College of Saint Benedict

I’m not here with answers. A few of my own students each year choose to teach in places like rural Alabama, Mississippi and West Virginia, and we talk about how to get rural education on our national agenda. But we don’t have any answers — yet.

Each of you, however, has the potential to find a few as you inch along (*). You are already travelers, volunteers, athletes, scholars, scientists, musicians, artists, and educators. You have presented your scholarship here on campus and in political arenas; you have joined struggles, built houses, made paper, and danced with professional companies; you have transformed your local communities, even as you’ve joined the global community in various ventures. Hold onto all of that.

And, by all means, continue to be extraordinary, effect good, fight injustice. Changes will come in Washington DC, in a science laboratory, in a fifth grade classroom, in a conversation at the grocery store. The simplest acts (teaching a child to swim; driving a meal to somebody who can’t get out; donating books, money and time to a library), the countless small gestures can have profound effect. But don’t expect to predict those outcomes, to quantify all of your performances, ahead of time.

(*) Reference to The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle