The Dartmouth Club of New York City
February 7, 2002
Rev. Dr. Stuart C. Lord
It seems almost American to have a schedule that rivals that of the President's. We wake at what seems to be the crack of dawn. We attempt to squeeze in a workout, or negotiate a peace agreement to get the kids out of bed. Then, it comes time for that dreaded commute to work---as we unsuccessfully try to read the newspaper on an overcrowded train, or listen to the radio while car horns are sounding off around us. We manage to get to our jobs, only to find out that those reports that are due tomorrow, were actually suppose to be submitted yesterday. We spend the morning in meetings, work through what everyone else calls lunch, and nearly forget the fact that this evening, we are serving as captain of the carpool, and must get out of the office in time to pick up the kids after soccer practice.
By the help of nothing less than a benevolent being, we actually complete those reports right before the boss starts to look for them (for the second time that is). We fly out of the office---just under the radar screen--and drive like a NASCAR star to get to the soccer fields in time. Though we would never admit this to our children, we're weaving through traffic like a New York cab driver, passing anything and everything that stands between us and that next stoplight. Then, we make the sharpest of corners into the school parking lot, only to see an all too common site.
Once again, we are the last of the carpool captains to arrive, and the soccer coach gives us that look---you know the one, that look, like we somehow meant to leave our children, and the neighbor's children (mind you) waiting outside in the cold.
We drop everyone at their requested destinations, and we finally make it back home. Yes, the good news is we're home. But the bad news is we have only 2 hours before bedtime, and we still need to accomplish that long list of things that goes into being a parent, a homeowner, a husband, a wife, a daughter, a son, a neighbor and a friend.
As the story goes, we almost always make it to bed much later than we had planned, and then we wake up the next morning only to do it all over again. By the time the weekend comes, we are either too tired to do anything substantial, or we are trying to play catch up on the things that we didn't get done during the week.
Considering the amount of time and energy that it takes for us to live our daily lives as Americans, many of us are left wondering how we could possibly take on another commitment.
How can we squeeze another hour out of our already jam-packed day?
Or, how can we ever be in a state of mind to do anything on the weekends but rest and relax?
Considering the fact that service does take time and energy---perhaps time and energy that we imagine ourselves not to have---it seems entirely logical that we might catch ourselves asking, "How Can We Afford To Serve?"
Well, I am here tonight to ask, "How Can We Afford Not To Serve?"
Now, I could stand up here and fill your heads full of the most disturbing of facts. I could give you the appalling statistics of how many high school graduates cannot read at a sixth grade competency level, or how many homeless people will wander our cities' streets tonight, hungry and hopeless. Or, I could pick up the newspaper and read you countless obituaries of teenagers innocently gunned-down by gang crossfire in this country. However, instead of approaching the topic of service from the angle of needs, I want to view it from an entirely different perspective, namely, that of resources.
Often people ask me, "Why Serve." "Why should I take time out my busy schedule and get involved?" It is indeed a simple question, and it leads me to respond with an even more simple answer, "Because You have something to give." Each of us, I am truly convinced, has something meaningful to give back to our community: a talent, a knowledge, a skill, a patience, a pleasantness, an energy or an understanding.
These gifts can take on many forms and serve even more functions. However, I have found, that when we start to consider the ways we might give back to our community, many of us often underestimate our talents, or misinterpret the significance of our abilities. Yes, it seems that a common myth in our country is to assume that only doctors and lawyers have the type of skills and knowledge that translate into volunteer services for the community. For example, it is not a far stretch for us to imagine a doctor going to a free clinic downtown and volunteering her medical services for a few hours on the weekend. Likewise, it doesn't take much for us to imagine a lawyer volunteering to draw up a contract for a nonprofit organization on his spare time.
What typically does elude us, however, is picturing how any professional---professionals like the ones here in this room tonight---can make substantial and lasting contributions to their communities.
A man by the name of David Forward has authored an informative and inspirational book entitled, "Heroes After Hours." I encourage all of you to read it, if you ever find the chance.
In the book, Forward chronicles the life stories of 16 professionals---all from Fortune 500 companies---who have taken their personal and professional resources and applied them directly to educating inner-city children, feeding and housing the homeless, comforting the sick, and saving the environment. After hours and on the weekends these "secretaries, stockbrokers, computer programmers, executives, and factory workers" are bettering the quality of life in their communities.
One of the case studies in Forward's book is a Vice President for one of the leading financial companies here in Manhattan. By day this woman is negotiating multi-million dollar business deals, and by night and the weekends she is taking that same drive, intensity and intelligence,
and channeling it into a tutoring and mentoring program for at-risk children in New York City's Hell's Kitchen---a program that she herself designed, developed and secured funding for. In the process of getting the program off the ground, this woman had to take on the New York Board of Education and the superintendent of schools to find a physical space for the youth and mentors to meet.
She managed to take those same negotiation skills that she honed in the boardroom, and use them with the superintendent of schools, persuading him to let the youth and mentors in her program Use His Offices for a meeting space.
This case study of the Vice-President who launched a tutoring and mentoring program in Hell's Kitchen, coupled with the numerous other stories in Forward's book, shows us how the tangible and intangible aspects of our professional lives can make a powerful and practical difference when taken out of the context of our careers and applied directly to the needs of the community.
