Hearts and Bars
7/26/2006
I've had this phrase in my head since February. Not like an awful song from the days of disco and mullets that penetrates one's skull at inopportune moments—this phrase is a good mantra. It's a warm and generous memory that came from my colleagues and made my day today as I'm here working the late shift on a clear summer evening. It was spoken by my economics colleague Peter Alonzi at a panel on "Living the Mission" five months ago.
You can read this on the web:
Mission Statement
As a Sinsinawa Dominican sponsored institution, Dominican University prepares students to pursue truth, to give compassionate service and to participate in the creation of a more just and humane world.
Some of my colleagues, faculty and staff, talked about it five months ago and I can't get it out of my head. And now my jaw hurts.
I just spent the last hour smiling too hard and it's injured my jaw. Somebody had given me a video of that discussion, and I finally got around to watching it down in the media center. And then came, flowing back, all those amazing statements that had struck me so viscerally.
Peter told us we have to throw our hearts over the bar, and everything else will follow. Somebody said: What? And he said: Commit yourself fully and without reservations. Let that lead you. Like a high-jumper: commit, and leap. And he's an economist! He's supposed to measure benefits and costs. But Peter said we're part of something bigger than ourselves at Dominican. We're part of a trajectory, helping shape a history. And so: be happy, be holy, be effective—and throw your heart over the bar!
My colleague Roz Hays in history, speaking in her 40th year at our school, noted that the verbal expression of our mission keeps changing, but the community has always been profoundly serious about seeking and valuing the life of the mind. She urged each of us, for the rest of our lives, however long that might be, to do some thing we care about enormously, to reflect constantly on what this is, to be sure that it is truly some thing worth doing [I added the space and I think Roz would approve—not just "something" but some one thing]. A nd the mission has to go beyond Dominican, she said. The institution wants to free us from the institution, so that we will pursue truth wherever we are.
My mathematician colleague Mordechai Goodman observed his astonishment when he came here decades ago, an Orthodox Jew at a Catholic college, when no one questioned his need to take time off for the Jewish holy days that first September. He felt affirmed, and trusted as a professional by those who administered the school back then. But most of all, I was struck by Mordechai's advice to us: Love these students. They're very, very dear. You have to realize that their lives in a certain way are in our hands. Most of us were just stunned into silence by that one. (It reminded me of something an accounting professor from another school once told me. He said he prayed before every class: Help me to love. And then he went and taught accounting.)
Somebody from the audience asked, but what about the students who come here, not for the mission, not really to "pursue truth," but for a degree, period. Some of them have come to make money, to get a career, any career, that will give them lots of money. What about them, in light of all this lofty idealism?
On the one hand, somebody responded: Does this mean they want to pursue lies, to give no service to anyone, and to participate in the creation of a more unjust and inhumane world? Well, hopefully not, but still—they know what they want, and it's not exactly our mission statement.
(This reminded me of an freshman orientation talk I gave about 20 years ago when I was teaching in Minnesota. I remember saying, hypothetically (I thought): I f our university gave you a degree today, without asking you to take any classes, read any books, think any thoughts, and it would be a real degree, and all you'd have to do is pay us over time, like a car payment or a mortgage—how many of you would take that offer? It was hypothetical. 30 hands shot up. Please! This is my job. I am at work right now. It was a parable. Put your hands down.)
And then came another response, one I especially liked: Let ‘em come, for whatever reason. For their own reasons. Then let them see how we work, how we act. They'll catch it. It's what our registrar Marilyn Benakis had said earlier: I preach by my work, my hope, my enthusiasm.
My colleague in English, Donald Shaffer, spoke of being a hot-shot graduate student, taking an adjunct summer job here some seven years ago while he was writing his dissertation. He was full of himself, glib, and on the road to Damascus (if not already there) when he was blindsided by two Dominican folks who asked him how he, personally, would make the connection between teaching composition and furthering our mission. This erudite University of Chicago Ph.D. candidate had—no answer. So he thought about it, and now he does. He became the first ever from Dominican to participate in Collegium, an annual summer colloquy on faith and the intellectual life. Today, he says, it's about teaching students to make ideas matter.
The session was closed by my dear friend Sr. Melissa Waters. She said, we invite students to something bigger than themselves. And we are so grateful that all of us have found each other to be in this holy place.
These colleagues, others on the panel I haven't cited, and many in the audience that day who spoke so movingly about why they're here and what they love, are mostly hither and yon this summer—t raveling, writing, some teaching and advising. But today they were all here on that monitor downstairs, on that fuzzy videotape throwing their hearts over the bar. And so our motto, once more with feeling: Caritas et Veritas. Love and truth. Love of truth. Love as truth.
