This book continues the conversations begun in Emilie Townes's path-breaking A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering. Once again, Townes brings together essays by leading womanist theologians, interweaving a concern for matters of race, gender, and class, as these bear on the survival and well-being of the African-American community. In Embracing the Spirit the emphasis is not on evil and suffering, but on "hope, salvation, and transformation" for individuals and their communities.

Chapter One

Looking to Your Tomorrows Today

North Carolina Central University,

December 16, 1994

Mary M. Townes

    I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to the graduates of North Carolina Central University's first Fall Commencement Exercise. One of my first thoughts when Dr. Marvin Duncan asked me to consider this assignment, and to allow him to recommend me to the Commencement Planning Committee and, with that group's concurrence, to make the recommendation to Chancellor Chambers, was that no one would want or expect a full-blown Commencement speech at noontime. Then I read in the November 25 issue of the News and Observer that some seniors were concerned that this program would not be as full of pomp and circumstance as the annual May Commencement, because it would be much smaller. This was my cue that today's honorees would be disappointed with anything less than a full-blown Commencement address. So, in spite of the hour, I do not plan to disappoint our honorees. Hope you will not be sorry! I intend to give a full Commencement speech in spite of the fact that, to paraphrase a line of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, you will little note nor long remember what I say here.

    When I sat in the B. N. Duke Auditorium forty-five years ago at the Commencement Exercise for the Class of 1949, the graduating group was about the same size as this one. We were graduates of the quarter system. This institution was North Carolina College at Durham. Tuition was $75.00 a year for residents of North Carolina. Room and board was $27.50 a month, and most of us had a very hard time paying it. The Alexander-Dunn Building was the cafeteria, and service was family style. B. N. Duke Auditorium had an organ, but it was not the present Moeller Organ that currently is insured for $350,000. The whole student population of about five hundred was a fairly closely knit group of persons who tried to help one another. If you did not dress right, they would let you know it--those were not the days when it was fashionable to mix polka dots, plaids, and stripes. Those who did not know this were politely informed. And for the first two of my undergraduate years, Dr. Shepard, the president and founder, ruled with an iron fist that was not in a velvet glove. There was no due process. If the decision was made to suspend or to expel a student, Dr. Shepard or Dean Rush gave you a one-way bus ticket, and informed the student that "there were no specific charges." There were no security officers when I was an undergraduate--no campus police. We had one night watchman. Lights in all rooms were to be turned off at 11:00 P.M. Mr. Jeff, the night watchman, reported all rooms that were lighted after 11:00 P.M. We were fined one dollar for each violation. How did we study after 11:00 P.M.? We used the hallways and the bathrooms.

    My, my. How times have changed.

    In those days, Nat King Cole was one of our heroes in the entertainment world. His song "Straighten Up and Fly Right" was one we used often to admonish those we thought were not doing right. Now you have Whitney Houston, among others. The lyrics of one of Ms. Houston's hit songs, "One Moment in Time," read as follows:

I want one moment in time

When I'm more than I thought I could be,

When all my dreams are a heartbeat away,

And the answers are all up to me.

    "And the answers are all up to me." And the answers are up to each of you! I am here to say to the graduating class that you must desire, expect, and hope for the very best for yourselves.

    If you expect nothing, if you desire nothing, if you hope for nothing, you will get nothing! Oswald McCall wrote the following words many years ago:

Remember that while you are seeking, you are also being sought. You will not be lost, you will not miss the gate. You will be found. You will be led. You will enter in. Look for that. Expect it. Expect shells to break in their season. Expect boats to ride as the tide comes in.

    This is hope, to desire and to expect. To desire but not to expect is not hope, for though you may desire the moon, you hardly hope for it. To expect but not to desire is not hope, for who that expects his or her loved one to die could be said to hope for it?

    But to desire , and to expect the desire's fulfillment, that is hope .

    And we are saved by hope.

    When hope is in the heart, it is as prophetic as the song of a young stream on the mountains. It is set for far destinies.

