Creating Community in a Non-Communal World

A Commencement Address for the Residential College. Given in Ashby Parlor, Tuesday, April 26, 2006 by Jeff Colbert.

I have to admit, I have long desired to speak at a Commencement. While I like to believe that I am not overly endowed with ego, as I am, for example, with waistline, I have, at times, thought that I might have a useful comment or two to make to those who were about to leave our academic institution and move on to the next phase of their life and career. I have had opportunities to think about what I would say. Since my first university graduation in December of 1984, I have probably attended 30-40 university graduations here and at other schools and have heard the commensurate number of graduation addresses. I have heard notable speakers from a variety of fields, but I have heard few notable addresses. In fact, it may render my earlier comment about my level of ego null and void, but after most addresses, I have thought, “I could have done better than that!”

I have learned, however, that sitting on the sidelines critiquing graduation addresses is far easier than writing one. It reminds me of comments made by many television game show participants. They watch the program from the comfort of their home (or dorm room) and are private geniuses. However, when they are selected to do the real thing and actually appear on national television, many private geniuses become public idiots. As I began to ponder what I actually would say, the fear of becoming a “public idiot” fell over me.

I had thought for years that if I had an opportunity to make a commencement address, I would talk about “the great questions of life.” There are several significant questions that virtually every human must answer in their lifetime. How they answer them will largely shape their future actions. So, when I was asked to perform this honor, my mind immediately flew there, a safe place where I had previously invested some time and thought. However, as I thought and prayed about it, that just didn’t seem to be the right message.

Later, as I thought about Residential College, I thought about the issues of “freedom and order.” As a political scientist, those are concepts with which I am familiar. In both my Political Issues class and my Intro to Public Policy class, we discuss the meanings, the importance, and the natural conflict between those two concepts. RC is certainly representative of that conflict. We exist within a relatively ordered university, yet we frequently push those university boundaries to see to what extent RC can bend or break them. I doubt there is a group of UNCG students with more freedom than RC students. Yet, if we were honest, we would have to admit that RC students, both historical and current, can be frequent abusers of that freedom, sometimes encouraging others to implement more order. But regardless of the applicability, that just didn’t seem right either. In fact, at a lunch meeting just this past Friday, Paul asked me if I would have a speech title by Monday so he could put it in the program. I indicated to Paul that we would all be lucky if I had a speech by Tuesday, much less a title by Monday!

And yet, as the Lord frequently does, I was given inspiration over the weekend. I imagine that many of you noticed an unusual presence on campus over the weekend. The campus seemed to “age” on Friday and Saturday as the University celebrated Alumni Reunion Weekend. For a number of years, the university celebrated Alumni weekend later in the spring, after classes had ended and most students were gone. Reacting to alumni requests, the Alumni Board moved the event to a weekend when school was in session. The alumni wanted to see the university when students were in attendance, rather than when the campus was relatively empty. I have been a member of the Alumni Association for a number of years, but had never attended a reunion. That was a mistake, and I will not repeat it in the future. Throughout the weekend, I had the opportunity to see a University that I knew about only through historical lectures or Dr. Allen Treleases’s wonderful book on the history of UNCG. I saw a community that is over one hundred years old come together and celebrate. I saw and met alumni with full heads of dark hair, because the ravages of time are still light on them. I saw others with full, dark heads of hair, largely acquired through the benefits of chemical engineering purchased at Walgreens or CVS. I saw others, with less hair, or whiter hair, who had quit battling time over their appearance. But regardless of their appearance, all shared a common identity—they were graduates of this school, whether it was the institution renamed in 1919 as the North Carolina College for Women, the institution renamed in the fall of 1931 as The Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina, or the institution which became known, in 1963, as the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. They were and are, a “community.” And then, I knew what I had to talk about—community.

Residential College prides itself on its sense of community and it should. But I think sometimes we get a little full of ourselves on the subject. We tend to think that we are the experts, and the only experts, on the subject of community here at UNCG. But this weekend taught me that community existed here at UNCG long before RC came into existence. The question we have to answer now, and in the future years, is whether community will continue to exist here at UNCG and, if so, in what form, and, where will we take it from here?

I spent a great deal of the weekend with two young ladies. Like me, they graduated in 1986 and we were the only 1986 graduates who showed up! Unlike me, that was the year they completed their undergraduate work, and for me, it was the year I completed my Master’s. And, unlike me, 1986 was the year they should have completed their undergraduate degree. I should have completed mine in 1974, but I actually completed my undergraduate degree in December of 1984. So, I was 10 years their senior. But we shared one other common experience. It was obvious to each of us that “our” UNCG was rather different than the one experienced by most of the alumni in attendance. For most of them, UNCG was “the Woman’s College,” a small, all white, all female institution which focused on a limited number of curriculum areas and whose competition for students was largely other public and private women’s schools. Our UNCG and yours, is a modern, diverse, teaching and research institution. We compete for students with everyone and our curriculum must be large, expansive and ever adapting to the 21st century environment.

