Charge to Future Graduates - Patrick Henry College

Patrick Henry CollegeCommencement 2009 – May 16“Charge to Future Graduates”John CurryGood morning family, friends, guests, faculty, and my fellow scholars of the eighthcommencement from Patrick Henry College. We are well met, four years from ourentrance to this Christian classical liberal arts college hiding in the soybean fieldsof Loudoun County. We are well met to celebrate a day of completion andbeginnings. As scholars, we stand to celebrate the official culmination ofacademic effort, a college degree. As lovers of learning, however, we stand at thevery first guidepost, understanding the beautiful paradox of knowledge. Engravedon that post are the words, “Knowledge gained sharpens our vision of those worldsundiscovered.” The guidepost serves us well for reflection.The Philosopher, in the ninth book of his Nicomachean Ethics, writes of therelationship between teachers and their students. “This, it seems, is also the way itshould be when (teacher and student) have studied philosophy [what comprises agood life] together. For money is not the standard by which the worth (of ateacher) can be measured, and no honor could match what he has given. Still, it is

perhaps sufficient to make what return we can, just as we do in the case of the godsand our parents.”Pause here a minute to silently honor those mentors—many of whom are heretoday—that have stood along your life’s road and pointed the way as they sharedideas and knowledge, who have guided your direction as you began thisexpedition, who shared their vision and spoke inspiration, who nurtured the rootsof your faith as a child and shaped the wings of your imagination. We stand today,the sum of their investments, and we owe our parents, grandparents, teachers, andcounselors a debt we can only repay by passing on the deposit entrusted to ourcare. What can we share that has not been shared with us?What you will hold in your hand in a few short moments is precious, bought withyears of investment that has cost much, but what you hold in your mind and inyour heart is even more valuable. That truth, that knowledge of Christ, freedom,faith, & reason, of virtue, goodness, & beauty, friends, that is auro pretiosior omni.It is more precious than all the gold in the world.These lines have fallen for us in pleasant places; behold we have a beautifulinheritance. We are wealthy, friends. Wealthy in the gifts of knowledge, infriendship, in experience. Regardless of the road you walk, can there be anygreater inheritance than the gift of Golgotha, the Son of Man’s sacrifice atCalvary?As high school freshmen, we witnessed 9/11 and the invasion ofAfghanistan. When we were juniors, our country invaded Iraq. As collegefreshmen, Katrina hits the Southern coast. We lived through upheaval anduncertainty at PHC. Today, we find a recession, H1N1 influenza, two kineticwars, pirates, and nuclear threats from relics of the Cold War. Friends, today’struth makes light of fiction.What memories are ingrained here on May 16 th ? Although schemes, tropes, andgeometrical figures may fade to sepia tones, I believe the simple memories willstay fresh in our minds; conversations here the first week with these fellowscholars we have the honor of calling friends. The first snow of the semester.Celebrating older friends who have walked this stage before us.Friends, walk these miles in a self-disinterested manner. Lay down the temptationto fill your pack with pithy anecdotes with which you will impress futureconstituents. Rather, walk these miles to see your reflection in humanity; walkthese miles to find the outcasts, the untouchables in the West and the East; walk

