"With diploma in hand," an open letter to my son upon graduating from college

Dear Dave:

We watched as you took your diploma in one hand and shook President Roush’s hand with the other. That was a great moment for all of us, for it signified the closing of one chapter in your life and the opening of another.

 Now that you have your diploma, remember that it has meaning beyond the listing of your name, the date you graduated, and the school, Centre College, which granted the degree you earned.

First, that diploma means you are to be a thinker.  Just because you’ve earned a degree doesn’t mean you automatically know how to think or that you will continue to do so. I’ve known plenty of people who have earned degrees from prestigious schools, and having walked across the stage with their diploma in hand, never read another book, entertained a new idea, or forced themselves to stretch one mental muscle. Having isolated themselves in a cocoon of indifference, they languished in mediocrity rather than thriving in the fresh air of open-mindedness and challenge.

While your liberal arts education has given you an excellent foundation to think for yourself, you must still work at it just as diligently as an Olympic athlete trains for the games. Thinking means listening carefully to others, evaluating what’s being communicated, and asking yourself how their ideas might integrate truth into your life, or conversely, negatively impact you and the global village in which you find yourself.

Second, it means you are meant to be you and no one else. Take another look at that diploma. It only has one name on it: your own. Your education has taught you the value of being who you are. When you are not you, the world is cheated because you have unique abilities, talents, and gifts only you can give the world. You have a purpose that extends beyond yourself, but if you try to live someone else’s values instead of the ones you yourself believe in, you compromise something vital within yourself, depriving yourself of the joy that comes in being the individual you are meant to be.

Third, it means you care about others enough to give a part of yourself to them. Education, at its best, doesn’t take place in a solitary cell in an online conversation between a student and an impersonal, unknown grader.

 Those times you spent with your buddies at the fraternity house or on the intramural field, the time you gave to others on the Student Government Council, or the moments you enjoyed interacting with friends at The Campus Center, were important. They can teach you how to cooperate, work for a common goal, and have fun in the process. So much of success in life is about getting along with others and making personal sacrifices that enable others to succeed. When you do that, you yourself are succeeding.

Fourth, as you look at that diploma, remember the people that handed it to you. I do mean President Roush, of course. But I also mean others as well, people like Dr. Wyatt, who ignited your love for historical research, Dr. Lucas, who directed you in your chosen field of study, Mrs. Nash, who in second grade instilled in you a love for reading, and Mrs. Followell, the high school teacher who first encouraged you to write, and Glen Richardson and Coach Robbins, whose demands on your physical discipline helped make you mentally tough. And be grateful for all those people standing in the shadows: secretaries, teacher’s aides, administrators, custodians---people who helped in anonymous ways along your journey to the stage.

And lastly, pick up that diploma and take it with you. Take all that it represents---the learning that enlightens your mind, the friends that are now a part of you, the work that makes you strong---and tuck all that in your heart, letting those things expand your mental horizons as they light the path to your future. When you strive for that, even when you fail along the way and few if any recognize the sacrifices you’ve made, remember: You truly are a success.

And as you find your way, having walked away from the stage with diploma in hand, look back and give mom and dad a wink. .

And don’t be sad if you see a tear falling from my cheek; it will be caught by the smile on my face.

Choose your destination carefully, you might just have to stay there

“Last thing I remember, I was 
Running for the door 
I had to find the passage back 

To the place I was before 
‘Relax’ said the night man, 
‘We are programmed to receive. 
You can check-out any time you like, 
But you can never leave!’”

----The Eagles, Hotel California

My cousins had picked me up at Love Field in Dallas, TX. I was to preside at their father’s funeral the next day. After visiting with their family in their mother’s home, they drove me to my hotel.

At least I thought it was my hotel.

They had taken care of my flight plans, and my dad said I could stay in the same hotel with him, my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew.

“It’s the same hotel we stayed in last year when we were in Arlington, TX, for Brian’s wedding,” Dad emphasized.

My cousins remembered exactly where that hotel was located because they had visited us there when we in Arlington the year before.

“We’ll see you at the church in the morning,” they said as they left me at the hotel.