One of the most startling events of the weekend was the Saturday luncheon, where we honored the class of 1956, the newest group of ladies to be 50 year graduates of the Woman’s College. I must parenthetically inform you that there was a male member of the class of ’56, at least sort of a member. I did not know it, but in those days, classes had child mascots. The male mascot of the class of ’56 was our own, Paul Ashby! I bet there are some cute pictures somewhere and Paul, I’m gonna find ‘em!! At that lunch, the various classes celebrating their reunions stood and were recognized. The largest gasp and applause was relegated to two elderly ladies who had graduated, not from the Woman’s College, but from the North Carolina College for Women. These two ladies had graduated from college in 1931!! You do the math! Without knowing anything about UNCG in the 1920s and 1930s, we can all imagine how different their lives and experiences had to have been. Consider for a moment the world they were born into and raised in compared to the world they are in today.

Community in the past meant different styles of communication– hand written letters and heavy, one to a house, party line telephones rather than e-mail and individual pocket sized cell phones, which also have text messaging, computer games, internet access and cameras.

Community meant different styles of home life—when it was hot, you went out on the porch or under nearby trees to get some shade; you didn’t rush into the house, close all the doors and windows, and enjoy the peaceful solitude of air conditioning. Homes had porches where folks could sit during the day or after the evening meal, and neighbors would walk over and talk, face to face (!), to each other. Today, if many Americans were tested on the names of their neighbors, most would fail.

Community meant different styles of entertainment—if you were well to do, you had a black and white television set, all three channels of it!! Homes had larger yards where the kids would gather and play games together outdoors, not sit alone in their rooms and enjoy PlayStation, search the Internet, or watch television on the set in their bedroom which is attached to the 300 channel satellite system.

Now don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying those times were better, I’m saying they were different. I rather like the idea that I can e-mail an entire class through Blackboard rather than making 75 separate phone calls, or just letting them find out when they got to class that class was cancelled. I like many parts of the Internet and I enjoy watching ballgames or sports events of some sort almost any hour of the day. I like that when my daughter became of legal driving age, she was able to have a phone in the car with her that insured that, if she had trouble, she could call AAA and then either her mother or myself, and not have her safety depend upon the attitude or the inclination of the person who stopped to “help”.

Education was different as well. We had fewer students, fewer curricula choices, limited career options for our graduates and many came to UNCG simply to become “educated”. It was a value in and of itself, and for several generations, having a college degree, of any sort, was the key to a bright and relatively prosperous future.

Well, Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas (or WC) any more! Residential College was born out of the reality that the world was rapidly changing and that the university had to change with it. Sometimes, we act as though the University is the cause of all these changes. We rant about being reduced to “numbers”, and about the increasing professionalism and emphasis on jobs. We complain about departments that make increasing demands on their majors and try to crowd out the elements of a “liberal” education. I understand these concerns, but UNCG is not the instigator of these issues; we are, at worst, reactors to these issues. I’m sorry, but if we are going to continue in our mission to educate the sons and daughters of North Carolina, as well as other states and countries, we cannot be what we were. And, as we have now have an enrollment in excess of 16,000 students, the university cannot refer to them all by their first names. The marketplace where you are going to compete for jobs is a demanding one that requires ever more knowledge about your field. It is rapidly becoming an international marketplace. We can blithely ignore this and, as an institution, become marginalized and antiquated, or we can prepare you for the competitive world in which you will have to compete. Long gone is the day when a college degree guaranteed you any job, much less one that is challenging, fulfilling, and allows you the standard of living you would like to have.

So, what do we do to cope with all of these changes? We continue the vision of Warren Ashby and others, who, more than three decades ago, refused to waste time howling at the moon and, instead, found a way to create community in the rapidly changing world that was the UNCG of the late 1960s and early 1970s. We must follow their example. The need to create and sustain community in the 21st century will be even greater than it was 35 years ago. We must embrace the innovation that was the founders of RC and use it to not just sustain OUR community, but help others create and maintain theirs. I have to admit, with some embarrassment, that I have spoken of other “communities” on campus as though they were something lesser. Don’t misunderstand me. I am an alumnus of RC and I think we are an amazing program, but we are not all things for all people and we shouldn’t try to be. Other folks want community, but a different type of community. We should embrace all of the elements of this institution that are trying to create community, because each of them says, in their own way, to Warren Ashby and the other visionaries who birthed RC–you were right. Community is important. A person being something other than a number is important. Creating connectivity in education is important. Allowing students to feel a bond, a kinship, with other students and with their teachers is important. Empowering students to make decisions is important.

