2008 Baccalaureate Ceremony Speech

President Sexton, faculty of the Steinhardt School of Education, Culture, and Human Development, alumni, parents, family members, friends, honored guests, and graduating students, as Dean and on behalf of the faculty, and staff of the Steinhardt School, I am proud to offer formal and official congratulations to you, our graduating class of 2008.

Bravo!

I also congratulate and honor you, parents, family members and friends -- who have supported our graduates.

Your belief in our graduates and your hopes sustained them throughout the days of their education at New York University. – even those days that may have seemed doubtful.

And you, dear graduates, Class of 2008, as you leave the Steinhardt School, and (some of you) leave New York, you end a chapter in the story that you have been creating called your life.

Your parents and many of your loved ones here today probably remember your first steps, your first day of elementary school, first lost tooth, first date, first rejection letter, first day of college, first job offer....

Your life has been measured in firsts.

But today's first is different.

When you step outside this magnificent hall this afternoon, and leave the ceremony at Yankees Stadium tomorrow, you will be graduated for the first time from New York University.

You, in a new, independent and graduated way, will be responsible from now on, for making your own firsts.

You have spent the last four years working to develop your individual talents and abilities.

Your accomplishments today are due to your gifts and efforts, but you are also here because of the help you have received from those who love you.

Look around you, look for the faces of the people who helped you believe in yourself even when you could not.

Look at the friends who stayed up with you during the all-nighters; who helped you land the internship or practica, attended your recitals and your exhibitions, who held your hand when your heart was breaking, who stayed with you and pulled you back together when you had made a complete fool of yourself, and then made you laugh.

I spent 23 years at Boston College, a Jesuit University, and have my own roots in Ireland and the Catholic faith. The Irish understanding of friendship is rooted in two words: Anam which means soul, and cara which means friend.

So an anam cara is a friend of one’s soul, a soul friend.

In his book, Anam Cara, A Book of Celtic Wisdom, John O’Donohue gives us a theology of friendship.

He tells us that to have a soul friend, an anam cara, is to have a friendship that is both an act of recognition and belonging.

The recognition arises out of the act of attending, listening as your friend and family have listened to you. Listening with a generosity of ‘self forgetting,’ in which there is no “I” in the the moment, but only “you.”

In the early Celtic world an anam cara was a teacher, a companion, a guide, a person who listened, understood, and reflected back the truth of the soul honestly encountered.

It is in that act of shared reflection we come to know ourselves. Think of your friends who have been your guides to your self-knowledge, self-understanding, who have said to you, “I know just what you mean,” who have called you out for being less of a person and said, “You’re not acting like yourself, who have said to you: “I am here for you, I will be here for you.”

You may not have known you were hearing ancient Celtic wisdom spoken. Have you had friends with whom you have you collapsed in laughter? And of course we are happiest when our happiness is mirrored in a loved ones laughter.

And in the act of knowing you, an anam cara comes to belong to you as you belong to your soul friend.

Graduates, even as we celebrate your accomplishments today, we acknowledge the webs of connection that supported you and allowed you to achieve what you have, those who have held you in their circle of belonging.

People are healthier, happier, when they have attachments to others. The infant needs to be held securely in loving arms for healthy development. Sick people heal faster surrounded by their loved ones. We need to be loved. My mother, who is 96, says, the only way to have a friend is to be one.

Of course when you open yourself to the possibility of being anam cara, you open yourself to risk.

A few years ago, I was in my friend, Kevin's, kitchen. Kevin's five-year old nephew, Kieran, had just returned from church and he was telling us what a good person he is. "I love everyone," Kieran said. He drew a circle with his arms and said, "I love everyone in this whole, wide world." "Kieran," my friend said, "Do you love Mary?"

Kieran's forehead wrinkled up. His eyebrows knit together, as he stared hard at me and he thought a long time. And then he said, "No." My friend said, "But Kieran, if you love everyone in the whole wide world that means you love Mary. Because she is in the world."

And Kieran said, "No. There is no more room in my heart."

Teachers, psychologists, you who have heard of Piaget, know that Kieran, five-years old and pre-operational, did not see that, logically, the parts are contained in the whole. He focused on the world and lost sight of the individual.

And we do the same. We focus on the glorious abstraction,
the idea, the movement, the issue, and fail to recognize and hear the individual, concrete, particular and singular.

We draw a circle in our mind that defines our whole wide world, and find, like Kieran, no more room.

Graduates, if you measure your life by how much you love others, rather than how much you are loved, you will find happiness and deep love.

Paradoxically, You will find your anam cara. As you love, you will find others to love you.

Hold onto and make new friendships that will sustain you and make you happy even as you develop your individual and unique excellences.

When you go out into the world, try to touch lives different from your own, challenge yourself to make new friends, different kinds of friends. Step outside your circle of comfort when there is no more room to embrace friends less fortunate than you in New Orleans or Myanmar, friends in faraway places – like Ghana, China or Abu Dhabi -- and friends close at home – look to your own community to see what is needed.

So here is my friendship blessing from John O Donohure,

May you be blessed with good friends.
May you learn to be a good friend to your self.
May you be able to journey to that place in your soul where
There is great love, warmth, feeling, and forgiveness.
May this change you.
May it transfigure that which is negative, distant or cold in you.
May you be brought into the real passion, kinship and affinity of belonging
May you treasure your friends.
May you be good for them and may you be there for them;
May they bring you all the blessings, challenges, truth,
And light that you need for the journey.
May you never be isolated.
May you always be in the gentle nest of belonging
With your Anam Cara.

And please, class of 2008, return often to your alma mater so that we may celebrate your successes, and hear about who and what you have learned to love, who you have reached out to, and who has been enriched, enlarged by your great gifts.

Dean Mary Brabeck