The fact that We All Have Resources To Give Back To Our Communities....Let me repeat that: The fact that We All Have Resources To Give Back To Our Communities is a point that David Forward seeks to drive home on every page of his book, and it is one that I hope you will take with you, when you leave here tonight.
Marianne Williamson once said,
"In every community, there is work to be done.
In every nation, there are wounds to heal.
In every heart, there is the power to do it."
The pitfall of too many professionals in the field of service is that they talk so much about "Why to Serve" that they never get around to talking about "How to Serve." These two topics, I would argue, are altogether inseparable.
It's like sin and confession, a professor of mine once said...
"one without the other doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense."
The point being that we need to know exactly, how it is, that we can get involved and make a difference in our communities. I am humbled to say that a week doesn't go by at Dartmouth without a hand full of individuals asking me this very question,
"Hey Stuart, or hey Dean Lord, how can I get involved?"
I always answer their question with one of my own,
"Well, what's your passion?"
That is to say,
- "What social condition would you like to see redeemed?"
- "What sight in your community would like to see changed?"
- "What group of people would you like to help live a better life?"
My purpose behind questions such as these is to empower people to think about what is absolutely meaningful to them. Because it is when you take that interest, or that issue, or that personal passion, and match it with a compatible community need...that a truly transformational service experience springs to life.
For all too long we have lived with the misconception that service is a one-way street---a one way street in the sense that only the person being served is transformed. Well, I have spent the better part of my professional career witnessing countless examples of two-way streets --- two -way in which the server's own life takes on a whole new significance and seriousness because of their service experience. I have seen students change their majors, doctors move abroad and retired grandparents take in troubled teens after their own children have long since been raised.
In fact, I have seen that two-way street grow into a full-blown freeway, as students cannot manage to contain their passion for service and end up getting entire fraternities and sororities---60...70....90...college students---working together to improve literacy in local middle schools or complete housing projects in an underdeveloped neighborhood. It is seeing these transformations that has led me to believe that the server has just as much to gain from the volunteer experience as do those being served.
In terms of what it actually means to match passions & resources to needs, I think back to when I first accepted my position. Having done a little homework on the student body and the surrounding community before I arrived in Hanover, one of my primary goals was to convince my staff and the Dartmouth Community, to continually see service from new and unconventional angles. In short, "to literally, and logistically, think outside of the box."
For example, each year the Tucker Foundation would offer X number of ways people could get involved. The programs and projects were extremely organized and always well run from the smallest to the largest of details. However, what immediately caught my eye from the start was the fact that we were never reaching those individuals whose passions fell outside of the parameters of our programming efforts. So, I went on an all out campaign to try to persuade those around me to start thinking of service in different terms. Instead of us defining service, why don't we let it define us? Why don't we strive to accommodate the passions of everyone who wants to serve and make a difference? Why don't we offer X times 2, or X times 5, or X times 25, opportunities to get involved.
How can we as a Foundation, as an institution of higher education, afford NOT to cultivate a passion into an opportunity for transformation?
It is with this philosophy in mind that we created an initiative called "Random Acts of Kindness." Last spring, we gathered as many Dartmouth Greek members in a room as we could fit. We then told them that our goal was to recast the definition of service at Dartmouth. For the next two hours they would go forth as groups or individuals and do anything---let me repeat that...ANYTHING--- that would help to improve the quality of their community. After two hours, the group would convene back at the same location, and we would talk about those experiences over pizza and drinks. As you may of guessed by now, there was certainly a dramatic difference in terms of the size, shape and scope of their contributions.
Some of the students, for example, drove to Norwich and spent some quality time with individuals in a nursing home. While others, stood on the street corner downtown and shook people's hand.
Still others, went back to their fraternity and sorority houses and cleaned up their rooms...
(I had one parent tell me later that it was the first time such an occurrence had EVER happened with her son).
(In fact, she invited me over for Christmas break to see if I could, once again, inspire her son to do the same at home).
The lessons that we learned during our debriefing time later that day with those students was the fact that service can take as many forms as it does functions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson use to say that
"the soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth."
I think much is the same with service. What we perceive service to be, as well as how we reveal it through our own thoughts and actions, is something for each of us to decide. Each of those students I just mentioned followed their own soul's directions when they left the room that day. Some were led to understand their community in the context of their living unit, others Dartmouth College, others Hanover, and still others the Upper Valley. However, the common denominator that was present throughout each experience was the fact that they all effected change in positive ways.
No one tried to judge whose contribution meant more or less to whom. And no one worried about how their contribution would stack up against society's definition of service. They simply knew in their own hearts and minds that they had made a difference in the life of their community. It was a feeling and a realization that I hope has empowered them to think differently and act deliberately. This was the message that we learned firsthand that day, and it is one that I hope you take with you when you leave here tonight.
Find your passion and follow your soul's lead. Don't get bogged down with definitions and excessive details. Simply serve. Somehow and in some way....make a difference in your community.
So when you go home tonight and turn on your television, watch the images coming from our inner-cities, listen to the reports on teenage addiction and inadequate healthcare, and then remember the number of schools that are failing the most basic of educational standards.
And when you turn off the television, take some time to think strategically about your own gifts: think about those things that you are good at and enjoy doing. In fact, ask those around you, how they think your resources might meet community needs.
And after all of that, if you still find yourself asking,
"How Can I Afford To Serve?"
I challenge you to ask yourself another question:
"How Can We Afford Not To Serve?"
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