I tried to check in at the front desk. “I should have a room under the name of my father, L.D. Whitlock,” I told the night clerk.

“No, we have no room under that name,” she informed me.

I went down the list: my brother Mark, my nephew Brian, his wife, Mandy. There was no reservation under any of those names.

“Hmmm, I’ll just call them,” I told the night clerk.

“We’re here, waiting on you, in room 231,” Mark told me on my cell phone.

Relieved that I was in the right place, I made my way to the elevator and down the long hallway to room 231.

I knocked loudly on the door, proudly announcing my presence to my family.

And much to my surprise, a kind Oriental man opened the door.

I apologized. He smiled, bowed, and shut the door.

I’m now nonplussed and on my cell phone to my brother: “Don’t you know your own room number, Nimrod?

Still on the phone, he asks his wife, Joy, to check the room number.

“231, the number’s right here,” I hear her say.

“That can’t be right. I was just there and an Oriental man is in that room,” I counter.

“What hotel are you at?” my brother asks.

“The same one as last year, just like Dad told me.”

I now have to hold my cell phone away from my ear because my brother is howling with laughter. In fact, his son Brian told me later, Mark was on the floor in hysterics.  

Somewhere in the planning process, they had changed hotels.

“How the heck was I supposed to know?” I demanded.

And I can still hear my dear ol’ dad’s explanation in the background, “Well, I thought someone would have told him.”

Making my way back down the hallway to the elevator, and to the front desk, I can hear Don Henley and the Eagles singing, “Welcome to the Hotel California.”

But alas, the night clerk, suppressing a snicker at my plight, happily pointed me to the front door, where I could wait on my not-so-compassionate big brother to pick me up.

And later, as I got in the van with him and my nephew Brian, I was glad to be leaving a place where I didn’t belong. And I thought of how easy it had been to wind up in the wrong place.

Finding the place where you belong sometimes requires checking the sources, repeating directions, and making sure you have reliable information. It was C.S. Lewis who observed in his book, The Screwtape Letters, “The safest road to hell is the gradual one---the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

Finding life as it is supposed to be, as it is truly meant to be, is like a journey. And the search itself prompts questions like, “Where are you going?” And “Who are you, really?”

That life is discovered somewhere in the admission that only One has the answers to the questions of our deepest longings---desires only satisfied by living within the Eternal Now.

The late Eastern Orthodox priest and church historian, Fr. Alexander Schmemann aptly wrote, “Eternal life is not what begins after temporal life; it is the eternal presence of the totality of life.”

As we find our place in that life, we discover we’ve been holding the key unlocking the door to true freedom all along.

No, I don’t want to stay one night in the Hotel Californian or any other place other than the place I was meant to be, a place where I can breathe in the fresh air of eternal life.

And enjoy the freedom of coming and going in the Eternal Presence forever.

When you can't say, sing it

She was struggling to tell me something but her words wouldn’t come. All she could do was mumble and that only with great frustration. I was holding her hand, trying as best I could to comfort her in her agitation.

“Could you come to the hospital as soon as possible?” Her son had called me in the early morning hour, his voice quivering. His elderly mom was not doing well: She had apparently suffered another stroke. “The last thing she told me was that she had to see her doctor. That’s how she refers to you, ‘her doctor,’ and so I called you.”

I smiled because I had heard her call me that before. I’m not a “real” doctor, a physician, that is. But I was “her doctor,” at that moment, standing at her bedside, offering the only remedy I could: prayer.

As I prayed aloud, she calmed down. Then she closed her eyes and grew very still. I watched to make sure she was breathing. And suddenly she opened her eyes wide, like she was surprised she was still there, and then she looked to the left and right without moving her head.

And the light in her eyes and the glow of her smile was angelic. Then, this one who moments ago couldn’t utter a single word, began singing, “Amazing Grace.” At first I was startled but didn’t hesitate to join her. And the two of us, both flat and off-key, sounding like two tone-deaf crooners, sang through not one but two stanzas of John Newton’s 1779 hymn.

I imagined the nurses glancing at each other with raised eyebrows: “What’s that preacher doing in there?”

