Partnership is Life: Baccalaureate Speech at Occidental College May 18, 2024
Below is a speech I gave at the Baccalaureate Service at Occidental College on Saturday, May 18, 2024. Since the service was not recorded and I’ve been asked to share these words, I’m saving them here.
Good morning everyone! It is an honor to be with you today. I want to first begin by thanking the Graduates for this opportunity to speak with you this morning. Thank you for your continued commitment to yourselves, your communities and to your contributions in making the world a better place. I am honored to be part of the community cheering you on in your journey. I’d like to thank the families and communities of these graduates. Your support, your prayers, conversations, care packages, money, and time have helped these young people meet this milestone. No one person can do this alone, and I thank you for being there for them. To the faculty, thank you for your commitment to teaching, mentoring, and protecting your students. To every staff worker, TA, adjunct, facilities person, front office worker, personal and executive assistants; you are the real reason this institution is running. I know it, and everyone else knows it, but for some reason no one seems to ever say it: thank you. Finally I’d like to thank those on this stage today that also helped to make this possible. Thank you to President Harry J. Elam, Jr, Rob Flot, Wendy Sternberg, and Vivian Garay Santiago. Special thank you to Susan Young and Gretchen Saalbach for helping with logistics.
I want to talk to you this morning about sowing. I want to start by reading the parable of the sower. This story is a passage in the Christian sacred text is a popular parable taught by Jesus about the kinds of circumstances a seed encounters as a farmer tosses them about. The passage reads like this:
““A farmer went out to sow their seed. As they were scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.””
Your time in college has been a time of sowing and of reaping. You have been given good seeds, ideas that have challenged you and helped you grow into the young adults you are today. You have been given seeds of friendship and companionship amongst your classmates, many of whom you now call friends. You have been given opportunities for leadership, and you have been given situations you've had to learn to navigate and step up to the plate of advocacy and change.
But if we are being honest, you have also been given weeds. Institutional red tape and politics have often cut off your ability to thrive and have your voices heard. Corporate greed and corruption have made it nearly impossible for you to afford to live and finish your education. And a host of isms and divisions have met you at every turn. For many of you, you have had to learn to grow despite these conditions. While we can honor and celebrate the rose that grew from concrete, we fail if we do not lament the fact that it had to push through concrete in the first place. And we fail if we do not work to create conditions of thriving so that it doesn’t have to happen again. I think that while we are up here thanking you and congratulating you, we should also offer our apologies to you.
For the ways the educational system’s complacency of and participation in oppression has hindered your growth, we are sorry.
For the ways that racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and other divisive ideologies have made it harder for you to be yourself in a space of learning, we are sorry.
For the ways that we have allowed violence in all of its forms seep into what is supposed to be a safe space for learning, we are sorry.
I recognize that apologies mean nothing without change, but it is my hope that this serves as a seed in good soil.
Not only have you been given seeds, but you are the result, the fruit if you will, of seeds planted long ago. Whether you are the first in your family to graduate college, or if you are continuing a family legacy of graduating from Occidental, you are the realization of a dream. I want you to think about your communities, think about what they had to do to get you here. Think about your praying grandmother or parents, about the extra jobs worked to make sure you had what you needed. Think about the chosen family that stepped up for you when you needed them, maybe when your biological families couldn’t or wouldn’t. Think about the mentors that spoke truth and encouragement to you. You stand here because they believed. You became the evidence of the thing they were hoping for. And not just them! You are here because you believed. You are here because of seeds you planted for yourself and your own future.
So, you have been given seeds. You are the fruit, the evidence of seeds planted long ago. But you are also a sower of seeds. You are also the ones who scatter those dreams, those visions of a better future on the ground in hopes that they land in good soil. Sowing business is discerning business. Just like the different kinds of ground in the parable, there are different places we can sow our seed. Remember, where we put our time and our energy is important. I am here today to remind you and encourage you that the seeds you sow will determine the kind of world future generations will inherit. I do not think there is a person in this room that isn’t affected by the world we’ve inherited, by the seeds that we and those before us have sown. Just like those before us, we have a responsibility to sow good seeds.
