Dylan St. Thomas spoke to fellow graduates on Saturday, May 8, 2021, as the Woods Online and graduate student speaker.
To begin, I would like to offer thanks to President King, my peers, this institution’s faculty, and all who have worked hard to ensure that those graduating can celebrate their accomplishment and do so safely. I also wish to extend my gratitude to the commencement selection committee, who offered their support and wisdom as I considered the words I would offer this day.
When Albert Einstein was asked to identify the most important question one can ask in life, he responded “Is the universe a friendly place or not?” The ancient Greeks and the modern discipline of psychology have delivered a word to us which I think offers some response to Einstein’s question. This word is “pronoia” which, unlike its etymological cousin “paranoia,” is rooted in the belief that maybe, just maybe, the world around us is ultimately conspiring to do us good. As we tackle questions about the friendliness of the universe, are we more justified to entertain the demon of paranoia, or allow the better angel of pronoia to inform our understanding of the world?
When one begins their journey at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, they are introduced to the ethos of this institution through a seminar class entitled Into the Woods. Within that class, we learn about the history of the college, what is expected of us during our time here and, most relevant to this discussion, the guiding principles that underpin The Wood’s experience. One of those very important principles is social justice. I can imagine that most of the graduates here today have been asked to consider, in greater or lesser ways, their understanding of how they can promote a more equitable and just society within their respective disciplines and within their lives. It is a subtle thread that weaves its way through our educational journey, but one that connects us to this place and to one another.
And it is subtle. I saw many of my peers unknowingly weaving that thread into their own lives. I encountered classmates who logged volunteer hours to satisfy class requirements, but who also stayed on as volunteers because they had already developed a relationship with the communities they were serving. I have developed peer friendships that are deeply rooted in a genuine desire for everyone to succeed. I have witnessed people helping others when it wasn’t expected, or required, or convenient. The Woods provides the thread and, somehow, we all find our ways of weaving its goodness into our tapestry.
I return to the question, “Is the universe a friendly place or not?” The political landscape has felt more like trench warfare than partisan divide. A pandemic hasn’t helped, with many of our society’s most vulnerable left isolated and afraid. I’m cooking more often, a reality that I’m not sure is more aligned to a friendly universe or a hostile one. There are all of these things that should be informing an unquenchable thirst for paranoia, and still we find ourselves holding doors for strangers, learning how to smile with our eyes because our mouths are obscured, and finding that, most often, we can still laugh and break bread with friends and family who don’t vote, or pray, or love in the same ways that we do. On paper, paranoia is so tempting. Retreat, withdraw, don’t waste the energy. In reality, our better angel Pronoia whispers in our ear and urges us to reach out and connect. More, she asks us to consider our role in her efforts: how are we conspiring to do good?
That can be a daunting question to ask ourselves. Saint Mother Theodore Guerin offers us perspective stating, “We are not called upon to do all the good possible, but only that which we can do.” I can’t help but feel that Saint Mother Guerin had a sense of divine Pronoia. One would have to have some faith in a conspiracy of goodness in order to leave one’s homeland and travel here, what would have been a densely forested woodland at that time. Some faith in a conspiracy of goodness would be needed to form a new religious order and, with paltry resources, institute a learning academy for young women. As she stated in her journals, all appearances were against its success, and still she and the Sisters of Providence carried on, perhaps innately aware of a loving Creator who had led them to this place and was conspiring, with them, for their good and the good of those who would come to call this a spiritual and educational home.
“Can we rest in the pronoia of the universe?” Is it too saccharine to believe that, for the most part, we live and move and have our being in a cosmos that supports our good and, if so, why can’t we seem to come together, at least, to acknowledge that astonishing reality?
My favorite author, Flannery O’Connor, might have been onto something when she said, “All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us, and the change is painful.” Polarization, like paranoia and failure, allows us to retreat and entrench. It is safe, albeit insular. Connection, like Pronoia and grace, pushes us out and into community even when it is painful. Even when it doesn’t feel safe, convenient, and aligned to our ideas. Of course, higher education offers us a unique foray into those forms of connections. We’re asked to share space with and seek understanding of peers who think, and live, and believe in ways that often seem so different from our own. Still, we share common goals that remind us of our connection. Like grace, the relationships of higher education can be painful – as most anyone who has completed a group project in the middle of a pandemic will tell you – but they grow us, and they change us, and in many instances they alter the very way we will move into the world once our academic requirements have been met. It seems, based on this understanding, that our societal differences of opinion have rarely been the issue. Rather, it is our societal failure to connect over shared mission that can lead us to believe we are separate peoples seeking altogether separate objectives.
In reality, most of us wake up wanting our loved ones to feel and be successful. We mumble disdain over the price of gas, and milk, and heating our homes. We rejoice over births, mourn deaths, and celebrate the small, but never inconsequential triumphs, of our earthly sojourn. So common are these occurrences that, perhaps, their commonality makes it hard for us to remember that the stranger, the friend, the teammate, the enemy, the liberal, the conservative, the Christian, the atheist, are all sojourning similarly. We’re all hoping, despite the ease of paranoia and failure and gracelessness, that we can ultimately rest into an awareness of goodness, and opportunity, and, even if sometimes painful, abundant grace.
Which is why we each must pick up that principled thread and find ways to weave it into our own lives. Not, to echo Saint Mother Guerin, that we must do all of the good, but the good which we can do. If the conspiracy of goodness is to be more than theory, then we must endeavor to be co-conspirators. We must plot goodness, and collude with goodness, and scheme with goodness. For those who think as we do and those who don’t. For those who pray as we do and those who don’t. For those who vote and love and believe as we do, and those who don’t.
To the graduates sitting here, today, I will reiterate that this institution has given us a unique advantage. We’re especially equipped, by the virtue of this college’s foundation, to join in this conspiracy. Just as this place has desired our success, sowed in us seeds of social and environmental justice, and affirmed us, we too must move forward from this day with hearts that desire the success of others, tend to and grow these seeds of justice, and affirm the dignity and worth of those we meet. The answer to the question “is the universe friendly or not” rests not beyond our grasp, but in these seats.
Answer wisely.
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