But I pressed on, coaxing her to sing more: “Let’s sing another. How about Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so?”  Smiling, she joined me, and on we went as I continued holding her hand.

“Amazing Grace,” and “Jesus Loves Me,” must be encoded in her long-term memory. When the words of the present were locked inside her, the words of the old hymns flowed freely.

A few months ago, National Public Radio did a segment, “Singing Therapy Helps Stroke Victims Sing Again.” The story focused on a 16 year old girl who was the victim of a devastating stroke at age 11. Through “melodic intonation therapy,” or singing therapy, her speech had returned, and she was back in school. “I’m singing in my head and talking out loud without singing. I do it, like, really quick,” she said.

The therapy helps train the undamaged right side of the brain, which controls singing, to speak. It’s the damaged left side of the brain which controls speaking. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has utilized a form of singing therapy to help her speak again. In the case of the 16 year old stroke victim, the nerve fibers on the right side, the singing center of her brain, had actually grown after only four months of singing therapy. Although she still struggles to find the words, she is far ahead of where she was after a full year of conventional therapy.

"Basically, the hardware of the system really changed to support this increased vocal output," says Dr. Gottfried Schlaug, who heads the study on melodic intonation therapy at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts.

Dr.Schlaug cites patients in their 80s who have shown brain adaptations after the therapy. It just takes longer for them, just as it does to learn a foreign language the older one is. And he has also seen good results with autistic children and people with Parkinson’s disease who have difficulty speaking.

“If you can sing it, you’ll eventually say it,” I encouraged my friend in ICU.

She smiled.

I assured her: “We’ve had a good worship service: We’ve prayed, and we’ve sung hymns, and we were preaching when we were singing. God has to be pleased with you. So get some rest.”

And she did.

And in due time, she may be able to speak again, by God’s amazing grace.

One missing child still too many

I know how easy it is for a child to be abducted. That’s because when I was a child, I invited a stranger into my home.

It was 1963, I was in second grade, and Mom was at PTA meeting. I had been allowed to come home and stay by myself rather than wait at school until the meeting was over.

That’s when the stranger rang the doorbell.

I shouldn’t have opened the door, but I did, anyway. I shouldn’t have answered his question about where my parents were, telling him I was home alone, but I did, anyway.  And I shouldn’t have invited him in when he flipped a shiny silver dollar in the air, promising me it would be mine if I would let him in and give him something to eat. I shouldn’t have.

But I did, anyway.

And in an instant, I, a child, was alone in my house with a complete stranger.

I suppose there are as many ways to abduct a child as there are children to be abducted. In the US about 800,000 children are reported at least temporarily missing every year, although only about 115 become victims of what is viewed as stranger abductions.

Being vigilant about the potential for child abductions is now woven into our social fabric: We alert our children to “stranger danger;” we know Amber Alert; we try to teach our children how to respond to a potentially dangerous situation; we have a communal fear of a child being taken: We no longer raise our children in an age of innocence.

Much of our safeguard against child abductions is a result of the ones who didn’t make it back home. Etan Patz never returned after he was allowed for the first time to walk by himself to the school bus in the quiet, supposedly safe SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan 33 years ago. His became one of the first cases to utilize technology and media to try and find a missing child. Not only were flyers distributed on telephone poles throughout New York City, but Etan’s face was on every milk carton in America.

Community awareness and technological advances have been successful. Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has noted, "More than 99 percent of children reported missing in America in recent years have come home alive." 

Technology has created other possibilities as well. Steve Carter, a 35 year old software salesman, found himself on a missing children’s website. Last year, Steve, a resident of Philadelphia, was watching CNN’S coverage of Carlina White, the Atlanta woman who discovered she had been kidnapped from a Harlem hospital in 1987 by a women posing as a nurse. A website for missing children helped clue Carlina into her missing past.

That story made Steve even more curious about his own biological family, so on a hunch, he clicked on missingkids.com. He found an age-progression image of himself as an infant. With the exception of the haircut, the resemblance was remarkable. His biological mom had apparently given him to a Honolulu orphanage, changing Steve’s name. Now, he has been reunited with his biological father.