Every movement on this campus in the past twenty years to create community has been a recognition of what the founders saw more than 35 years ago. In the rapidly changing world in which we live, and in which we will live, community will no longer be a natural, easy thing to have. We will have to create it wherever we go. UNCG is the most diverse university in the UNC system. We have increasing numbers of transfer students, commuting students and graduate students. Think about this. Fifty years ago, 80% of UNCG’s students lived on campus and 20% commuted. Today, even with the new student housing being built, the numbers are virtually reversed. How will the university create community with tomorrow’s population? I don’t know. But I know who ought to among those thinking about this and helping the university in this endeavor. It ought to be the administrators, the students, the faculty and the alumni of Residential College. We have a legacy, a tradition, and, I believe, an obligation.

Some of you are leaving RC to move into the outer university. When there, don’t pine for the good old RC—create community where you are. Some of you are leaving RC and UNCG and heading for graduate school. When you get there, don’t wax poetic about what once was. Take the vision of RC with you and create community. Some of you will graduate in a few short days and move into the world of work. Feel free to complain about the loneliness, the isolation, the lack of close friends, and the lack of connection to others. Feel free to have the personal private pity party of all time–for ONE weekend!! Then, get off your duff and begin the process of creating community. The founders of RC, I believe, did not create RC so we could have a wonderful, insular, self gratifying experience that we would eventually leave, and then feel sorry for the poor fools who missed what we had. I firmly believe that their hope was that we would gain this awareness of the importance of community, and then take it wherever we went. Those who came before us: Ashby, Arndt, Bragg, Calhoun, Cooley, Gordon, Griffith, Helgeson, Pfaff, Rogers, Tisdale, Whitlock, made a difference in our lives so that we might go forward.

Those who are now and have been before you in recent years: Aaroe, Arndt, Ashby, Calhoun, Carpenter, Cauthen, Flood, Headington, McKinnon, Ramsey, Seabrooke, and, if I may be so bold as to say, Colbert, have tried to make a difference in your life so that you might do the same.

The road will be hard, I absolutely guarantee it. But as one who has now walked on both sides of the RC road, I cannot describe for you the measure of the reward. I wish you the best in all you do in the future. Stay connected to both Residential College and UNCG. Support them both in the future. Speak well of us, wherever you go, but I’d far prefer you do it by action, rather than by word.

Thank you

What is the Question?

A Commencement Address for the Residential College. Given in Ashby Parlor, Tuesday April 24, 2007 by Dr. W. Allen Ashby.

I want to thank the members of the RC community for inviting me, and giving me this opportunity to think through these thoughts and then share them with you. I think that was my father’s vision for you: that a residential college was first and foremost a parlor, a place where people could naturally come together and share what was important to them. So, I’m pleased to stand before you this afternoon in this place, that not only has my father’s name attached to it, but his vision, his legacy, and your lives, as well.

However, let me forewarn you that I’m only going to tell you four, short, stories about my father, and therefore the remainder of these remarks will really be about the secret motto that I hope you will soon see inscribed above the door as you enter the parlor here. Dante’s motto for Hades of course was: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” but that seems a little discouraging to me, and besides, contrary to perhaps some fleeting momentary feeling you might have had, the Residential College is not hell and so I think we need a motto more in line with the room we’re actually living in.

Still, you could have put Dante’s motto above the front door of our family house over on Wright Avenue, for my father, as you will soon see, was a man of many questions and few answers, and therefore a constant challenge to live with. He had two degrees from Yale; a Ph.D. in philosophy, and prior to that a three year Bachelor of Divinity degree. He got that degree so that he could become a Methodist minister, which he was, for most of his life, and which allowed him to preach, perform marriages and funeral services. In fact I often tease my students in New Jersey by telling them that my father married my sister, and I gave her away. And I know they think: how typically Southern, but the truth is, we did.

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Part 1: “How do you find the important questions?”

