Live well, do good, be true

By Byron Borger

This post originally appeared at the blog Booknotes. It is from the book Serious Dreams, a collection of commencement speeches.

LIVE WELL, DO GOOD, BE TRUE: AN INTRODUCTION

Here is my long introduction to Serious Dreams.  There was one more set of edits after this version, but this edition is handy for me to share here, with our compliments.  I hope you enjoy it.

It’s funny how, when somebody seems destined for great things in our culture, we say, “She is really going to go far,” as if there is great virtue in leaving home, moving away, heading out to, well, anywhere but here. It is almost a cliché that young adults who move back to their old hometowns (let alone to their childhood houses) are losers. After all, who doesn’t want to “go far?”

Yet there is also another set of voices these days calling us to stay put, live locally, celebrate the small and mundane, form communities, and discover vibrant ways of finding home in a culture of displacement.

Graduation speeches–and, at first glance, maybe even the speeches in this little volume–tend towards the first view. “Oh, the places you’ll go,” the great Dr. Seuss predicted. Who isn’t inspired by the encouraging word to really “make something of yourself?” In some Christian circles, much is made about God’s call to change the world and our man- date to transform the culture. I like that breathy, exciting rhetoric–you’ll see it in my own speech, I hope. But such an attitude can be damaging. So allow me to say here at the outset that there is nothing wrong with staying put. We don’t have to go far; we don’t really have to go anywhere new or different or big. In fact, many of our wisest writers here in the hot-wired, fast-paced, twenty-first century do not invite us to the highest paying jobs, to the glitz of the big city, or to halls of power and prestige. Rather, they invite us to quiet, ordinary lives in small towns, caring for extended family and friends–not “going far,” but staying home.

From the esteemed Kentucky farmer, novelist, poet, and essayist, Wendell Berry, we are inspired to develop a sense of place, caring about local regions, watersheds, rural places. From Presbyterian pastor and writer Eugene Peterson, we hear the themes of paying attention to local details, practicing the presence of God in the ordinary and the mundane. Books like the one by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove drawing on old monastic wisdom called The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture praise the value of steadiness. Stability may not sound that enticing to a fresh-out-of-college young adult like you, but for those who are serious about living into the contours of a meaningful, good life after college, stability is important to consider alongside the louder calls to “go big or go home.” Maybe part of what it may mean for you to live well and do good is to be true to your own hometown.

Maybe you will be inspired by these energetic speeches to head out into the world and be used by God for Christ’s Kingdom’s sake, and that might take you to faraway cities and exciting, innovative jobs. But I hope you will also consider what Steve Garber calls “common grace for the common good”–which is a pretty big idea–that God cares about common graces built into creation such as good friends, healthy food, imaginative art, sustainable neighborhoods, helpful stores, nourishing families, trusted spouses. God is at work in many small, ordinary, human things such as work and play and art and citizenship, and we are invited by God to cultivate these common gifts, for the good of all. Our salvation in Christ is for this very purpose: to live humanly in the world that God loves, so that we, our neighbors, and our neighborhoods may flourish. Few people say this better than Amy Sherman, whose inspiring chapter reminds us that our success is for the sake the of broader community.

This big vision of the common good is often lived out in small ways. But these exciting talks delivered with great passion on days given to celebrate commencements could be misunderstood as a call only to go big, to go far. They should not be misunderstood, as if we are calling you only to extraordinarily great things.

Don’t feel bad for getting an ordinary job with a plain-sounding title and an unremarkable salary in your major which, maybe for you, was a mixed-bag, anyway. You don’t even have to feel bad for getting an ordinary job that is not in your major! That’s just the way it works sometimes.

Yes, most of us long to see the world healed and made a bit more whole. We want our own professions and workplaces to be transformed so they are better, healthier, serving the world in the way they should. Many of us long to play a part in the redemptive story of God. There is nothing good about living a boring life–what Thoreau called “quiet desperation.” But this call to find a life of purpose and joy by taking up our vocations in the world doesn’t necessarily mean doing big, crazy things. We don’t have to be extraordinary. We can, as the Bible sometimes says, live quiet and peaceful lives, blooming gracefully where we are planted, learning to care and mature in ordinary discipleship.

As elder social justice activist and leader in the cause of racial reconciliation, Dr. John Perkins, reminds us in his challenging graduation speech offered at Seattle Pacific University, “you have enough to learn more.” I think he meant that, as college graduates, you have learned how to learn, to think well, to study, to develop your own personal library, to figure stuff out. You have the skills and self-discipline and habits of heart that will allow you to continue being life-long learners. You will continue to grow and thrive. You will need to because this “making a difference” stuff, whether in a posh office at a Fortune 500 company or in returning to a familiar summer job for a season or two, takes time.