Having eaten the roast beef sandwich I had prepared from Sunday’s lunch, the stranger in my house paused as if he were a connoisseur of fine desserts, liking his lips, anticipating an after dinner treat.

I gazed at the floor.

I can still feel his eerie stare like the hot breath on the neck of an animal being pursued by a predator.

Then, as if he sensed my apprehension, he suddenly became a salesman and pulling out a picture album, he opened it and began showing portraits of children, picture after picture of boys and girls. They looked like pictures of children suitable for a church pictorial directory.

But they weren’t.

“Would you like to go with me and have your picture made?” he asked. Having my picture made didn’t sound the least bit appealing and besides, I told the stranger, my mom would be home any minute, and he could ask her.

“You don’t have to ask her,” the stranger whispered, and in the next breath, he asked to use the phone.

He made a call to the Weston Hotel, which I later learned carried the seediest of reputations in our town.

I don’t recall the details of his short conversation, but he abruptly hung up the phone with declaration and announced, “Sorry, kid, I’ve got to go.”

And he hustled out the door, without a mention of the silver dollar.

Later that afternoon, Mom was interrogating my older brother, Mark, about the mysterious disappearance of the roast beef. That’s when I told Mom, matter of factly, what had transpired while she was at PTA.

At once there was a flurry of activity. Dad was suddenly home, the police arrived, I was questioned, and later, late in the night, taken to the police station and asked to pick out the suspect in a line-up.

The stranger wasn’t among them.

Who told him to leave my house? And why didn’t he take me? Did he move on to abduct other children? And who were those children in the photo album?

The possibilities are as frightening as the ones that could have happened to me.

It’s comforting to be a part of the many who were never abducted or among the 99% who were but returned safely home.

It’s the 1% that haunts me. For I was most surely almost among them.

Jesus told about leaving the 99 and searching for the lost one: “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others on the hills and go out to search for the one that is lost?” (Matthew 18:12).

Why does he go? Because the Father cares.

 And knows: “I have called you by name; you are mine” (Isaiah 43:1).

Even when their names are changed and their background erased, the Father knows who the missing children are and to whom they belong.

And even when their life is lost, he has found them.

Eight letters: the space between their world and mine

Recognizing that the space between her world and the one she is slowly but surely entering is drawing closer, Pat Summitt, who has won more basketball games than anyone in NCAA history, stepped down as coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols last week. Summitt was diagnosed with early onset dementia last year, at the age of 58.

Early onset dementia attacks people younger than 65. Many are in their 40s and 50s, and some even in their 30s.

Alzheimer’s disease, a form of dementia, affects millions. The statistics are staggering: According to the Alzheimer’s Association, in 2011, 5.4 million Americans were living with Alzheimer’s; 15,000,000 caregivers provide 17 billion hours of unpaid care at home; Alzheimer’s costs the nation $200 billion annually, and someone develops the disease every 68 seconds.

If all the Alzheimer’s patients were placed in one state, it would be the 5^th largest in our nation.

It is predicted that if a cure for dementia is not found by 2050, 16 million Americans will have some form of the disease, with Alzheimer’s being the most prevalent.

Life is by no means over with a dementia diagnosis. Like any good coach, Pat Summitt has a strategy to stay healthy as she faces Alzheimer’s. And her son, Tyler, also a basketball coach, reminds us that we can learn from those with Alzheimer’s. “Despite (it), she has stuck to her principles and stayed strong in her faith. Her confidence to be open about this disease has taught me the importance of honesty,” he said in an interview with Carol Steinberg of the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America.

Tyler is right: Victims of this disease still have much to teach us. Entering their world on a fairly regular basis, I learn from them.

 And every time I look into their eyes, I’m reminded that the space between their world and mine is only the length of that eight letter word: dementia.

One, whose blank stare appears fixated on the other side of the room, no longer recognizes me.

Only several years ago he was in the early days of retirement. I remember him then, still robust, vigorous, and active. And today, I miss that wry, almost cocky smile of his.

“We love you,” I remind him.

“You’re a good man,” he says in a monotone voice with no facial expression. I wonder if his answer is a standard response he learned years ago, like “hello,” “good-bye,” “how do you do?”