On my 9th birthday (and here’s the first story, eh?) after everyone else had left the room, my father and I were sitting alone at the dining room table and he asked me if I wanted another piece of cake, and I said, “of course.” And he cut me a slice, and he put it in front of me, and then he took the knife and cut that slice in half, and put half on his plate, and then cut my half in half again, and put that half on his plate, and then he looked up at me, and asked: “Do you think if I keep cutting each half in half, that eventually I’ll get to nothing, or will there always be a half left to cut? ‘Can we ever get to nothing?’” (Question #1; hereafter: (Q1), (Q2), etc.). And I looked back at him, not quite sure that the 3/4 of my cake on his plate was any longer mine, and I can remember thinking: “Gee dad, this is my birthday. I just want my cake; and I want to eat it too.” But of course, I didn’t say that. I said, “I don’t know,” and he said, “let me know if you do” and then he gave me both plates, and he left the room.

Living with my father was frequently like that, an unpredictable challenge, predicated upon an unpredictable question that blind sides you but then lingers like a guest that never leaves.

In a similar way Gertrude Stein was a challenging woman. She was constantly trying to jolt people out of their complacency. She was constantly trying, like the cubist painters whose paintings surrounded her in her parlor in Paris, to startle people into a sense of pure being, a form of enlightenment, satori. Her most infamous saying of course was that “A rose is a rose is a rose.” Only, of course, that’s not what she actually said. What she actually said was “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” (Three “is’s”, and not two). And the source of the comment was not a flower but an allusion to the English painter, Sir Francis Rose, who she admired and one of whose paintings hung in her parlor, while her Gauguin was banished to her bathroom.

But anyway, in the great semi-hypocritical story of her life, she was on her death bed, dying, and her lifelong companion Alice B. Toklas was there, and sensing that Gertrude might have some insight into the great beyond, she asked her: “Gertrude, Gertrude, what is the answer?” And Gertrude rolled over, looked up at Alice, and said: “Alice, what is the question?” And then she died.

And so, now, thank God, I’ve finally gotten to at least the title of my talk: “What is the question?” (Q2).

As many, or most, or all of you know, when my father died in 1985 (and this is the second story) he left behind an extensive manuscript, A Comprehensive History of Western Ethics, which my mother asked me to edit and get published, and which I did, and one night the phone rang in my house in Plainfield, NJ, and a woman said, “Are you Allen Ashby?” And I said, “Yes.” And she said, “My name is Sally Roberts, and I was a student in your father’s class in the late 1950s. I just discovered his book, and it is such a delight. I can hear his voice as I read the words, and I am transported back to our seminar room. It was a two semester class on Western ethics, and on the day of the final exam, your father came into the room, handed out the blue books we had to write in, went to the blackboard, and said: ‘Using the people and the ideas we have read about, and anything else you think is honestly relevant, please answer the following question, and when you are done, you can leave.’ And he turned, and wrote on the black board ‘What is important?’ And then he left the room.” (Q3).

Are you beginning to get the picture? Because it sure seems to me that whenever you are asked one of these tough unpredictable questions, that you can never be certain if your answer is really right, and if you can’t be sure you are right, then what is the question really for?

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Part 2: “What makes a question, a more beautiful question?”

In one of the short introductions to a book of his poems, the poet e.e. cummings writes:

“Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles: they are by somebody who can love and who shall be continually reborn, . . .” And then, after a short intervening paragraph, he ends his introduction with a single sentence paragraph:

“Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question” (332).

So, I guess it is not only

“What is the question?” But it is also,

“What is the more beautiful question?” (Q4).

But let me see if I can make all of this a little more practical for you:

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Part 3: “If memory is who we are, then who is creating our memory?”

Let me ask you a rhetorical question. And no matter who you are, or when or how long you’ve been here at RC, please feel free to try to answer it in your own mind. Here it is: “Now that you are finally leaving the room, what has been the best experience that you have had at RC?” (Q5). And by “best experience” I don’t want abstractions and ideas. I want a moment we could have video taped like my father cutting my birthday cake.

But while you’re looking for that moment, your moment, let me take a quick detour through this idea of a master video tape of our lives, that tape that sometimes reputedly flashes before our eyes, just as our lives fly off the power lines of this life.

I’ve been fascinated for years by memory. “Why do we remember something?” (Q6). And also its corollary, “Why do we forget so much?” (Q7). Because if I asked you, “What do you remember from the year you were 9?” (Q8). “What will I get?” “How many memories?” Ten, a hundred? But even a hundred isn’t a memory a day. And so “Who erased all those other lived experiences?” (Q9). And “Who chose to keep the ones we remember?” (Q10). “Why are just those facts in that history book, or in that book of Western Ethics?” (Q11) “Who gets to determine what is important for us to remember, as an individual or a culture?” (Q12).

