Video: Divinity Dialogues: 2019 Gomes Honorees

May 2, 2019
Video: Divinity Dialogues: 2019 Gomes Honorees
Salma Kazmi, 2019 Gomes Honoree

The 2019 Peter J. Gomes STB '68 Memorial honorees speak on the topic of “spiritual innovation.”

The panelists were:

  • Erik Martínez Resly, MDiv ’12, founder and co-director of The Sanctuaries in Washington D.C.
  • Salma Kazmi, MTS ’09, founding executive director of the Boston Islamic Seminary, former associate director of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, and co-founder of the Center for Jewish-Muslim Relations
  • Varun Soni, MTS ’99, dean of religious life at the University of Southern California (USC) and the first Hindu to serve as the chief religious or spiritual leader of an American university.
  • Vanessa Zoltan, MDiv ’15, a humanist chaplain, and CEO and founder of the feminist production company Not Sorry Productions, who with collaborator Casper ter Kuile, created “Harry Potter and Sacred Text”
  • Kerry Maloney, the School’s chaplain, director of the HDS Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, and an instructor in ministry studies.

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

[MUSIC PLAYING]

QUARDRICOS BERNARD DRISKELL: Greetings again. To all who are gathered here with me at the HDS campus, I am, once again, Quardricos Bernard Driskell, MTS 2008, and this year's chairperson of the Alumni/Alumnae Council. And it was my honor to present the Gomes Honors to five remarkable recipients just a short while ago in Andover Chapel.

And now, we will hear from each of them in a special installment of Divinity Dialogues Series hosted by the HDS Alumni/Alumnae Council. Divinity Dialogues was created by the Alumni/Alumnae Council in 2012 to showcase the inspiring and diverse personal and vocational stories of our alumni. As graduates, we know the importance of stories to our lives together here HDS, and of our individual stories, and how they weave together to make our communal story.

Today, we will hear from the 2019 cohort of alumni recipients of the Gomes Honors. Each honoree will share a bit of his or her story with us now. And although we only have a short time together, we will surely benefit from getting even a glimpse of these very fascinating figures. And so let us begin with our very own Reverend Eric Martinez Riesling, MDiv '12.

[APPLAUSE]

ERIC MARTINEZ RIESLING: It's hard to compete with lunch, so I won't be offended if-- I want to thank the council and everyone who is present here today. This award belongs to the magic that we see in others but struggle to see in ourselves. This award belongs to the first word of a poem spoken for the first time in a pole dancing studio in front of 15 complete strangers. And this award belongs to the last note of a remixed hip hop Punjabi folk song joyfully disrupting the regal halls of the Kennedy Center five years later.

This award belongs to perseverance. This award belongs to Antoine, Big P, and the young people in Ivy City who planned with architects and petitioned city officials to turn an abandoned school building into a recreation center. Carrying forward a dream born over 40 years ago but ignored, even to this day because in our nation's capital, the greed of gentrification eclipses the hopes of generations. Facts.

And this award belongs to Penny Gamble Williams, a grandmother to many an elder in our community, and a spiritual leader of the Chappaquiddick Wampanoag Tribal Nation who is rediscovering her voice at her age to pressure government officials into finally accepting the age old truth that community stripped of their land still deserve a place in this country.

This award belongs to all of the ancestors, and all of the elders, and all of the youth who have been doing this thing we call innovation for a very long time, often, without resources. Often, without recognition. Hiding maps to freedom in freedom songs, rectifying whitewashed histories and community murals, transforming generational trauma through movement, and dance, and prayer. This award belongs to every major social movement that has used arts and culture to move people.

So this award belongs to every major social movement in the history of this country. And this award belongs to everyone who's bout this life, as Osa Obaseki would say. Osa who once answered a Craigslist ad to get involved in our community only to find himself building that very community of over 150 artists. Osa who once taught 500 Unitarian Universalist's about the spirituality of trap music and who now co-chairs our board of directors.