Stepping into the world of another, I ask this former leader in our church, “How are you doing?”  

Without fail he answers the same: “Can’t complain.”

“Looks like you just finished eating. What did you have?”

Like a little boy who has been asked a question above his years of comprehension, he doesn’t attempt to formulate a response but innocently looks to his wife for the answer.

Down the hall, I step into the world of another whose life changed years ago.

Walking her to the dining hall, she surprises me. Instead of the same question she normally repeats over and over, “Where am I?” this time she asks instead, “Who put me here?”

Not sure of the answer and not wanting to agitate her with a guess, I appeal to the highest source possible: “The Lord,” I instantly tell her, masking my hesitation.

“The Lord,” she says, repeating it back to me, seemingly satisfied with my response, at least for another evaporating moment in her life, and then slowly, deliberately she declares, “Yes,” like a math student who has just discovered the answer to an algebraic equation that became suddenly obvious.

Walking out of their world, I get in my car, and as I turn the ignition, I ponder how the space between their world and mine is encompassed by the same love of the One who has us both in his caring hands.

In 10 Gospel Promises for Later Life, Dr. Jane Marie Thibault tells about a nurse’s answer to a dementia patient’s question, “Honey, what’s my name?”

After the nurse told her, the patient said, “Oh, that’s right! Half the time I don’t even know who I am!” Then, pointing to a cross on the wall, she said confidently, “But he does, and that’s all that counts!”

Indeed it is, no matter which side of that space you are living in.

Why bad boys are bad

Last week was a bad week for bad boys. First, 51 year old Bobby Petrino, at the height of his career, got himself fired as the University of Arkansas football coach for allegedly trying to deceive the University’s Athletic Director about the coach’s relationship with the 25 year old football employee and former volleyball player, Jessica Dorrell. Then 11 Secret Service agents were placed on administrative leave for allegedly being involved with prostitutes in Cartagena, Columbia, while preparing for President Obama’s visit. Petrino, the father of four, was one of the top coaches in college football. It took years of successful steps before he could stand in that exclusive realm. And those secret service agents worked long and hard to gain their honored positions in the Secret Service, an elite group whose job it is to protect the president and other high ranking officials. Now, the University of Arkansas is embarrassed by Petrino’s actions, just as the Secret Service is by those agents. Why would these men take such a risk? There’s a scene in the movie, The Help, where concerned friends are trying to set up Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone) with a man. The two are making conversation at a restaurant, waiting for their double-date partners to arrive, and already, Skeeter’s date is half-drunk and making rude comments. Skeeter, the unsouthern southern girl, wastes no time in telling him what she thinks about him. As she stands up to walk away, she asks, “I’m sorry, but were you dropped on your head as an infant?” Maybe someone should ask Petrino and the Secret Service agents the same question. More pointedly, why do men do such incredibly stupid things? After all, Petrino and the 11 men in the Secret Service are only the last in a long line of men who have done stupid things: Tiger Woods, Rick Pitino, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and John Edwards are only a starter list for a huge catalog of names that stretches across history. It can be traced all the way back to the original stupid guy: Adam. From the time Adam took the forbidden fruit from Eve, men have been trying to please women. The problem is, men seem to get confused about which woman to please. Thus, tempted by the fruit of another, men mistakenly imagine the new fruit is different and therefore better than what they already have. And one bad decision leads to another. But, where Adam started it, Jesus stopped it, or at least he gave us reason to hope we could. And he understood that we’ve all done things we’ve later regretted. He stood up for one who was about to be stoned to death for getting involved in one of those stupid things. Two people were caught in the very act of adultery; it was only the woman who was dragged before the moral majority. That’s when Jesus intervened: “Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone” (John 8:7). One by one those arrogant men lowered their heads, dropped their stones, and walked away. The only one without sin that day turned to the woman and refused to condemn her. Then he left her with a command: “Go and sin no more,” he admonished. That’s the seemingly impossible challenge: stop doing stupid things. But, he who issued the command gives us himself, and in him, we discover the possibility of fulfilling it. That should give hope to all of us: bad boys and bad girls.