Help me to love.
I've had this phrase in my head since February. Not like an awful song from the days of disco and mullets that penetrates one's skull at inopportune moments—this phrase is a good mantra. It's a warm and generous memory that came from my colleagues and made my day today as I'm here working the late shift on a clear summer evening. It was spoken by my economics colleague Peter Alonzi at a panel on "Living the Mission" five months ago.
You can read this on the web:
Mission Statement
As a Sinsinawa Dominican sponsored institution, Dominican University prepares students to pursue truth, to give compassionate service and to participate in the creation of a more just and humane world.
Some of my colleagues, faculty and staff, talked about it five months ago and I can't get it out of my head. And now my jaw hurts.
I just spent the last hour smiling too hard and it's injured my jaw. Somebody had given me a video of that discussion, and I finally got around to watching it down in the media center. And then came, flowing back, all those amazing statements that had struck me so viscerally.
Peter told us we have to throw our hearts over the bar, and everything else will follow. Somebody said: What? And he said: Commit yourself fully and without reservations. Let that lead you. Like a high-jumper: commit, and leap. And he's an economist! He's supposed to measure benefits and costs. But Peter said we're part of something bigger than ourselves at Dominican. We're part of a trajectory, helping shape a history. And so: be happy, be holy, be effective—and throw your heart over the bar!
My colleague Roz Hays in history, speaking in her 40th year at our school, noted that the verbal expression of our mission keeps changing, but the community has always been profoundly serious about seeking and valuing the life of the mind. She urged each of us, for the rest of our lives, however long that might be, to do some thing we care about enormously, to reflect constantly on what this is, to be sure that it is truly some thing worth doing [I added the space and I think Roz would approve—not just "something" but some one thing]. A nd the mission has to go beyond Dominican, she said. The institution wants to free us from the institution, so that we will pursue truth wherever we are.
My mathematician colleague Mordechai Goodman observed his astonishment when he came here decades ago, an Orthodox Jew at a Catholic college, when no one questioned his need to take time off for the Jewish holy days that first September. He felt affirmed, and trusted as a professional by those who administered the school back then. But most of all, I was struck by Mordechai's advice to us: Love these students. They're very, very dear. You have to realize that their lives in a certain way are in our hands. Most of us were just stunned into silence by that one. (It reminded me of something an accounting professor from another school once told me. He said he prayed before every class: Help me to love. And then he went and taught accounting.)
Somebody from the audience asked, but what about the students who come here, not for the mission, not really to "pursue truth," but for a degree, period. Some of them have come to make money, to get a career, any career, that will give them lots of money. What about them, in light of all this lofty idealism?
On the one hand, somebody responded: Does this mean they want to pursue lies, to give no service to anyone, and to participate in the creation of a more unjust and inhumane world? Well, hopefully not, but still—they know what they want, and it's not exactly our mission statement.
(This reminded me of an freshman orientation talk I gave about 20 years ago when I was teaching in Minnesota. I remember saying, hypothetically (I thought): I f our university gave you a degree today, without asking you to take any classes, read any books, think any thoughts, and it would be a real degree, and all you'd have to do is pay us over time, like a car payment or a mortgage—how many of you would take that offer? It was hypothetical. 30 hands shot up. Please! This is my job. I am at work right now. It was a parable. Put your hands down.)
And then came another response, one I especially liked: Let ‘em come, for whatever reason. For their own reasons. Then let them see how we work, how we act. They'll catch it. It's what our registrar Marilyn Benakis had said earlier: I preach by my work, my hope, my enthusiasm.
My colleague in English, Donald Shaffer, spoke of being a hot-shot graduate student, taking an adjunct summer job here some seven years ago while he was writing his dissertation. He was full of himself, glib, and on the road to Damascus (if not already there) when he was blindsided by two Dominican folks who asked him how he, personally, would make the connection between teaching composition and furthering our mission. This erudite University of Chicago Ph.D. candidate had—no answer. So he thought about it, and now he does. He became the first ever from Dominican to participate in Collegium, an annual summer colloquy on faith and the intellectual life. Today, he says, it's about teaching students to make ideas matter.
The session was closed by my dear friend Sr. Melissa Waters. She said, we invite students to something bigger than themselves. And we are so grateful that all of us have found each other to be in this holy place.
These colleagues, others on the panel I haven't cited, and many in the audience that day who spoke so movingly about why they're here and what they love, are mostly hither and yon this summer—t raveling, writing, some teaching and advising. But today they were all here on that monitor downstairs, on that fuzzy videotape throwing their hearts over the bar. And so our motto, once more with feeling: Caritas et Veritas. Love and truth. Love of truth. Love as truth.
Help me to love.