This award belongs to the incredible artists, and activists, and organizers at the sanctuaries and all those beyond the sanctuaries who not only look but see. Who not only listen but hear. Who not only act but strategize to the leaders and those leaders in training who know that communities know best what's best for them who refuse to give people a voice because they're committed to amplifying the voices that people already have. This award belongs to integrity.

This award belongs to turning down partnerships because they're not transparent. And turning down projects because they're not accountable. And turning down profits because they're not equitable. And turning down possibilities because they just don't sit right in the soul. And unsurprisingly, this award belongs to budget deficits.

But it also belongs to donations. And to the gift of being surprised by people's generosity. This award belongs to the rainy afternoon I sat in my car weeping and on the verge of giving up altogether because I couldn't handle one more artist bailing last minute. I couldn't handle one more leader moving away, one more grant falling through, one more conflict breaking out, one more person I so deeply cared for and loved leaving.

This award belongs to being overwhelmed by the grief of so much loss. And this award also belongs to finding Omni Glover with us today. My prayed up, trained up, fired up, truth telling, mic dropping, soul-stirring co-director who call-- yeah!

[APPLAUSE]

And so many adjectives, but I was told I had to keep it to eight minutes.

[LAUGHTER]

Who calls me and our entire community to our higher selves. This award also belongs to falling short, to saying hurtful things I didn't mean, to doing things I shouldn't have, and to not doing things I should have and to, so often, not knowing what to do. This award belongs to limitations and to overcoming limitations through collaboration by uplifting the weak.

And this award belongs to this very community, this HDS community of scholars who serve communion, and of chaplains who risk arrest, and of activists who whisper [NON-ENGLISH] before grabbing the megaphone. This award belongs to my first Halloween at HDS when Tiffany, Jeannie, and I dressed up as three signs of the biblical covenant.

[LAUGHTER]

I was the Sabbath, Tiffany was a rainbow, and Jeannie had the great honor of dressing up as circumcision.

[LAUGHTER]

Facts. In so many ways, this award belongs to my beloved colleagues who are with me here in body and in spirit. To my beloved mentors who are with me here in body and in spirit. To my beloved colleagues who are here with me in body and in spirit. To my beloved professors who are here with me in body and in spirit who, in so many ways, are the first fruits of the world I still believe is possible.

This award belongs to the people who make life worth living. So this award belongs to my family too. To my wife Jackie, whose love reminds me of what's truly important in life. To my family in law whose faithfulness reminds me that all of this is worth it, even though it's hard. To my brother whose thoughtfulness reminds me of the goodness in this world. And to my parents, who are also here today, whose unconditional support reminds me that I am enough.

And this award belongs to my creator whose mercy sustains every breath that I take, whose grace beats the heart in my chest, whose patience guides my calloused hands squeezing ink through silk screens, printing posters on the eve of marches, mobilizing thousands in the name of futures, fulfilling promises uttered by ancestors of generations past, my beloved in whose remembrance my heart finally finds rest. So this award belongs to me in this moment not to hold but to carry on behalf of so many. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

QUARDRICOS BERNARD DRISKELL: Thank you, Rev. And now, we will hear next from Salma Kazmi, MTS 2009.

[APPLAUSE]

SALMA KAZMI: That's going to be a tough act to follow. Salaam alaikum, may God's peace and blessings be upon all of you. I'd like to start with a few words of gratitude. I'm so appreciative of the Alumni Council and the many people who have worked hard to assemble us all for today's ceremony and events. Thank you.

I feel truly honored to be here with you and to be among this amazing group of Gomes Award recipients. I'm also grateful for my family for being here. My parents came to the US from Pakistan and navigated through some immense hardships when I was growing up. More than any place I've studied, it was the standard they set of ethics, integrity, and strength in the face of adversity that form the core of who I am.

Thanks also to Tom Porter who I worked with and for at the BU School of Theology and who is here today. He has been a great mentor and supporter of my work over the past few years. The theme of this year's Gomes Honors, as you've heard, is spiritual innovation. Often, when I mentioned this to Muslim friends, they chuckle.

