Commencement/Reunion Weekend

O' to be able to gather at Tappan Square among friends, families and classmates, taking formation as one under the canopy of trees long attending Oberlin's most sacred moments.

Before there was Oberlin, wisdom keepers first proclaimed that, "as humans-we are born of the Earth, nourished by the Earth, and healed by the Earth."[i] We give thanks for the bounty of this good earth-and in this COVID season, we choose the Earth's generosity to meet the hardship and suffering in our day.

Keeping distance, even separated today, we are evermore united, standing where we are, however we might, in ovation for the class of 2020. We see you, individually and as one class. We behold your many achievements. And we say, wow!

In striving to become all you are created to be, you have challenged Oberlin to live to its name that it might be the Oberlin our world so desperately needs.

Your journey here has been marked with exhilarating moments, great joy, and sometimes long, painful nights; early departure and uncertainties, still. In times of clarity and chaos, even in profound loss, you belonged to one another. Marked Obies forever, be assured that the Oberlin you now depart once more is the better for that you came our way.

Looking through corona eyes, we see that no one is spared a sense of absence or loss--a beloved friend, colleague, family member who, on this day, feels far, far away and whose company we sorely miss. We also see the privileges we carry that have helped to buffer us from harm's way. May we remember those who have been impacted by the virus and lift up the many who work tirelessly, serving the most vulnerable among us.

On this day of remembering, we are mindful of the many in our extended family, across generations, who have lived and died for all they believed. We pray for peace.

And, as we travel to our next station, we are all too aware the the division and rancor across this not-so-fair land-where race, class and religion divide as ever before--a nation in search of its soul. May any among us, eager to return to what was, make haste to create anew, addressing head on all that calls for change.

Let us heed the lessons of land stewards before us:

-"In geologic time, to know where the place [Oberlin] is, is not to know where it was...and slightly different from (where) it will be tomorrow.[ii]

-"[W]e are always evolving and eroding, at once...worn down to our essences as we are forced to change our course."[iii]

-"The natural order tells us: I will feed you, I will clothe you, I will shelter you, I will heal you. Only do not so devour me or use me that you destroy my capacity to mediate the divine and the human. I offer gifts that you may exchange with each other."[iv]

May the Great Spirit that is in all things abide in us, taking wonder in all that science confirms. May the spirit rising in Oberlin, the oneness we strive to achieve, abide first in us, bold even in our humility. Swift to forgive, to be forgiven. May the future we choose be rooted in fairness, courage, imagination--and yes, kindness.

With Toni Morrison we declare,"This is precisely the time... There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilization heals."[v] May it be so.

One thing more. May there be joy abundant on this day of all days!

Blessings on the Class of 2020 and the Oberlin family always! May the degrees conferred, relationships formed in Oberlin-prepare us for taking leave of this sacred place, greeting what soon will become. Amen.

David F.H. Dorsey
Multifaith Chaplain

[i] Thomas Berry, Evening Thoughts (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2010), 139.

[ii]Thomas Fairchild Sherman, A Place on the Glacial Town: Time, Land, and Nature within an American Town (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 28.

[iii] Terry Tempest Williams, Erosion: Essays of Undoing (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), 20.

[iv] Berry, 139.

[v] Toni Morrison, "No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear," The Nation 300, no.14 (April 6, 2015): 184.