    I am here to say to this graduating class: If you are going to be more than you think you could be, you will have to stand tall , to smile tall , to live tall , and to think tall . In the physical side of your life, you must stand tall ; in the social side of your life, you must smile tall ; in the spiritual side of your life, you must live tall ; in the mental side of your life, you must think tall . You owe it to yourself, to your parents, and to others who have supported and encouraged you to stand tall , to smile tall , to live tall , and to think tall .

    What do I mean by standing tall ? In this physical aspect of your life, your parents and guardians have provided for your physical development. No doubt they anxiously await the day you will be able to provide for yourself--things like food, housing, clothing, transportation, insurance, and taxes. When you do become self-supporting, remember that it would be nice to send your gratitude home in the form of a certified check.

    Standing tall also means radiating self-confidence and high self-esteem. It means having pride in your person and your decorum or manner--the image you project. When you go out to seek a job, do not look as though you are begging. Put on your best clothes--do not go to a job interview in sneakers, jeans, chomping on chewing gum, britches hanging off your hips. You should hold your head up, look the interviewer in the eye, and tell him or her in your best English (not your dormitory English) what you have to offer. Tell the interviewer that you are willing to work hard and long, and that you are willing to learn the things you do not know how to do. Don't ever put the lowest price tag on the service you can offer. Employers know that they are not likely to get more than they are willing to pay for. People who make it a habit to give more than is asked or required are people who stand tall .

    What does it mean to smile tall ? It means you should always be as cheerful as possible. Nothing is more depressing than to run into a person who is a constant complainer. Things always are wrong with them--their toenails ache, their hair hurts, their ears pop all the time. When you meet these chronic complainers early in the morning, do not let them ruin your day! We have to remember that everybody has troubles and problems. Everybody has at least one cross to bear--and we are all lucky if we have just one cross.

    Learn to carry your burdens like a mature person and to present your best front to your publics. Take yourself seriously, but do not be grim about it. Be serious but not tense, focused but not obsessive, confident but not cocky.

    We know that our young people are not all going to hades in a basket. Your presence here today indicates that you are not. So we have to discredit, to some extent, what Socrates wrote in the fifth century B.C. These are his words:

Our youth now lives in luxury. They have bad manners; contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise. They no longer rise when others enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers.

Do those words sound familiar?

    Let us now consider living tall --the spiritual side of our lives. Acceptance has been called the first law of personal growth. Acceptance is seeing something the way it is and saying, "That's the way it is." John-Roger and Peter McWilliams have given the following description:

Acceptance is not approval, consent, permission, authorization, sanction, concurrence, agreement, compliance, sympathy, endorsement, confirmation, support, ratification, assistance, advocating, backing, maintaining, authentication, reinforcing, cultivating, encouraging, furthering, promoting, aiding, abetting, or even liking what it is.

    Acceptance is saying, "It is what it is, and what is is what is." When you are in a state of nonacceptance, it is difficult to learn. Relax. Accept what has already taken place--whether done by you or something outside of you. Then look for the lesson. You might not enjoy everything that happens in life, but you can enjoy the fact that no matter what happens, there is a lesson in it. Look for the lesson!

    There is a children's play that is accompanied by a group of choral readers. The play is based on the thirty-first chapter of Jeremiah. In this play, the children dance out the journey of struggle, survival, despair, and hope as they move toward the land of great mountains, a land fertile and holding great promise and opportunity for all. In their journey, the children move through periods of doubt and disbelief, periods of being lost and on unfamiliar ground. But the choral readers keep repeating the stories that remind them of who they are, of the power surrounding them, and of the reason they are on their journey. Finally, they catch a glimpse of the mountain, but before that mountain is a chasm.

    The more they look at the chasm, the more anxious and fearful they become. They can see the danger and the promise before them, but they need a word of hope. The choral readers begin their song again, and they retell the story--the story that reminds them of their identity, purpose, and power. And suddenly, a child rises and positions herself in an act of faith and leaps into the air. As she leaps, she reaches forward to the land of promise and also extends a hand back to grasp the hand of a brother to take with her. He follows her example while holding onto her hand and reaches back to clasp the hand of a sister to take with him.