In the Islamic tradition, innovation gets a bad rap. In fact, there is a very famous hadith or prophetic saying that calls every religious innovation a misguidance. And for many Muslims, the word innovation immediately brings to mind this famous prophetic warning. But of course, to see innovation only in this light is very limited.

Any circumstance not previously encountered requires some level of innovation to navigate, whether intellectually, socially, or otherwise. In the early history of Islam, the decision to simply compile the Quran into a single volume was initially met with hesitation because it was a task not completed during the life of the prophet himself and, therefore, was suspect.

Nevertheless, as the first generation of Muslims approached death, it became clear that the long-term survival of the Islamic tradition would depend on the written preservation of its central text. And so the compilation of the Quran may be considered an innovation. American Muslims and, perhaps, all modern Muslims are constantly running into new circumstances not previously contemplated by our tradition.

Each of these is an opportunity for innovation. We are forced to find new ways of understanding things, new ways of doing things that fit within our context, and address our unique needs. Navigating these realities is something many Muslims do individually, and it is also a journey that needs to be undertaken through the work of institutions.

The scholar Omar Farooq Abdullah calls this work a cultural imperative that must be undertaken deliberately to produce a successful, indigenous, Islamic culture in America. One of the things that inspired me to help build the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, the mosque in Roxbury, was the vision its architects had of blending Islamic and Bostonian design elements. He pursued Dr. Abdullah's cultural imperative through architecture.

I saw that he and others leading the project were trying to reimagine a Muslim religious space as it might look in a new context where few mosques have been built from the ground up. Instead of replicating designs from elsewhere, they were undertaking the work of innovation and, thereby, setting a tone that I found tremendously hopeful for the future of the American Muslim community.

The architect blended the brickwork and arches familiar to Bostonian buildings with a dome and minaret that are found in places like Turkey, and Egypt, and Pakistan. This architectural imagination was a physical rendering of what many Muslims born to US immigrant families have striven to do with their lives. Blending this from here, and that from there, the spiritual and the mundane, the domestic and the foreign into a fabric of lives that feel authentic, and whole, and complete.

My time at HDS was also an essential part of helping me frame the questions and issues that lie at the heart of Dr. Abdullah's cultural imperative. How do I live as a person of faith in a secular society? What has been the path of other religious groups entering the American social fabric? And what can we learn from their experience? How have Muslims in other times and places attempted to answer the questions of modernity? How do I engage intellectually with my peers of other faiths in addressing critical social issues?

Prior to my studies at HDS, I had also spent time studying with traditional teachers in Syria, and I had completed a variety of Islamic, community based, educational programs. HDS offered an important counterpoint to all of these. In traditional settings, the mode of learning is immersive and prescriptive. This student is the recipient of the wisdom of the teacher, and intellectual training is closely intertwined with spiritual behavioral and ethical formation. All of these are beautiful.

My time at the ISP Cultural Center was, similarly, an immersive experience. The community, at that time, was quite insular. And though I was a staff member and had professional responsibilities, much of what I gained from that experience was through my constant companionship with people that put faith at the heart of their lives.

HDS, meanwhile, was an opportunity to step back, to think, to ask questions with and of others who were wrestling with their own questions about faith, community, justice, and spiritual life. It was at HDS that I first attended a student run conference on Islam in America, a still emerging area of study at the time. My time here gave me the language to be able to have meaningful conversations with Jews and Christians, and later provided me with a framework for thinking through Boston Islamic Seminaries curriculum.

At the Boston Islamic Seminary, we tried to reimagine traditional Islamic learning in the context of contemporary needs of Muslim communities and future Muslim leaders. We tried to bring together traditional modes of learning with academic and skill based modes that are more common at HDS and other Western seminaries. We thought about our coursework through three lenses. Text, context, and skills, considering what Muslim communities and religious leaders were missing today in each of these areas, and how to weave them together in an integrated whole.

HDS was central to all of this work. And for that, I am truly grateful. Thank you so much for recognizing all that this school has done for me in the past few years.

[APPLAUSE]

QUARDRICOS BERNARD DRISKELL: Thank you so very much, Salma. And next we'll hear from Varun Soni, MTS 1999.