these miles with humility, with eyes intent on seeing, ears bent to hear, heartsaching to care, and hands eager to comfort.This cracked, bleeding, but beautiful world is the one we get to call our home, ourwilderness, our trial, our gift. Pilgrims and stewards, caretakers and strangers, wewalk carefully through two Kingdoms, one of man, one of Divinity. We laughjoyfully at the paradoxes, pouring our efforts into today’s work, knowing full wellthat our today and tomorrows are transient. We joyfully build that which will notendure physically, comfort and care for the dying who will not see another dawn,vigorously preserve civilizations and cultures that will slide quietly into the mistsof time. The cynic peers over his glasses and sees a foolish group feverishlyrearranging deck chairs as the band plays “Nearer My God to Thee.” TheChristian, however, smiles and continues to serve in anonymity, holding thedespairing student in the backstreets of Purcellville, cleaning the faces of thePuerta Vallarta children whose home is a trash can, pulling the 9th grader from theMalaysian brothel to safety in Chiang Rai. Why? Because by grace, through faith,we have seen the immaterial, we have caught a glimpse of the eternal, weunderstand that, somehow, our Redeemer takes the feeble efforts of crackedvessels and forms something beautiful, something heavy, something eternal. Andthat hope silences the cynic’s call, and our hands have work enough to do while wedraw breath on this byway.Friends, the journey’s time is brief, but remember, it is our path that we walk.Each generation of faithful pilgrims has answered the brief but vital call ofstewardship before moving on to meet their Maker. Now it is our turn. Whateverline you draw from One Patrick Henry Circle, whatever words mix together in thefourteen lines of your life’s Sonnet, your journey will be through land—cracked,bleeding, but beautiful, and that path is entrusted to you and to no one else.Inherent in that gift is your choice in the matter: this day is your day by grace, andas its steward, you choose how you will spend these twenty-four hours, in joy ordiscontentment, in hope or despair, in mediocrity or thugnificence.Friends, with this attitude, perhaps we are the blind beggars trying to wrench aliving from this world. Unwilling to hear the call to sacrifice, perhaps we are thedeaf ones, Perhaps we are the sick ones, nursing petty hurts and imaginedoffenses in the middle of an unparalleled inheritance. Watch and see, friends. Somany look without seeing and watch with no vision. Straining at our ownreflection in the mirror, we miss the beauty of looking up, looking out, perceivingthe world outside of ourselves.

“And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it hadestablished a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for goodthings to run wild.”G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 102Friends, take this inheritance and use it to shape your perspective of your world.Walk a mile through the alleys of New Delhi, through the paths of India where anestimated three million of your neighbors are prostitutes, 40% of whom arechildren. Walk a mile down the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, the graveyard ofempires, whose children have grown prematurely, their innocence worn away bydecades of trauma and violence as brutal and jagged as the stony peakssurrounding the valley. Walk a mile past the empty huts, the charred skeletons oftowns in the largest country in Africa, where the Sudanese War Children arecatechized in the liturgy of death.Walk a mile down the byways of Mumbai, Moscow, and Miami. Do these citiesmean anything besides articles in National Geographic and the Economist? Whatdo you see in the vast world around you? Do we, Patrick Henry’s eighth class,understand what our world, our nation, our neighbors need? Friends, do you knowyour neighbors? Perhaps we have only begun to learn the context of our world twothousand and nine years from our Savior. Perhaps I’ve learned the most aboutshaping culture by speaking to the people that comprise culture. Perhaps myconversation with a homeless man at 1:00 in the morning in Louisville, KY was anencouragement to see Jesus in new light. Perhaps my atheist Harvard graduatefriend, a poet, who discussed Kierkegaard with me while watching the sun set overthe Soviet era building projects in St Petersburg was encouraged to take a secondlook at the faith and reason. The ninety-year-old woman at the MethodistRetirement home in Salem, VA, who said quietly when I left her side, “Thinkabout me sometimes.” People are unordinary, Lewis argues: they are anything butmere mortals. Each man and woman here today has a specific purpose, regardlessof race, religion, economic bracket, and whether a D or an R appears inparentheses after their name. The Son of God came to declare the good news ofthe Kingdom of God, and he proceeded to do so in the most countercultural waypossible. When he could have been meeting with the Jewish Judicialrepresentatives, the Roman tetrarch, the moral movement, he spent time with theoutcasts, touched lepers, and comforted prostitutes. Instead of a battlefield to pointto, to commemorate Christianity’s mark on civilization, we point to a hill outsideJerusalem, two beams of wood and the unclothed figure of a dying Savior. Wepoint to his perfect life, his sacrificial death, and his resurrection from the dead.