As you move from this place to continue your sowing journey I want to offer three bits of advice. The first is this: do not forsake your power. See, power is a funny thing. Everyone has it, but is often convinced they don’t so they offer it up without even realizing it. Those who want your power for themselves will often start by distracting you with pleasure; your favorite TV show, a promise of wealth and influence, ongoing pop culture drama, only to get you to sign it away by burying it in the fine print, or slipping it into convoluted legislature. The best thing you can do in not forsaking your power is to pay attention. Do not let those who think they have more influence than you strip you of your power. Remember that as long as you have a voice, you have power. As long as you have a body, you have power. And as Uncle Ben reminds us, with great power comes great responsibility. Use your power to sow seeds of justice and freedom in your communities.
The second piece of advice I have for you is don’t forsake your faith. I spend a lot of my time in the dystopian world of science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler. One of her most popular novels, also entitled Parable of the Sower, is set to begin this summer, in July of 2024 although it was published in 1993. In this work we encounter a world in disarray. Economic divide between the rich and poor has become so great the middle class no longer exists. Political tensions rise to the point of conflict and in an election year many are unsure of whether they will vote for the current president or his opponent who has captured a cult like following of the religious right. The destitute resulting from an environmental, political, and social crisis leaves entire communities on the brink of collapse, dependent on larger corporations to provide jobs and resources (at a cost of course). I could go on about the opioid crisis, or corruption of law enforcement, or the general feeling of uncertainty and hopelessness, but I would first need to remind you that I am speaking of a novel and not recent headlines.
In the midst of this chaos we meet a young woman named Lauren Oya Olamina. Lauren is part of a community led by her father who is a university dean and Baptist minister. As she is observing the world around her, she comes to the conclusion that her father’s god is no longer her own, and seeks to name a god that can help her face the challenges of the world she was born into. What’s unique about Lauren’s experience is that even though she rejects her father’s belief, she does not abandon faith altogether. Instead she roots herself in her expression of faith. She expresses God as change. She establishes a community that seeks to change the world.
What is the lesson here? As a theologian, I think it is this: Whether you adhere to the faith or religion you were born into, if your belief has changed, or even if you do not put your faith into traditional religious traditions, your faith in something beyond you is necessary in sowing good seeds. It is a belief in something beyond ourselves that moves us to action, that helps us find ourselves and our purpose in the world. As you move into this next season of life, remember those faith practices that brought you here. Lean into them as points of rest and rejuvenation. Allow them to help you as you discern what is next for you.
And the third piece of advice I offer is this: I want to remind you that partnership is life. As we have seen in our spaces of growth, in our areas of resistance and advocacy, and even in nature, partnership is required. In order for us to have the kind of world we seek, we must partner with one another. As we have seen in demonstrations around the world, people from different cultural backgrounds, religious practices, economic histories and generations have come together to fight for the sanctity of life in calling for the end of violence and death in places like Sudan, Congo, and Palestine. I commend you for the ways in which you are partnering with one another, and I encourage you to continue that partnership beyond the walls of this institution.
You are graduating and moving into a new season of sowing. Do not forget your power, do not forsake your faith and do not forget each other. In establishing a new religion and community, Lauren creates what is called the Books of the Living, which serves as a guide. One of those verses centers on partnership, and I think it offers us a good final word. It reads:
““Partnership is giving, taking, learning, teaching, offering the greatest possible benefit while doing the least possible harm. Partnership is mutualistic symbiosis. Partnership is life. Any entity, any process that cannot or should not be resisted or avoided must somehow be partnered. Partner one another. Partner diverse communities. Partner life. Partner any world that is your home. Partner God. Only in partnership can we thrive, grow, Change. Only in partnership can we live.””
Go and live in partnership.