[APPLAUSE]

VARUN SONI: Good afternoon, everyone. I guess I'm representing the 1990s today.

[LAUGHTER]

It didn't seem like that long ago, but the golden age of hip hop.

[LAUGHTER]

So I'm so honored to be with you today and to return to my Alma matter in this capacity. It's especially meaningful because, as a student here at Harvard Divinity School, I was deeply inspired by Peter Gomes. I believe I met him for the first time right here in this room during a weekly tea. I was inspired by his open heart and his open mind, and by his courageous and prophetic work on campus and in the world.

Indeed, Peter Gomes modeled for me how to bring together the spiritual and the scholarly, the personal and the professional in my life and in my work. And that's probably why I followed in his career path as, both, a university chaplain and professor of religious studies. Over the last 11 years, I've encouraged over a dozen of my undergraduate students at USC to attend Harvard Divinity School and embark upon their own spiritual and scholarly journeys here.

And rumor has it that they nominated me for this recognition. And so I feel like I'm coming full circle. Standing in my alma mater between my mentor and my mentees alongside other distinguished graduates who have transformed the world by transforming themselves. And it's especially meaningful for me to share this moment with those who made it possible.

I'm very grateful that my dear friend, Tony Madon who I first met as a student at Harvard Divinity School, is here to celebrate today as we continue our journey of friendship. Even though I come from a family of physicians-- I have 11 physicians in my family, so my PhD in religion means nothing to any of them.

[LAUGHTER]

I had to redeem myself by marrying a physician, and she doesn't call me doctor either.

[LAUGHTER]

But nonetheless, my parents were unwavering in their support of my academic and religious pursuits. And I'm so happy they could be here today. My wife Shakti, who embodies the meaning of her name as the creative force who animates my universe, is here. And I'm so grateful to her for being here, and also that her first visit to Harvard Divinity School is for this auspicious occasion.

And I feel especially fortunate that my daughter, Tenzin, is here today. She just turned 5 on Monday. Last week, she asked me why we were going to Boston. And I said, because I'm receiving a recognition. She asked me why I was getting recognized and I replied, well, it's for the work that I do. And then, she asked me why her mother, who is a pediatrician, isn't getting recognized.

[LAUGHTER]

She said, "Mama's work is more important than yours."

[LAUGHTER]

"She saves lives, and you just teach people."

[LAUGHTER]

"I don't want to go to your ceremony. I want to go to mama's ceremony."

[LAUGHTER]

It's hard to argue with that logic. She also told me last month that, when she grows up, she wants to be a real doctor like her mother and not like me. I'm just lucky that she showed up today. So thank you, Tenzin. When I was hired as Dean of Religious Life at USC, I became the first Hindu in American history to be the chief religious or spiritual leader of a college or university. All of my colleagues around the country at the time were ordained Protestant ministers.

USC really thought outside the box. They hired me, a non-ordained Hindu attorney. So I was the beneficiary of hope and change in the era in 2008. I have the great privilege of overseeing more than 90 student religious groups as Dean of Religious Life. More than 50 campus chaplains representing every faith tradition in many denominational perspectives, and I get to do this work in the heart of Los Angeles, which according to Professor Diana Eck, is the most religiously diverse city in the world.

And so at USC, we have the great privilege of thinking creatively and expansively about how our faith traditions can be part of the solution to the world's great crises and not part of the problem. And Harvard Divinity School trained me so well for this work. Throughout my career, I've seen firsthand how colleges and universities can be extraordinary locations for reconciliation and engagement.

At USC, we have students from 120 different countries and all 50 states representing many religious, spiritual, and philosophical perspectives, identities, and histories. I've seen students come together from India and Pakistan, from China and Japan, from Israel and Palestine, students who come together from regions that are historically antagonistic toward each other.

And they work together. They learn together. They play together. They love together. And they courageously tell new stories about themselves and about their world. Stories of redemption and healing. Stories of creativity and possibility. And I've seen students from all the world's religions come together around their shared hopes and their common dreams, around their interfaith aspirations. They grow deeper in their own faiths by learning about the faiths of each other by visiting each other's houses of worship, by reading each other's holy texts, and by serving the larger community alongside each other.

