COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS GIVEN BY CALDWELL COLLEGE PRESIDENT SISTER PATRICE WERNER, O.P., PH.D. ON MAY 17 AFTER SHE RECEIVED AN HONORARY DEGREE
Thank you, Alex and Helen, and my sincere thanks to the Board of Trustees for awarding me an honorary degree today. I am certainly pleased, honored and humbled by the gesture. Thrilled also to be sharing the stage with this, my last graduating class at Caldwell College. It's a bit of a strange feeling to be on the other side of the diploma but I'm comforted to know that in a few minutes things will get back to normal and I will have, once more, the privilege of personally handing the diploma to each of our graduates. Today is really their day.
Let me begin, then, by extending my congratulations to the Class of 2009, a class which-from all accounts-is considered special in many ways by faculty and staff with whom they have interacted. Today is an important day for you, one which should be rightly celebrated and treasured. Whether you are a traditional student receiving your degree after four years, a Continuing Education graduate whose academic journey has been longer, perhaps interrupted from time to time and squeezed in among family and work obligations, whether you are graduating with an undergraduate degree or a graduate degree, no matter. Each and every one of you has ample reason to rejoice today. Be proud of your accomplishments, treasure your memories, hold on to the friendships developed over these years, look forward to a future filled with hope and promise and myriad possibilities.
Congratulations also to the parents and spouses of our graduates. I'm sure your emotions are mixed right now … pride in the accomplishments of your loved ones, nostalgia because of the many memories of these past years, and maybe relief as well because you will have one less tuition payment next fall. I say "maybe" because I think a good number of our graduates have decided to immediately continue their education (I know at least one who starts her first graduate course tomorrow).
Today's graduates will face many challenges, not the least of which are a troubled economy and the military and political unrest in many corners of our world. The economy has hit many of us close to home: jobs lost or hours cut back, savings reduced, mortgages at risk, budgets streamlined. Our current social landscape reveals growing poverty and homelessness, diseases which continue to devastate specific populations and even whole countries, loss of trust in government, corporate and religious leaders. These are serious challenges but they are not insurmountable and it is our prayer that your Caldwell College education has well prepared you to make a difference in this world and that you have been, as we say in our Mission Statement, "empowered to comprehend community and global issues and to act responsibly toward self and others."
Meanwhile, all of you have one immediate challenge, and that is to sit through this commencement address. About ten years ago, one of our commencement speakers stood before the graduates, looked them in the eye and said in effect, "We all know what you came to hear today. You came to hear your own name called out to receive your diploma and you came to hear the applause and congratulations of your family and friends … what you didn't come to hear was the commencement speaker." And he was right, wasn't he?
But graduations are kind of pompous events, full of protocol, full of expectations. I'm expected to impart words of wisdom as you leave Caldwell and move on in different directions. You are expected to pay attention. You're not, however, necessarily expected to remember. Maybe a little story will help pass the time.
As I reflected on today's occasion and on my own life experiences, I recalled a story told by the author Paula Ripple in her book Growing Strong at Broken Places. She tells about a friend who wanted to take slides to show the making of a stoneware pot. The two women drove down side roads on Cape Cod following signs that read simply "Potter." After many fruitless turns, they finally found themselves in a potter's shed at the tip of the Cape. The potter, a woman of more than 70 years, was delighted to show them her work and happy to turn a pot as they watched. After preparing the clay, she directed them to take pictures showing only her hands and the wheel. She made comments as she worked:
The condition of the clay matters [she said]. Even though you can select different kinds of clay for different purposes, you have to prepare them for the wheel. Yes. The condition of the clay matters.
A part of the process [she continued] is unpredictable. So, no two results are ever exactly the same. It's like life. You can make decisions but you can never predict the exact outcome.
Describing the pliability of the clay and the direct relationship between its pliability and its strength, the woman added:
If you can't bend a little and give some, life will eventually break you. It's just the way it is.
As she worked, the potter carefully positioned herself so that one of her hands could work from the inside, placing pressure on the pot, and the other could work from the outside. There were opposing forces in the two hands. And the woman explained the care needed to make sure that neither hand put more pressure on the pot than the other, lest it either collapse or bulge outward. This idea startled the author who said she used to think that pots were shaped only from the inside, and often compared that to the inner values which shape our lives. At this, the potter interrupted:
You are wrong [she said]. Life, like the pot I'm turning, is shaped by two sets of opposing forces. There are forces inside of us and there are forces that come to us from the outside, like family and friends, or the country in which we live.
The woman's final words summed up not only the making of a pot but her basic belief about life:
Both my hands shaped this pot [she said]. And the place where it actually forms is a place of tension between the pressure applied from the outside and the pressure of the hand on the inside. … My life, like this pot, is the result of what happened on the outside and what was going on inside of me. Life, like this pot, comes to be in places of tension. Life comes to be when we learn how to avoid looking for answers and finally learn how to ask questions that will bring us to life.
I think that we-you and I-can learn from the potter. There is a tendency in all of us to want to live tension-free … to be able to move from "A" to "Z" in a straight line, to make the perfect pot on the first attempt. We want to have all the correct answers without even having to ask the questions, never mind do the research and study involved. But before we can begin to search for answers, we must first appreciate the questions.
Your education at Caldwell College has equipped you to ask the right questions: "Who am I? Who are we? Where are we going? Why?" And, in asking those questions, you have begun or continued the work of shaping the very substance of your lives. Caldwell is a bit like the old potter but imagine her, if you will, not simply demonstrating the turning of the pot but actually joining hands with a young apprentice, the student, to help condition the clay-pushing, pulling, stretching, molding. The individual student bends, takes, gives … responding to forces and pressures both from within and without, synthesizing and reshaping information, analyzing problems from many different perspectives, finding Veritas/truth wherever it may be found, occasionally failing but having the courage and determination to keep trying.
Someone once wrote (and I apologize because I forget who), "The great project of every human being is his or her own life." Too many people never fully undertake the project but, rather, drift aimlessly through life doing whatever their mood suggests and becoming whatever the forces around them make them to be. In my bedroom, I have a framed photo of a potter's hands working the clay. The first thing you notice is how messy the work is. A potter has to be willing to get dirty, has to be willing to accept rough hands, perhaps broken fingernails, hands and nails that have to be scrubbed clean. Art can be messy. As can life. While each one of us is called to make of our life a work of art, there is no guarantee that this will come easily, that we will not be muddied in the process, that our path will be smooth. There will be tension. The potter teaches us that, like the pot, our life is the result of what happens on the outside and what goes on inside of us. Life comes to be in times and places of tension. That tension can activate our creative energies and enable us to give shape to our dreams.
Today I remind you that your work of art is still becoming. Your belief in yourself, your faith in God, the love and support of family and friends, and the intellectual, moral and social underpinnings of your education here at Caldwell will hopefully continue to enable you to shape your life into a work of art. No one can predict what the future will hold for you … what challenges you will face in the years ahead. You will not always be able to choose the forces which will influence your life. You will not live tension-free. The love and friendship, the success and happiness you experience today will at times give way to sadness, loss and occasional failure. Your life will be shaped by your acceptance of and creative response to these moments of tension.
Earlier I mentioned my framed photo of the potter's hands working the clay. I was recently given another work entitled "In the Hand of the Potter" and featuring a beautiful/strong earthenware piece. The hands of the potter can be glimpsed in the background, hovering over the work. In Jeremiah we read, "As the clay is in the hand of the potter, so you are in mine." We are all-you and I--in the hands of the Great Potter. My prayer today is that you will be faithful to the good teaching that has been given to you and that God will be with you as you shape your own future and that of the world around you.
Members of the Class of 2009, congratulations and God bless you.