But even more specific than just memories, I’ve been fascinated by first memories. “What is the first thing you can remember?” (Q13). Some people aren’t sure, but most, when you ask them, and wait, can give you one. And it’s almost always a small slice of videotape. It begins, it rolls, it stops. There’s nothing before it, and nothing right after it. It’s an island. But you know, I’ve come to believe that our first memory is our real birth. It is the first time that we have a sense of our self as separate from the world, and I’m convinced, that like our fingerprints or our DNA, that memory is who we are. It is a compressed, beautifully dense poem, waiting for us to read it, and like any great poem, we’ll never know what it fully or finally means. So, it’s actually a question isn’t it? “Why did I enter life here, though this memory, and not any other?” (Q14). And do you suppose that’s what some, or all, of the rest of our memories are? “Are memories just questions, that we mistake for answers?” (Q15). And I ask again: “Who is starting and stopping the tape, and why?”

And so, a few minutes ago I asked you about the best experience you’ve had at RC, and let’s say you give me an answer, a slice of videotape, and then I ask you: “OK, but what does your selecting that memory tell us about you?” (Q16).

Which then, is the more beautiful question? The first one. Or the second? Or the third that I haven’t asked you yet? And “Is this the secret to life’s important questions, the ability to turn our own answers into more beautiful questions?” (Q17). And “Is this the hidden secret to RC?” (Q18).

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Part 4. “What is nothing? And what is the opposite of nothing?”

Toward the end of his life my father gave back his Methodist ordination. (This is the third story). He stopped being a Methodist minister, and he couldn’t marry my brother anymore, or me. And I asked him: “Dad, why did you do that?” And he told me, “Son, I just want to be free to ask the important questions now, and I don’t think I can do that, if I believe I already know the answers. So, I need to let go of my faith, in order to be able to find my faith. Does that make sense?” And, of course it did. Only, he didn’t tell me what those important questions were that he wanted to ask, and I forgot to ask him that important question.

But as you might have guessed, this time I was already way ahead of him, because when I was nine, he had already taught me to believe in nothing. So, I didn’t have a faith in something that I needed to let go of, because when I was nine my father had asked me a question I couldn’t answer, and then he left the room. But the question stayed in the room, in that parlor of memory in my mind. And I still can’t answer it. But along the way, I have to tell you, I’ve had a real affinity for nothing. Whenever I see the word, my ears prick up the way my dog’s ears used to stand up when he saw the calico cat crossing the back yard.

Because when you’re looking, let me tell you, you can find nothing, everywhere.

As a boy, from the time I was 5 until I was 12 I was sent to my father’s parents to live for the summer. They had a large and beautiful house on the James River in Newport News, Virginia, and in the summer that I was 12 my grandparents sent me to Vacation Bible Camp for two weeks (and that’s an oxymoron if there ever was one). At the end of the two weeks they came to pick me up and we had a play that we had prepared for all the parents, and my task was to present the commercials during the scene changes. I had three commercials that I had written, but I can only remember one, and I have no other memories from those two weeks, but the commercial I can remember goes like this: “Ladies, have you tried the new perfume called ‘Nothing’? Why it’s odorless, tasteless. You can’t even see it. And so next time, if you really want to impress your date, why don’t you put on, ‘Nothing’?” (I never had to go to Vacation Bible Camp again).

But nothing is everywhere.

In Plato’s dialogue The Sophist he at first decides that nothing can’t not-exist because when we talk about nothing, we make it something and therefore nothing is always something and never nothing and so nothing can’t exist. He sounds a lot like Gertrude Stein here, doesn’t he?

But I don’t know, “Is nothing the silence you hear between musical notes, that makes notes, notes; the empty space between words that makes words, words?” (Q19).

“Can you paint nothing?” (Q20).

Even though we can’t see it, a black hole is certainly not nothing, but evidently it makes a lot of something into nothing.

“Is this what death does?” (Q21).

And “Does love do the opposite?” (Q22).

In his book, An Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger calls nothing “The fundamental question” (1). “Why is there something rather than nothing?” he asks. (Q23).