But despite the light that animates a student's university experience, there is a long and dark shadow that falls over it too. Over the course of the last several years, my confidential pastoral conversations with students have taken a troubling turn. Whereas, students used to ask me how should I live, now they asked me why should I live. They used to talk about hope and meaning, and now they grapple with hopelessness and meaninglessness.

Indeed, many of our university students are struggling with crippling levels of stress and anxiety. And every year I encounter more depression, more suicidal ideation on campus, and more and more students who are in crisis. What I've noticed from many students is that there is an underlying root issue that they are wrestling with, and that is that they are really, really, really lonely.

I believe that we are now confronting a spiritual crisis of loneliness in American higher education. A new research study show that the loneliest generation in the United States right now is not the oldest but the youngest. Specifically, young adults between 18 and 22 years old. Generation X. Post millennials. Our university students. I never got this question in my first five years on the job that I now get almost every day from students. How do I make friends?

They may have 1,000 friends online, but they may not have any real friends in real life. They may be experts at talking with their thumbs, but not so much with their tongues. And as a result, many university students feel as though they don't have a tribe or a sense of belonging. And in the age of connection, they feel disconnected from themselves, from each other, and from what it means to be human.

And so as the vice provost of Campus Wellness and Crisis Intervention at USC, I think deeply about what it means for young people to feel human, to feel connected, and to feel like they are thriving and flourishing in their lives. And once again, Harvard Divinity School trained me so well for this work. Studying religion here taught me more about what it means to be human than what it means to be God. As I view religion as a language that empowers us to ask and answer the ultimate human questions of meaning and purpose, of significance, and authenticity.

And so even though I work at a secular research university, the practices, perspectives, principles, and pedagogies I encountered here at Harvard Divinity School fundamentally shape the work that I do every day, to support students in their spiritual and scholarly journeys, especially in terms of ritual and mythology, contemplation and meditation, emotional intelligence and resiliency, gratitude and joy, and service and self care.

I now build and run secular programs on campus focused on human connection from a university mindfulness initiative to a new course on well-being, from drum circles to dream analysis groups, from laughing yoga to primal scream sessions during finals, from community teas to coloring book activities. These are all ideas I got from my time at Harvard Divinity School. And I'm not going to lie, also from my kids preschool.

[LAUGHTER]

As members of the Harvard Divinity School community, I strongly believe that all of us here have the extraordinary opportunity to be spiritually innovative as Peter Gomes was by translating the timeless wisdom of our religious traditions into timely action for this day and age. Such an approach means that we proactively engage with secular entities, that we focus on what it means to be human, and that we act and move in the world in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ethics.

And as we do that, may all of us here be deeply inspired to offer our gifts of love and service at the altar of humanity. May we recognize, once again, that we are not isolated beings but deeply connected in miracle and in mystery to this university, to this community, and to each other. And may we all continue to fight on together. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

QUARDRICOS BERNARD DRISKELL: Thank you so very much, Varun. It's good to know that your daughter is teaching you.

[LAUGHTER]

Next, I invite Vanessa Zoltan, MDiv 2015, to speak.

[APPLAUSE]

VANESSA ZOLTAN: I brought my phone up because Dan Smith, my preaching teacher at HDS, taught me that going over is the highest sin of any preacher. Before I get started with my prepared remarks, I actually have a favor to ask of the group. I was chatting with my fellow honorees during our photo session, and they were all mentioning that their families were here. And I was like, oh, man. I thought my mom was being a crazy Jewish mother when she was like, I'm going to fly out for this and was like, no, mom. That's so dumb. So I made them all promise that they wouldn't mention on camera that their moms were here, and they are all liars.

[LAUGHTER]

And so my mom is watching the live-stream. And to make up for the fact that I called her dumb, can you all please say hi to my mom and dad on the camera. Hi, mom and dad!

[LAUGHTER]

I'm sorry!

[LAUGHTER]

I will never assume you're being crazy Jewish parents again. I just lied in front of hundreds of people.

[LAUGHTER]

OK! So first of all, of course, I want to thank the Alumni Council for this amazing honor. It feels strange to be anywhere without Casper and Ariana, the people who co-founded the original podcast with me. In fact, I so hate being on stage alone that I made Ariana design a spin-off podcast called The Women of Harry Potter and the Sacred Text so she could be onstage with me when Casper wasn't available.

And I really want to thank the people who were so supportive of me while I was at HDS. Not just my parents and my brothers but Stephanie Paulsell who basically birthed me.

[LAUGHTER]

Amy Hollywood, Matt Potts, Laura Tuak, Emily Click, Dan Smith, Kerry Maloney, Dudley Rose, Mike Motea, and Cheryl Giles. Many of you are in this room. I'm sure I'm forgetting people. But also my cohort members, Lauren Taylor, Rebecca Ludly, Julia, and then I also want to thank my partner Peter who was not supportive when I was at HDS, and it happens to be because I didn't know him then. But I think that's a poor excuse.

[LAUGHTER]

So my first day of class at HDS, I was in Intro to Ministry Studies. And this beautiful, amazing woman comes up and starts telling a story. Her name was Stephanie Paulsell. And the story that she told was of a town in France called Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. I apologize for my accent. And it is a town in France that was committed to the idea because they were oppressed Protestants in Catholic France to the idea of radical hospitality that whenever anybody knocked that they would open their doors.

And I'm the grandchild of four Holocaust survivors. And this town saved over a thousand Jews from perishing in the Holocaust. And so this story really grabbed me. And it didn't just grab me, but I thought, oh, my goodness, I found my home. I found a cohort full of people who this is the first story that they want to hear on their first day of school. They want to be committed to training themselves to be ready to open doors when people knock.

And I had found my island of misfit toys. Like, my cohort who wanted to be trained and couldn't find other seminaries who would train them, whether it was because they were queer, whether they were atheists, whatever it was that they felt as though this would be their home. And I felt so connected. And then, that second week, Dudley Rose was giving a wonderful lecture, and he coughed a little bit. And about three people stood up and left as Dudley started coughing.

And I was like, oh, I did really find my people. Hypochondriacs. Like, great.

[LAUGHTER]

And then, each of them came back in with water. And I was like, oh, suck-ups. I have not found my people. That, like, super wasn't my instinct. Dudley's not dying. Like, he had to clear his throat. He is fine. But then, I realized that just as much as I was proud of the ways that I was like them, I was excited by the ways that I wasn't like them and the ways that they were going to teach me to have better instincts. I still think they're suck-ups though.

The mission of our organization, which Stephanie coined-- I'll stop talking about you now, Stephanie-- is spiritual practices to prepare people for the revolution. More and more, people are unaffiliated, and are lonelier, and our seas are rising. And so we are going to have to learn how to take care of each other in new ways.

And we are excited about the ways that we do that through our podcasts through 30 programs that now meet all over the world through our live events with Hot and Bothered where we will be treating writing romance novels as sacred. The two biggest purchasers of romance novels in the country are women's prisons and nursing homes. So we are excited to be going into those spaces.

And we are excited to take people on walks that end up being transformative experiences. And none of this would have been possible without my time here at HDS. I found myself at HDS because I worked in education for eight years prior to coming here. And in my eight years working in education, what I realized was that we know exactly how to fix education in this country.

You pay teachers better, you train them well, and we respect them. And children will learn if they have good teachers. We, as a country, just don't believe that poor black or brown children deserve to learn. And that seemed to me to be something that was broken in our spirits. And I did not want to spend my life trying to solve a technical problem when we needed an inspirational and soulful fix.

And the greatest gift the HDS gave me was my colleagues and my cheerleaders. In my senior defense of my thesis, which turned into Not Sorry Productions, Mike Motea, my advisor, said to me, Vanessa, what do you think it is about this project that resonates so much with people? And I was like, what people, Mike? You and Stephanie? Like, nobody knows about this. And he was like, oh, OK. Well, it will resonate with people.

And Mike knew to dream for me before I even thought to dream for myself. But what I've realized is that HDS is not a three year program. I talk to these peers, and they continue to inform me every day of my life. In fact, Matt Potts wrote that line of my speech.

[LAUGHTER]

I am, as we all are, concerned about the future of religion. I am worried that without congregations, we will not have a place to take care of our environmental refugees, to do our blanket drives, to host our AA meetings, and to make meaning of our grief and to celebrate our love. But I was just on a road trip and saw two of my fellow alumni. And I know that what I am doing happens to be visible. And I know that it impacts people, and I am grateful that my gifts can support people in their lives.

And so many of my peers, my friends-- Abby and Olivia, who I just saw in Minnesota and Ohio respectively-- are out there doing the real work of meeting people in their acute pain. So I am grateful for this honor, and I wish I could share it more explicitly with them for they pull me from my despair with the work that they do. I am scared for our future, but my fellow honorees and the other people in this room make me hopeful.

So thank you for keeping me from despair and for this great honor. I released the first episode of Harry Potter and Sacred Text three years ago, and I told the story of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. And I didn't tell them about the suck-ups because I'm so embarrassed for them.

[LAUGHTER]

But what we are trying to do is fill the gap for people who don't have the opportunity and privilege of being in rooms like this at HDS to learn from the people who I learned from to meet the Abby's, and the Olivia's, and the Stephanie's, and even the suck-ups. So I would like to take that little bit of hope that I feel in this room out into the world. Thank you so much. I went over time. Sorry, Dan.

[APPLAUSE]

QUARDRICOS BERNARD DRISKELL: Thank you, Vanessa. And we know that your parents are still proud.

[LAUGHTER]

And now we will acknowledge a member of this year's cohort who, herself, is not an HDS graduate but might as well be, but who is known to many of us in her service as school chaplain, as director of the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life. Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, friends, please join me in a hearty round of applause for the Gomes honoree, Kerry Moloney. Kerry, please come.

[APPLAUSE]

KERRY MOLONEY: Oh, friends.

[APPLAUSE]

Oh, my gosh. Sit.

[APPLAUSE]

[CHUCKLE]

Here's a Sesame Street question for you. Which of these things is not like the others?

[LAUGHTER]

What an honor to be recognized by a school that I am sure I would not have been admitted to had I applied.

[LAUGHTER] And

To be in a company like this, and to be recognized by our distinguished Alumni Council who are out making a world of difference in a world that needs to be different, Vanessa. In a world that needs to be less lonely, and it's such a time as this. Dear siblings, the places in which the world prays, and worships, and meditates are becoming targets of hate and extremist violence that if you are a brown person, if you are a Black person, if you are a Muslim, if you are queer, if you are a Jew, you have a target on your back.

And it is our privilege and responsibility in this place to tend to that, and to try to make the world not only safer but more just, and to work across divides. So I cannot imagine a more important honor for all of us to receive and to hold together, and the honor that belongs not to us but to the people whom we serve, Eric, and to doing the hard work of being negotiators in times of conflict, Sana, to making the world less lonely and to connecting women in prison and bringing them joy with narratives. People in nursing homes. Absolutely extraordinary at such a time as this.

So I too need to hold to the preacher's responsibility to not go over. And I'm not known for my concision, so I'm going to keep myself to 3 comments. OK? The first is something about our beloved Peter. And by the way, Connie Buchanan is peering over us here.

[LAUGHTER]

So let us remember the spiritual innovators of Harvard Divinity School who were the women who invaded this place in the '50s and who keep invading it!

[APPLAUSE]

WSRP.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

Peter Gomes, whom I knew for 30 years-- not nearly as well as many of you-- but I served for a dozen years as the university chaplain across the river at Boston College. And of course, he was in town. And you knew Peter. He is a figure. And then, I was appointed chaplain at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. And Peter was a proud alumnus and a very active trustee. So I was summoned for an audience to Memorial Church.

