have seen first-hand how truly
interdependent we are. We are able to be here today because you chose to work
as a community for the common good, and nearly every setback we experienced
resulted from a moment when someone lost sight of that. As leaders, you must
always choose the common good.
Reinhold
Niebuhr wrote: “Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we
must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense
in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are
saved by love.”
Our progress will require hope, faith, and
love – these you have in abundance.
Class of 2022, you are graduating into an
alarmingly broken world, but I am hopeful because I know what you can do. I am
so proud of you, of what you have accomplished, and even prouder of what you
will achieve.
Congratulations!