    The stage explodes with a human chain leaping over the chasm to the land of promise. But the joy is shattered when the last person, preparing for the leap, puts down her baby in order to get a firmer grip on her before they move across the chasm. The momentum of the human chain reaches her before she is ready; her hand is grasped before she can grasp her child, and she is taken over the chasm. Her child is left, alone, on the other side, a chasm separating her from her mother, her people, her hope, her future.

    The child wanders toward the edge of the chasm. The community, who no longer need the choral readers to tell them their story, call the child by name. The community tell her their story and her story. The community encourages her to leap.

    You watch as the child gathers courage and confidence and is empowered by the community. She keeps her eyes on the great mountains and leaps into the air over the chasm and into the arms of the waiting community.

    It is said that one night there was an old man sitting in the audience. And for him, this was no longer a play; it became real. He rushed to the stage, picked up the child, held her high in the air, and proclaimed with the voice of wisdom and vision--"Thank God almighty! Even our children know how to fly!"

    That child flies right here in the midst of us.

    You, the members of this graduating class, must be a part of that community of welcome and justice that defies the great abyss of despair and destruction and violence, that dares the chasm of hatred and inhumanity.

    Finally, I dare you to think tall . In your individual minds, please answer these questions for me: What happens to some people that causes them to declare themselves done when they receive a bachelor's degree? What is it about renting or buying a cap and gown and getting a diploma that makes some of us think our learning days are over?

    It is not that there is nothing left to learn. Far from it. "Commencement does not just mean graduation; it means a new beginning. Commencement is a time to make a commitment to life long learning."

    Education has been described as the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. The Earl of Chesterfield said, "Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show you have one."

    What will you do with your degree? Will you grow in wisdom and in understanding? Will you be a good citizen, informed about the world with its variety of government, but loyal to America? Will you have a special ability of understanding and caring for people, any people, all people? Will you strive to reach higher levels of maturity? Maturity is a necessary part of excellence and success. It is stick-to-it-iveness, the ability to stick to a job and to work on it and to struggle through until the job is done. It is endurance of difficulties, unpleasantness, discomfort, frustration, and hardship. The ability to size things up, to make one's own decisions, is a characteristic of maturity. The mature person is not dependent unless ill. The mature person shows tolerance and can adapt to different situations and can compromise, unlike Newt Gingrich. But we must hope that Newt will learn.

    Like the children I described in the play based on Jeremiah, you must reach back and help others to rise. There is a rising cry that the mission of institutions like ours is redundant, that we should not have a future. This institution will have to be the very best it can be if it is to survive into the twenty-first century and give others a chance to strive to reach the "promised land." To this end, it is very important that all of us support NCCU with our financial resources. Don't worry about whether or not your donation is too small. All donations will be welcomed!

    Thinking tall demands that you continue to resist the old racist belief that African Americans are genetically and intellectually inferior to White Americans. A recently published book entitled The Bell Curve and subtitled Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life is getting a lot of attention and providing fodder for the conservatism that has swept this land. The Bell Curve is an 845-page book that costs thirty dollars plus tax. It presents arguments based on such shaky premises as (1) intelligence can be depicted by a single number, the IQ score, (2) this single number can be used to rank people in linear order, and (3) the score is genetically based and can't be changed. The book's authors, Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein, claim that race and class differences are largely caused by genetic factors and are therefore essentially not capable of or susceptible to change. In other words, they are immutable.

    The Bell Curve contains no new arguments and presents no compelling evidence for its claims. It has gained attention at this time because it reflects the ungenerous and depressing temper of the times. It supports the idea that it is OK to slash selected social programs such as Head Start, because the beneficiaries, mainly African Americans, can't be helped due to inborn limitations expressed by low IQ scores. We have always had to run faster, kick harder, jump higher, think better, hang tougher, live livelier, hate slower. And we cannot stop now! I agree with William Raspberry's assessment that The Bell Curve confuses brains with social advantage.

    Finally, "Only the curious will learn and only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning. The quest quotient is much more exciting than the intelligence quotient!"

    Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and God bless you.

    Thank you.

Excerpted from EMBRACING THE SPIRIT by Emilie M. Townes. Copyright © 1997 by Emilie M. Townes. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.