Nothing is ubiquitous in Shakespeare, “Nothing will come of nothing,” Lear says to his favorite daughter, as he is cutting the cake of his country, “speak again” (1.1.90). And yet you know, at the beginning of that play, King Lear has everything, every thing we think we all want: power, money, family, the certainty of his knowledge, health in his old age, and he is surrounded by servants. And then half way through the play, he has become his own opposite. Now, on the barren heath in the midst of a brutal storm, he strips off all his clothes (“robes and furred gowns hide all,” he says (4.6.165)). Clothed in nothing, he has become his own shadow. He is: powerless, poor, hated by his daughters and sons-in-law, ignorant and uncertain, twenty-four hours away from his own death, and his only servants are fools and madmen. And yet, and yet, it’s only when he has nothing, is nothing, that he discovers what it means to be human. It is only then that he discovers his own capacity for compassion, empathy, love, and being vulnerable. And more, when he stops being king, (being clever and always knowing what he knows) when he stops preaching and judging (when he gives the ordination back), he begins to ask the important questions:

“Does any here know me?” (1.4.223).

“Who is it that can tell me who I am?” (1.4.227).

“Is man no more than this?” (3.4.101-102).

“Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?” (3.5.76-77).

“Where have I been? Where am I?” (4.7.53).

“Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, / And thou no breath at all?” (5.3.312-313).

At Colonus, bring stripped of everything he held dear, and facing the moment of his own miraculous death, Oedipus asks his daughter: “So, / when I am nothing then am I a man?” (lines 430-431).

Carl Jung believes that our goal in life is to “forge an ego that does not break down when incomprehensible things happen” (297). Implicitly he thinks we need something at the center of our lives, at the center of that sense of the self that controls the videotape’s camera. He believes that the important question is: “When the incomprehensible thing happens to you (when you answer the phone and she is dead; when you find yourself serving your country in Iraq; or when the killer comes into your classroom) when the incomprehensive thing happens to you, what will sustain you?” “What is the faith you have found?” (Q24).

Buddha, on the other hand, seems to me to want to erase that center, that sense of the self, to get as close to nothing as he can. A Buddhist monk once asked me: “Do you want to know how far you are from your peace, Allen?” (Q25). And I said, “of course,” and he said, draw up a list of everything you own: your socks, your books, your partner, your friends, your ideas, your beliefs, your memories, your mind. And if your list is this long (and he separated his hands) then that’s how far you are from your peace, and if your list is this long (and he narrowed the distance between his hands) then that’s how far you are from your peace.

Is Jung right? Or Buddha? Or neither? “Does your best RC experience, your first memory, always have to be about you?” (Q26). “Does everything you know always have to be about you? Is it really impossible to become nothing?” (Q27).

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Part 5: “What is it, to live and love the questions?”

In February of 1903 Rilke began to write what became a series of 10 letters to a young poet who was seeking his advice on a number of life’s important questions, and in the fourth letter, Rilke writes:

You are so young . . . and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, that cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. (33-34)

Is that what my father was doing at the end of his life, learning how to live and love the questions? And if so, then how do you and I do that? “How do we live and love the questions?” (Q28).

Well, I told you at the outset that I was only going to tell you four stories about my father, and I’ve told you three now: the story of cutting the cake; the story of “What is important”; the story of letting go of your faith in order to find your faith; and now, before I give you my final double story about my father’s death, let me give you a test. I mean it’s only fair. I’m still a teacher, you haven’t really graduated from RC, and unlike Elvis none of us have left the parlor, yet.

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Part 6: “What are the questions that really test our lives?”

I hope it’s obvious that I’ve been trying to postulate that the purpose of an important question isn’t the answer we give, but the next more beautiful question that follows it. Because there are no right or final answers for these tough questions. They are a poem, a memory, a parent asking us to abandon the hope and certainty of something we are sure we are, in order to be at home just wandering in the world. They ask us to trust in nothing because they want to startle us into the miracles that are to come.

But still, how do we know what the important questions are? And to help you answer that, let me give you ten examples. But as you hear them, I need you to do two things that are, in some ways, mentally contradictory. Of course, there’s not going to be enough time to really do this now, and so I’ll get the questions to you later, if you want. Or my brother will. RC is, after all, really about a family sharing and caring. But here’s what I want you to do. I want you to answer them, and then I want you to ask yourself, the next more beautiful question. (You can have a friend do this with you, if you want; they ask the questions, and you give the answers; or I guess, you could be the friend and ask them). (And of course, if we had world enough and time, I would want you to continue that process. For every answer, there must be a more beautiful question.) But for now here are the questions. (Q29-38).

1. What is the most important word in the English language?

2. Who has hurt you the most in your life, and what did they do?

3. If you could have everyone in the world spend one hour honestly considering any one question you asked, what would that question be?

4. Is there something that someone has done, or could do to you, that would be truly unforgivable, and if so, what is it?

5. If you could whisper in someone’s ear the one sentence you’ve always wanted to say to them, that would make you feel substantially better, who would that person be, and what would you say?