Our nation’s twenty-sixth President, Theodore Roosevelt, had this wise advice forthose about to embark on another stretch of their life’s road: "It is not the criticwho counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where thedoer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who isactually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, whostrives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is noeffort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, thegreat devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows,in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, atleast he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those coldand timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."Theodore RooseveltClass of 2009, remember President Roosevelt’s wisdom when you aretempted to disillusionment. On Monday, you’re walking into a wild part of theworld. When you fail, you might as well fail greatly, smiling as you give ofyourself, a caretaker of this path. Remember President Roosevelt’s wisdom whenyou are tempted to hubris. On Monday, you’re walking into a world that will tryand stroke your ego for its own benefits. When you choose a cause, make sure it’sa worthy cause, then spend yourself consistently, with inexhaustible hope andendless humility. Nobody goes out to mar himself with dust, sweat, and blood(unless you’re part of the MMA Club), but, after great failure, be humble andhopeful, and after great achievements . . . be humble and hopeful.Speaking of MMA Club, here is a piece of advice for the male contingent of the‘09 Class. Hello, brothers. I’m sure some of you feel like Nisus, a hero from theAeneid who confides in his brother-in-arms, Euryalus: “This urge to action, do thegods instill it, Or is each man’s desire a god to him, Euryalus? For all these hoursI’ve longed To engage in battle, or to try some great Adventure. In this lull Icannot rest.”Nisus, The Aeneid, Book IX, ln 252-256. If college is a lull, it is a lull of training.So . . .Take heart (be courageous), be active (don’t get lazy), be loyal (support yourbrothers and sisters, in the truth). Heed the words of the Oak Hill charter . . . wait,excuse me, I’m sorry, this is from that Creed written in the Grecian territory ofLaconia:“Here is courage, mankind’s finest possession, here is the noblest prize that ayoung man can endeavor to win, and it is a good thing his city and all the people

share with him when a man plants his feet and stands in the foremost spearsrelentlessly, all thought of foul flight completely forgotten, and has well trained hisheart to be steadfast and to endure, and with words encourages the man who isstationed beside him.”Spartan CreedBrothers, our world has disparate messages for the men of our generation. Cutthrough the chaff. Plan to act, and act nobly. Plan to act, and act with courage.Plan to act, and loyally stand by the men and women with whom you serve.Four years is far too brief a time to walk the length and breadth of knowledge, butour direction is sure. Four years is far too brief a time to build an edifice capturingthe glory and beauty of knowledge, but our foundation is sure.Twenty-some odd years of life and an undergraduate education. Take it and fly,friends. Take this inheritance—grip the truth like a treasure: it is so much of afoundation to understand and pursue truth, it is such a mistake to think we havecomplete understanding. Like the sons of Issachar, let us strive to discern thetimes and know what we ought to do. Walk this path with discernment today withyour family. Walk with discernment tomorrow as you assume the mantle ofPatrick Henry graduate. Wherever your journeys lead you in the next year,whatever your vocation, whatever wilderness, desert or oasis your trail cutsthrough, walk discerningly.May the distance between knowledge and wisdom be short, between wisdom andaction, shorter, and may the distance between your actions and love beinextricable.Seven years ago, as a fifteen-year-old high school sophomore, I listened to the firstcharge to the first commencement at Patrick Henry College. I echo that chargetoday: Go and be leaders in whatever sphere your Creator has given you tosteward. Walk from here, and preserve and celebrate liberty. But mostimportantly, most importantly, walk from here and take the treasure of the Gospelin your vessel of clay to the hearts of men and women broken by sin. Here,speaking in the hearts of men and women created imago Dei, in the image of theAlmighty, we lead nations and shape cultures, for nations and cultures are shaped,in turn, by individual people.Go far, friends. Treasure this inheritance. Walk your journey with love and care.Be loyal. Do not back down from the truth; never cease to run after it with

humility and patience. Do not grow weary in doing well, for in due time you shallreap, for the One who called you is faithful. Take heart friends, and fly. Godspeed.