Albion College, Albion Michigan
Fall Convocation 2001
August 30, 2001
Not that I don’t appreciate the generous introduction, Peter. I really do. It’s just that I don’t feel entirely comfortable here. I’d feel more comfortable up there. Back where the choir loft used to be. That’s where I sat with the tenors. In fact, nobody ever sat there before I sat there. I was here the day they opened the doors. The year was 1958. The month was September. I was a freshman. I arrived on campus on Sunday, auditioned with Dave Strickler on Tuesday, started rehearsals on Wednesday and sang at the opening service the following Sunday. I tell you this so you will know that others have been here before you. And as to who left which mark where, I can’t begin to say. But to those of you who are squeaky new here, I would urge you to let this school touch you, even as it endeavors to teach you.
So much for nostalgia. We are here to face forward, not back. I apologize for any false expectations raised by my title. Some of you gazed at the words “One for the Road” and thought beverages. Others of you stared at the same words, considered my profession, and thought beliefs. I am not here to talk about either. To whatever degree life and learning is a “road show,” some beverages and beliefs are better than others. But of all the things I could offer for your journey, I have chosen (instead) a song.
Part of me is reluctant to do so. I don’t really know you. And I’m not sure how much confidence I should place in you. You could tune me out in the next few seconds and never return. Or you could “go with the flow” and who knows what might happen. I will cover my hindquarters by telling you that I am not the first person to do what I am about to do, but rather the second. The place, Syracuse University. The occasion, graduation. There he stood….in all of his academic regalia….making silly motions with his hands and fingers. Just like these. But then the motions became recognizable. For there wasn’t a person in the audience who hadn’t seen or made them previously.
The second time through the motions, he broke into song. Whereupon everybody in his audience began to sing along with him. And to whatever degree the spirit moves you, I invite you to sing with me now.
The eensy-weensy spider climbed up the water spout.
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain.
And the eensy-weensy spider climbed up the spout again.
But there is more to it than meets the eye. Let’s dissect it for a closer look.
The eensy-weensy spider climbed up the water spout.
What do we learn? We learn that a very small-in-stature spider commenced to climb. I suppose it is in the nature of spiders to be small. And also to climb. As to this thing about water spouts, I can’t rightly say. I’m not all that “into” spiders. When I was a student, this campus boasted a world-class expert in spiders. His name was Merton Chickering. But like a lot of people my age, I was in the presence of greatness and knew it not. So back to the song. Why a water spout? Because it was there, I suppose.
All things considered, most of you are bigger than spiders. So why have you been climbing? Several reasons, I suppose.
· Because the light is better up there.
· Because the view is better up there.
· Because the pay is better up there.
· Or because things thin out up there….
so you won’t feel crowded, trapped and crushed in the crowd.
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
Rains will come…which won’t necessarily be “showers of blessing.” And all the Doppler Radar in the world won’t alert you to their arrival. But when they come, they will interrupt your “king of the hill” game, big time. Such rains will come in the form of:
· a class you can’t pass
· a prof you can’t please
· a job you can’t do
· a fact you can’t dodge
· a blood test that doesn’t lie
· or a friend who does
· an addiction you can’t kick out
· or a lover you can’t coax back.
As concerns such rains, the issue is not “if” but “when.” The author of Ecclesiastes is right. “Time and chance really do happen to us all.”
Public debate about bullies is in. When I was a seventh grader, a bully approached me in a bathroom of TappanJunior High and said: “Ritter, do you know what a swirly is?” Upon learning that I didn’t, he said: “A swirly is when I put your head in the toilet and flush.” Fortunately, I talked him out of his intention. But life later accomplished what he didn’t…. grabbing my head and flushing all over me.
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain.
Which means that good things will also happen in your life.
· Fortune will smile on you.
· Friends will smile on you.
· Love will smile on you.
· God will smile on you.
And….as with the adversities….you won’t be able to explain the “good stuff,” either. “Why me?” is not only something we cry in the rain. “Why me?” is something we also cry in the sun. For most of you have already been kissed by sunshine. I mean, do you think you got this far by your own efforts?
· Because you were all that good?
· Because you were all that gifted?
· Because you were all that gorgeous?
· Because you were all that godly?
Well, if that’s what you are thinking, I suggest you cut the self-made (“I did it my way”) crap, long enough to acknowledge that you got this far (and did this much) because a whole lot of wonderful people got in your way….I mean, literally, got in your way. But what were they doing there? I mean, they didn’t all get there by accident, did they? How is it that they showed up exactly where you needed them….when you needed them? When I take a long view of history, I see my life as having been laced with people who showed up at just the right time, opening doors when I didn’t have any place else to go. If I were a Presbyterian (or a Calvinist), I might call that “predestination.” Since I am not, I’ll settle on “grace.”
And the eensy-weensy spider climbed up the spout again.
The spider was not easily deterred. Which is why this song is the quintessential American anthem. And which is why there wasn’t anybody in the room, a few moments ago, who couldn’t recall it. In addition to being in our brains, I would contend that the “eensy-weensy spider” is also in our blood. We are not standing still. Life and learning are not standing still. And this college is not standing still.
Some years ago, the marketing geniuses at GM coined the phrase: “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.” They were right. It wasn’t. But would you believe that two years from now, there will be no such thing as anybody’s Oldsmobile. Who could have foreseen it?