6. If there were 103 different words for love, then how many do you think you know?

7. If a magic fairy made a tragic mistake and changed your sex for 48 hours, what three things do you think you might learn that you don’t already know?

8. What is the one question that I could ask you that you would be the most afraid to hear and have to answer?

9. Who is the person you can feel the most like yourself with? And how do they do that?

10. What is the most difficult one specific thing, that you could do, that if you would do it, it would benefit you the most?

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Part 7: “Where have you seen the birds on the power lines?”

My father died in 1985, of what was then a relatively unknown and strange form of cancer. And while, as a man, a father, and a teacher, he would not let you rest in peace, he was at peace. He lived for a couple of weeks in the hospital after the surgery, conscious, conversing, laughing, at ease in the face of death. But lying there in his bed on the 4th floor in Wesley Long Hospital, all he could see were the power lines stretching behind the hospital, although from time to time birds would alight on those wires, rest, remain, and then just as mysteriously, miraculously, fly away again, randomly. I cannot tell you the delight in my father’s eyes as he watched those birds. They were a form of daily enlightenment for him I think, and I know they gave him an infinite miraculous happiness.

So, I guess I have to ask you: “Where, in your own life, have you experienced those birds on the power lines?” (Q39).

Well, you may not be keeping track, but I am. I have now asked you 39 questions. But “Which ones will you remember, and which ones will you forget, and why?” (Q40).

And now that’s 40. And I’m still not done, but I’m almost done.

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Part 8: “How can you find a ‘satisfying happiness’?”

Before my father died he wrote out some possible suggestions for his Memorial Service, which was held just up the block from here in the Alumni Center on October 6, 1985, and at the end of his remarks to us he wrote:

“Do what is right for you. If nothing fine. If something entirely different fine. Above all, make it a satisfying happiness. I have been and am.”

And you know that single adjective, satisfying, changes everything, doesn’t it? Because, “What is the difference between ‘happiness,’ and ‘a satisfying happiness’?” (Q41).

My Buddhist monk once told me, “Allen, just remember that being thankful doesn’t come from happiness; but happiness comes from being thankful.” Whenever you are thankful, you’ll find that you are, in that moment, genuinely happy. The grace of sunlight as it crosses a room; the sudden scent of lilac in the spring air; the sound of a distant dog barking at night; having your cake and eating it too; birds flying off the power lines.

And can I tell you one last secret? RC will be a satisfying happiness for you, because you will be continuously thankful for it, for the family, the community of people who have made it possible, for your time in it, and its ongoing presence in your life, and my Buddhist monk is right because every time you feel that thankfulness for RC, (for all, and not just the best moments) you’ll feel in that moment, a satisfying happiness. And now all you need to do is to understand how this miracle happened to you, so that you can create it again, and again, for yourself and others.

And so, let me leave you, with a final 42nd question, which if you know The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is the secret answer to “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.”: So, here, now, one last time, for the meaning of life, the most important, and more beautiful question, is:

“What, do you think, is the secret motto that needs to be inscribed above this parlor’s door?” (Q42).

And believe me, when I tell you now, thank you, thank you for inviting me. Thank you.

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Works Cited

cummings, e.e. Poems 1923-1954. NY: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc. 1954.

Heidegger, Martin. An Introduction to Metaphysics. Tr. Ralph Manheim. NY: Anchor Books, 1959.

Jung, C.G.. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Tr. Richard and Clara Winston. Recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffe. NY: Pantheon Books, a Division of Random House, 1963.

Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet. Tr. M.D. Herter Norton. NY: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. 1934.

Shakespeare, William. King Lear. The Complete Works of Shakespeare 5th Edition. Ed. by David Bevington. NY: Pearson Publishing, 2004. 1207-1254.

Sophocles. The Three Theban Plays. Oedipus at Colonus. Tr. Robert Fagles. NY: Penguin, 1984.

Closing Remarks at the WARC Renaming Ceremony

By Em McKeever (RC’04, RC Upperclassperson ’07, ’08), Saturday, September 29.

Thank you all for your commitment to the Warren Ashby Residential College. Thank you for being here today. As a current member of RC, I have oftentimes found myself in total awe of the great history of the program: the innovation of Warren Ashby; the dedication of those who got the program onto its feet, as well as those who fight the constant battle of making ourselves known on campus; the students who come through. I am constantly amazed by everything around me. I’m convinced that I am living and working with people who will one day be famous, well-known and well-loved members of whatever community they will eventually join.

