Invocation

DEAN OF THE TUCKER FOUNDATION

As we gather this morning to celebrate a shared journey it would seem appropriate to pause before our Creator, seeking guidance in the preservation of those recent signs which give hope:

Hope born of receding arrogances—of those promoting international warfare in pursuit of world order, of those advocating domestic violence in pursuit of a higher morality;

Hope born of renewed wonder for both the miracle and the frailty of intellect and renewed respect for university purpose—not solution of today's crisis but guarantee of that civilized margin necessary to rational probing of tomorrow's issues;

Hope born of an awakening to the hard odds against winners, in the Russian roulette of the drug culture, and the degrees today not granted—one that never will be—because that awakening came too late;

Hope in a year which saw a little more of poetry, a little less of politics, and fading rhetoric—diminished use of the third person paranoid "they" to explain all human existence this side of perfection, and return to a more honest "we" and accountable "me";

Hope born of extraordinary resilience of those in academic field work, daily assaulted by human indignity— whether in the segregated Southern school for the blind—or the integrated Northern school—waiving tuition for the white South African, demanding payment of the black from Roxbury;

Hope in the humaneness of Indian Americans on this campus, who by their presence reach across centuries of pillage and paternalism, to give Dartmouth the chance to make good on a 200-year-old promise.

These are the stirrings, the signs, the hope.

May our Creator help us to insure that the sum total will count for something, not only in earthly matters, but in the higher drama of the universe. Amen.