Early on in the visioning process, someone suggested that what we had on the drawing board was “not your father's Albion.” Or your mother’s, either. And while 18 of us spent three wonderfully creative (and more than occasionally combative) years designing and drooling over what George (the elder) Bush once called “that damn vision thing,” we still find ourselves at a loss to explain it in language that web-searching teenagers can understand, and sticker-shocked parents are willing to pay for.
But explain it or not, we are living it. More institutes. New centers. Foundations for under-graduate research and educational technology. A retooled first-year experience. All that and more, gathered under the slogan “Liberal Arts At Work” (which may....just may....have just the right mixture of vagueness and specificity so as to excite more people than it confuses). Sure, the Vision feels like a maze. But what a maze....offering you ways to go further and deeper, even to the point or “losing yourself” in the best sense of the word.
When I came to Albion, they said: “Register here. Show up there. Designate a major.” My major was Philosophy. It meant that I needed a minimum of 24 credit hours and eight classes. Do you know how many philosophy professors there were during my first three years here? One! A good one. An able one. But only one....until Bill Gillham showed up, offering me an option during my senior year. When I entered the room called “Departmental Major – Philosophy,” I felt as if there were no doors before me, even as the one labeled “Door of Choice” was slamming behind me.
Today, philosophy not only bleeds into theology, but biology, anthropology and maybe even geology. Today’s philosophy major can come alive in the Centers for History and Culture, Meaning and Value and, if blessed with a creative bent, perhaps even Art and the Environment. When I asked my colleagues on the Vision Committee whether a philosophy major could do an undergraduate research project, Gene Cline gave me one of those looks that said: “And what time warp are you stuck in?” To be sure, I once did well here. But given today’s impressive smorgasbord of options, I could really pig out here.
Which would be helpful, given that my world is changing as rapidly as anybody’s. To be sure, I still preach the Word and administer the sacraments. I still visit the sick, bury the dead, baptize the beginners and marry the lovers. But I also serve as the CEO of an ecclesiastical corporation whose annual budget is approaching $2.5 million, that is until we break ground on an addition that will cost an additional $5 million and change.
A month from now, I will keynote a metropolitan-area conference on the evils of racial profiling, all the while sitting on a committee trying to overcome social fragmentation by regional transportation. Did I have a thimble’s full of knowledge about either of those subjects six months ago? You’ve got to be kidding.
In October, my church will host a business ethics conference, featuring the only professor to hold dual appointments in Harvard’s Business School and Harvard’s Divinity School. But I still have to make time for the cancer sufferer who drops by to talk about stem cell research and the Job look-alike in Beaumont Hospital who says to me: “Bill, you’re a smart man. Tell me what it was I did to tick God off.” That’s ministry today. And that’s why my successor will need a whole lot more of the Vision we’ve designed and you’re consuming.
Now, for those of you who are coming at this for the first time….the cocky and queasy ones…. let me say that this is a season of great expectations. You have the right to expect much of Albion. After all, you are paying a lot and should get your money’s worth. But we also expect a lot of you. Last May we turned out another class of tired old seniors, and from you we expect renewal. Albion is a lot like Dracula. We thrive on new blood here….especially yours.
Are you ready for this? Sure, you’re ready for this. I mean, what’s the alternative? Shutting down the Development Office of your life? Come on now, that would be tragic. David McCourt (Harvard, class of ’21) once wrote of his Cambridge experience: “The best thing I got out of college was myself.” For there is not one of us in this room who couldn’t be termed “a work in progress.”
I have grown tired of the shallow determinism that says: “You can’t change a leopard’s spots, you know. Neither can you teach an old dog new tricks.” Wrong! If you come from the faith perspective I own and preach, you have to think differently about both spotted leopards and aged dogs. Concerning leopards, I know next to nothing. But concerning dogs, I have met a few. Pet dogs. Show dogs. Hound dogs. Guide dogs. Tracers. Racers.
I knew a racing dog once….down Florida way….greyhound, if I remember right. He lined up on a track with all the other greyhounds. Gun went off. Dogs went off. Around the oval. Toward the wire. Chasing a mechanical rabbit. Until this particular greyhound retired. Called it quits, just like that. I didn’t know him all that well. But, as luck would have it, I got invited to his retirement party. Talking to him afterward, I said: “Do you miss the glitter and excitement of the track?”
“No,” he replied.
“Well, what was the matter? Did you get too old to race?”
“No, I still had some race left in me.”
“Well, what then? Did you not win?” I asked.
“I won over a million dollars for my owner.”
“So, what was it? Bad treatment?”
“Oh no,” the dog said. “They treated us royally when we were racing.”
“Did you get crippled?”
“No.”
“Then why?” I pressed.
“I quit,” he said.
“You quit?”
“Yes. I just quit.”
“Well, why did you quit?”
“I quit the day I discovered that what I was chasing was not really a rabbit.” Then he looked at me very seriously and said: “All that running, and running, and running, and running….and what I was chasing, it wasn’t even real.”
Old dog. New trick.
A whole new life, just like that. That’s what I believe. Yes, that’s exactly what I believe.
Note: If I am not mistaken, it was Robert Fulghum who first sang “The Eensy-Weensy Spider” in an academic gathering at Syracuse University. It was Fred Craddock who introduced me to the recently-retired greyhound. And it was Peter Domes, Harvard’s beloved preacher, who gave me the lines from David McCourt. Any observations about the Vision (and the work of the Vision Committee) are clearly my own and reflect three years hard labor with some wonderfully talented academics.
