Closing remarks Fall 2010

by Professor Kevin Whelan

Thank you for your superb commitment: We asked you when you came to share your gifts as we walked this journey together. ‘Is ar scáth a cheile a mhaireann na daoine’. Together we were able to make a life-giving community: you came here as strangers to each other, but you return as friends. 

Book of Sirach: ‘A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; he who finds one finds a treasure’.

At our initial orientation, I may have puzzled some of you when I said that the person that you would meet here in Dublin was yourself. I believe that all of you streteched yourselves here in Dublin and that as a result that you grew and matured in ways that will only become fully apparent to you when you are back on campus.

Here at O'Connell House, we strive to lay out a green carpet for you. We hope that anytime you came in our blue door, you were greeted by a welcoming word, a smile, an invitation to a cup of tea and a chat ... Joe, Eimear, Aoife, Denise, Bébhinn: I as Director and you as participants are lucky to have such a great staff who are so genuinely committed to your welfare here, just as we as a staff are lucky to be able to serve such a wonderful group of students.

Six comments

1 To make yourself interesting, you have to do interesting things and meet interesting people [Don Keough]

2 Do what you love doing. Work with the very best people you can find: be inspired: Don’t ever sell yourself short: Never stop trying to be the person that you want to be: Nelson Mandela quoting Marianne Williamson.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented,and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." 

3 Give until it hurts. Share your gifts. And always know that whatever you give, you will receive back so much more. And remember that no act of kindness, no matter how small or apparently unrecognised, is ever wasted.

4 Embrace an ‘Attitude of Gratitude’: the less entitled that you feel, the happier you will be. 

Remember that your parents, your family, your teachers, your friends, your community, your university, your country, your ancestors - made you who you are: your character and accomplishments are not uniquely your own, but the cumulation of many people’s efforts, time and commitment. Remember that you really know yourself best through the reactions of people around you:

Gils Scott-Heron: ‘The way you get to know yourself is by the expressions on other people’s faces, because that’s the only thing that you can see, unless you carry a mirror about. But if you keep saying ‘I’ and they’re saying ‘I’, you don’t get much out of it. They’re not really into ‘you’, or ‘we’, or ‘they’; they’re into ‘I’. That makes conversation slow. I am the person I see least of over the course of my life, and what I see is not accurate’. 

5 We are called, each of us, with our unique range of gifts and our unique limits, to share a common journey, and yet one that is distinct for each one of us else. Realising that frees us to rejoice in the gifts, graces and accomplishments of others. We are augmented by others’ talents rather than being diminished or threatened by them, each of us contributing to the common good at our points of strength, each of us drawing from that common good when we needed help, support, fellowship, guidance. Even as we experience our gifts as gracious, we should think of our limits as gracious, because they free us to recognize the gifts of others. And embracing that perspective can free us from anxiety - the curse of the 21st century. Seek only to do your best, but not to be perfect: seeking perfection promotes unhappiness: 

Leonard Cohen: Anthem [1992]: 

Ring the bells that still can ring,

forget your perfect offering,

there is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

The relationship between grace and gravity:

We as human beings are anchored between the physical and material world and the metaphysical or spiritual world. 

Gravity is necessity: grace is what is freely given to us. Gravity is our body, grace is our soul. Gravity is confinement, grace is freedom: Gravity is who we are, grace is what we aspire to be. Gravity is time, grace is the eternal. Gravity is history, grace is hope. Gravity is nature, grace is the divine. We are creatures of both gravity and of grace. And our life is the path we choose between gravity and grace. And the Cross is the intersection between the axes of gravity and grace. The dead Christ incarnated on the cross opens himself to share in our human gravity: the risen Christ opens us to share in his grace.

6 Embrace a commitment to life-long learning not just your university segment; great conversations, great journeys, great paintings, great books, great films, great architecture, great food nourish our lives. And there is an intellectual challenge too: to bring what you learned here in Europe back to the ND campus and to America. I trust too that you learned a good deal about America during your time here. What does she of America know who only America knows? And you more than any generation that has ever lived on our lovely plant live in a globalised world. 

Let me finish by sharing three final observations:

First, we are exceptionally proud of you,and we will follow your futures with a paternal solicitude.

Second, we will always carry warm memories of your time here with us. Thanks for the memories that you gifted to us: I will never forget as long as I live a magic moment that we shared on the beach in Ballintoy, nor your achingly beautiful rendition of ‘The Deer’s Cry’. 

Finally, this week is a sad one for us in O’Connell House. The worst part of our job is that you become so much part of our lives and then ond day you fly back home again, as you have to do, but you leave us lonely for you. We hope that a little corner of your heart will glow indelibly green. And we want to see you back here for the game in 2012.