I can’t measure the gratitude that I have for all these people, those of you who I have met and the many who I have not. And it’s hard to even say what I would thank you for. Thank you for a place that I could call home, seven hours away from home as a freshman. Thank you for a place I could safely learn how the real world works, oftentimes through crash courses in personal conduct. Thank you for bringing together a community of people that envision change and take great steps to accomplish that change. Thank you for a classroom where I could learn how to broaden my understanding of sisterly love.

Thank you for caring about the future, and therefore, myself and all who currently dwell here and all who have dwelt here and all who will dwell here. Thank you for the many hours of careful cultivation you have put forth. I assure you, they have not been hours wasted.

I think I speak for many of us when I say that the awe of our great history inspires us to craft an even greater history for Warren Ashby Residential College. This renaming is absolutely key to remembering that history and to remember Warren Ashby’s great commitment to community, to the future, and to all of us here today.

Residential College — Rededicating Our Commitment To A Vision

By Jeanne Aaroe, Assistant Director of Warren Ashby Residential College.

As many of you know, for the past seven years, friends and supporters of the Residential College and students, colleagues, and family members of Warren Hinds Ashby have pooled their time, energy, and resources to pay tribute to the life and good works of Dr. Ashby by establishing the endowment that bears his name. Once completed, the Residential College will also bear his name—and that time is at hand.

On Saturday, September 29 from 4-6 pm, we will celebrate the 37th year of the Residential College by honoring Dr. Ashby’s exemplary life and good works, which, decades later, continue to define the mission and spirit of what will soon be the Warren Ashby Residential College in Mary Foust Hall.

During this long-awaited reception of dedication, we will have the occasion to honor those who have played a dynamic role in the life of RC and of this new beginning. The list is long and illustrious—ranging from students who were taught by Dr. Ashby in the 1950’s such as Ms. Alice Irby, who initiated the Endowment, to Dr. Robert Miller, whose leadership as Dean of Arts and Sciences gave fruition to the concept of an experimental community of learners. Throughout, Drs. Murray and Fran Arndt have remained a constant and guiding presence as devoted faculty members and directors, past and present.

With the success and subsequent growth of learning communities at UNCG, we RC staffers are grateful to finally have the answer to the often-asked question from prospective parents and students, “So which residential college are you?”

RCers are generally excited about the news of their name change. They eventually learn about Dr. Ashby’s life and contributions to UNCG and are always amused by his son Paul’s (RC’s office manager) stories about life in the Residential College during the early 1970’s. One cannot occupy space in Mary Foust Hall without coming to understand its history and the legacy of those who have come before. On September 29 we will rededicate ourselves to that legacy as we pay tribute to Dr. Ashby and to those of you who have sustained his vision with your supreme generosity.

A Prayer: For Emily Arndt (1971-2007)

Poem by Tom Kirby-Smith.

Forgive us when we grieve, and not rejoice;
Forgive us when we doubt and cannot praise;
Sometimes it’s hard to understand your ways
And harder when we do not hear your voice.

Those who believe it say you sent your son
To speak a language we could understand,
To touch the people with a living hand,
And with his human suffering make us one.

His was a human death: Pilate’s decree;
Mob violence; working of the Roman law;
Soldiers that followed orders; some that saw,
And mocked, a pretense of divinity.

This death is different: human care and skill
Did all it could to comfort and assuage
The pain it could not cure, and ease the passage
Of a brave spirit no disease could kill.

We–thinking of her suffering–might well see
A thing untimely, cruel, wanton, purely
Evil itself, at best a proof that surely
There can exist no living deity.

Nature, indifferent to our reproof,
Keeps silent witness to our miseries;
Blind atoms gather into congeries
And then disperse, indifferent and aloof.

But we protest, and call this useless pain,
And grieve because whatever lives must perish,
And thus forget that too much that we cherish
Comes from a source that claims it back again.

Therefore it’s certain that we could do worse
Than give thanks for the one we came to know–
It seemed too briefly–make a gracious show
Of gratitude to our starry universe

That brings not only bodies into being
Assembled out of particles far-flung
From dying stars, by processes unsung
By psalmists, and by no providence all-seeing

But full of power to make a sentient creature
That knows the world in which it comes to be,
Bears witness to its own mortality,
Transcending thus the claims of its own nature.

That spirit, like a mist upon a lake,
Will seem to vanish with the rising sun,
Gone with the stars that fade into the dawn,
As with our dreams when we are full awake,

Yet it endures, not as a memory,
But as a presence, known, intense, more real
Than the transient flesh that made it possible
And in its dying set the spirit free.

But now perhaps these words presume too much;
Silence may be the greatest eloquence,
Waiting communion past what we can sense,
As in a dark room we know a voice, a touch.