When travelers find each other

My wife and I were the only customers in the souvenir and gift shop, lone shoppers during an off-season in Daytona Beach, Florida.

The lady at the cash register was kind but guarded, like the person checking your ID at airport security. But something about this lady intrigued me: Was she shy or resentful? Uncaring or prudent? Calloused or bruised?

Directing me to the next aisle, she snapped, staccato style, “Sweatshirts and hoodies over there; caps, next aisle.” Her accent, which I guessed to be Eastern European, was heavy.

Rummaging through the sweatshirts, I found one I liked. “How do you think this one fits?” I asked, trying to draw her into a conversation.

“Da large, better. Medium, too small,” she glowered at me over her reading glasses.

Feeling like a grade school student who had asked a question with an obvious answer yet still unconvinced of it, I was afraid to state my disagreement with her size assessment.

“Where are you from?” I cautiously queried, realizing the question was risky: I feared she would ignore me, refusing to reveal that much about herself, ceasing any possibility for further conversation.

“Europe,” was her blunt response.

I plowed on: “Eastern Europe?”

“Greece.”

“Oh, a beautiful country,” I said, smiling. “I visited there many years ago. I loved all the historical sites in Athens--- the Acropolis, the Pantheon.”

My tourist resume drew no response. But I wasn’t ready to give up, not yet.

“I studied Classical Greek in college. In fact, I majored in it.”

Straight faced, she continued staring right through me as if I weren’t there.

Unable to break the conversation code, I finally turned and walked away.

Three steps down the aisle, I turned back around.

“Someday I would like to visit the monastery at Mt. Athos,” I blurted.

It was like I had said the magic word that opened a secret door; she now invited me in for a visit. Grinning, she looked directly at me: “Holy men of God are there.”

Encouraged, I asked, “Are you Eastern Orthodox?”

“Ahh, yes, Eastern Orthodox,” she nodded, as if I had mentioned a close personal friend.

“I often pray using the comboschini of the Orthodox faith,” I continued, pulling my prayer rope from my pocket.

Smiling like her long awaited dinner guest had finally arrived to enjoy her gyros and baklava, she showed me her prayer rope and then turning around, opened a drawer and pulled out a picture album.

“You look,” she commanded, opening the book for me: “Pictures of my home.”

She was beaming now, pointing out photograph after photograph of her church, her town, its beaches, the mountains, the grandeur of her homeland.

I could imagine her carefully lifting the photo album from the drawer when no one was in the store and gazing into the pictures, slowly inhaling the fresh air of Greece.

“You miss your home?”

The tears in her eyes were her answer.

There is a common thread among us, connecting us to places so dissimilar and so alike. Sometimes, like travelers on the same road, we meet at the intersection of different faiths, and in their diverse expressions we find a commonality reminding us of familiar beginnings, a spiritual likeness that stays with us on the road to new discoveries.

Other times, we bump into each other on the entrance ramp of a shared place, a common culture, even though on that traveled, yellow bricked road, it’s obvious we’re no longer in Kansas anymore, for had we stayed where we were, never venturing to ask---Where? Who?--- we wouldn’t have noticed the other travelers. We’re too familiar with them in Kansas.

Sometimes it’s a prayer rope, or a holy book, or a religious symbol that jars our unconscious longings for traveling companions whose presence carries the scent of our spiritual origins and whose eyes squint toward our ultimate destination. And having waved bye as we travel on, we realize we have just met old friends for the first time.

Again.

But you have to look for them, or you’ll swish by them---clerks at cash registers, waiters at restaurants, seat mates on airplanes---and they’ll miss you, too, as casually as you pass strangers on opposite escalators.

And in those moments when we do pause to look, when we dare to inquire, we sometimes, even if only rarely, find ourselves sharing photographs of our mutual pilgrimage.

And along the long and winding road, those encounters can soothe the loneliness of the lonely, the bitterness of the bitter, the weariness of the weary.

Against her earlier recommendation, I bought the medium, not the large sweatshirt.

But my new friend didn’t seem to notice.

She was too busy showing me her life journey in photographs.


Contact David B. Whitlock, Ph.D., at drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com or visit his website, www.Davidbwhitlock.com