Commencement Address Notes: Bill Grace
• We live in a time of profound potential
• In these defining times each of us individually and collectively our institutions and nation can choose to cast profound light or profound darkness
• I would like to offer reflections on three opportunities for leadership and service that will help us to cast profound light.
• Let me frame these current times more clearly.
• We live in a time when major shifts for good and ill are underway.
• Those who seek to increase their leverage to help create a more promising future will be well advised to work on change at the foundations of culture.
• For too long, three dominant social ethics have informed and influenced individual, institutional and national behavior in the U.S.
These ethics are materialism, individualism and elitism.
• While the first two speak for themselves elitism requires a little explaining.
• Consider the following costs in billions of dollars, which compare the projected annual cost to meet basic human needs on a global level vs. actual annual spending on luxuries in the U.S.
Basic education for everyone worldwide $6 B
Nail care in the United States $ 6.5 B
Water and sanitation for everyone worldwide $9 B
Ice cream in the United States $20 B
Basic health and nutrition for everyone worldwide $13 B
Weight loss programs in the United States $ 33 B
Elitism is the kindest word I know to describe those grave and tragic comparisons.
These three dominant ethics have lead us to this place in history where:
• our environment is in peril,
• global economic injustice is rampant
• and successful people in the developed world report a sense of emptiness and lack of meaning in their lives.
My purpose in mentioning this is not to dwell here but to use this as an opportunity to point to three rapidly emerging new ethics that are beginning to take social prominence over the old ethics.
Materialism is being replaced by stewardship, individualism is becoming community and elitism is being transformed into compassion.
My suggestion is that you find a way to lead at these foundational levels of social ethics so that regardless of the specifics of your future job you will always have a deep sense of clarity about the purpose of your life. You are shapers of a new future and your greatest leverage will be to find specific and practical ways to advance these new emerging ethics.
Let take a close look at all three.
Stewardship
• Stewardship is leadership of the household in the owner’s absence.
• This invites two questions:
• How big is your vision of the household
• Who is the owner?
• We all have sat under shade trees that we did not plant, we have drank water from wells we did not dig and we have warmed ourselves by fires we did not light.
• Now it is time for us to plant trees, dig wells and light fires for other generations we will never meet.
Who among this group will be bold enough to think and act for a future one-thousand years from now?
Community
• Change always happens in movements -- in community.
• Community is essential to change efforts
• Community however sounds prettier that it is.
• Two rules of community
• at the heart of community is the willingness to welcome the stranger.
• Also -- Authentic community is not about being perfect it is about being persistent and reconciling
• I have been married for 30 years not because Sandy or I are perfect but because we keep choosing forgiveness and growth.
• He is what I promise you if you choose to advance the greater good through the power of community:
• some of you will be betrayed,
• some of you will be lied to by people you thought were your friends
• and others of you will find yourself on the short end of a power grab.
• The power of community and the power of love is about what do we do then. Do we seek to even the score or do we seek reconciliation in order to restore community?
• Reconciliation in community is not about being a doormat -- it is about being a doorway. A doorway to peace, forgiveness and reconciliation.
Compassion
• Compassion means to suffer with
• And compassion and the voluntary choice to connect deeply with the suffering of others may be the most powerful life-giving force on the planet.
• Jamal story.
• Compassion can not only help water to rain down upon us but
• compassion can also cause understanding to rain,
• and compassion can help wisdom and courage to rain –
• compassion can help justice and peace to rain,
• and from those mighty waters a new world is not only profoundly possible but indeed likely.
• It is my hope that no matter what your work entails that you will embrace the vocation of leadership and look for ways every day to advance these three new ethics that have the promise to bestow new life.
• Blessings on your journey.
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