[LAUGHTER]

Before I went to Lewiston. And if any of you ever had the opportunity to visit Peter in his office, you remember it was outfitted. It was kitted out with all this fabulous antique furniture. I remember sitting on some 17th century rickety piece, afraid I was going to break it, and kind of nervous about meeting the great Peter Gomes before-- I mean, I had met him before, but this was an audience.

And he had a phalanx of people protecting him out there, including the wonderful Jan. And finally, after well after the appointed time of our meeting, he emerged from his office, and with a great flourish, bent to the ground and said, "Madam Chaplain, I am at your service." And so he was. And so he was.

And in that meeting of an hour in his office, he schooled me on what I needed to know about Bates, and told me all the lovely things and beautiful things that awaited me. And he didn't even begin to give me a full hint of the mysteries of that marvelous decade of my life. He also told me all the things that needed my attention. He had lots of opinions about that.

And then, he gave me this great gift. He pulled up from under his desk one of those college mirrors. You know, you can get them in college bookstores. It was a Bates mirror with Hathorn Hall on the top. And he gave it to me. And I said, oh Peter, I can't take this. This is too precious a gift. And he then freely admitted to re-gifting it.

[LAUGHTER]

And he said, with characteristic self deprecation, "My dear, my friends and foes alike would agree that I would do well to be relieved of, at least, one image of myself."

[LAUGHTER]

So off I went to Bates, and Peter was always at my back. Always at my back. He had my back. Everything I asked from him, he would do. Whenever I asked, he would come. And he was the beloved son. He was the prodigal son. When he'd come, we'd slaughter the fatted calf, and everybody came out. He was beloved there.

And he gave me the great privilege of working with one of my dearest friends and best mentors of my life who is here today. Don Harwood, the president emeritus of Bates who is here in honor-- not of me, I think of me-- but of Peter and all that he gave to all of us, and to Bates especially. So that's my first little handful of things to say.

The second little handful of things to say is I'm supposed to talk about spiritual innovation and what I've learned while at HDS. It is a profound puzzle to me that I'm being honored as a spiritual innovator. I may be the greatest traditionalist I know, perhaps, even more so than Peter. So I have come to, kind of, ride the coattails of all the people like you and many of you in the room.

Everything I've learned about spiritual innovation has come from our students here, quite frankly. And my job is to have permanent professional religious whiplash. I go around to everything that's here, and there's a lot that's here, and support it and try to help make it happen. We have a from below pedagogy where we don't try to program them. We need not program from above.  All of-- you see what crops up.

So I go around and crash all these parties, and pray with people, and meditate with them, try to support them, and the easiest thing to do is to love them and to be loved back. So that's my job. But I will say that when I arrived here 15 years ago at the benificence of Stephanie Paulsell, and Dudley Rose, and Bill Grame-- who was dean at the time-- to serve first as the associate director of Ministry Studies and then as chaplain and director of religious and spiritual life, the school was in a bit of a shift. We were trying to figure out what do we do with this new religious landscape. And we were shifting the MDiv curriculum to look like that and to address how we educate people for this time and how they educate us. And one of the things that was being changed was the weekly noon service.

So we had this group of students who would come together to refashion that and to center the voices and experiences each week of a different tradition on our campus, and not to water it down but to make it uni-vocal or multi vocal within its own tradition, but to not do the lowest common denominator thing, which never works. And here, I'm just going to read to you and I'm moving along here quickly, but the opening vows that that group came up with and we've tinkered with a little bit over the years.

Many of you in the room are familiar with this, but some of you may not be. So when we gather each Wednesday in Andover Chapel, or the Braun Room, or outside or wherever it is, this is how we begin our service. And you should know that these bows are now under rigorous discussion by the current iteration of the noon service committee. We're wondering whether or not asking the community to say them, even though they had been written by students, is itself a kind of hegemonic move toward pluralism.

But that's a whole other discussion. And it's so HDS. It's just fabulous.

[LAUGHTER]

So at the beginning of each service, we welcome people. And then, everybody says, in this hour, may we find ourselves in a space of truth and openness. And then, the host groups of the week say, as leaders, may we share our traditions in a spirit of hospitality with those who may not understand what we do or why. Having the courage to be true to our traditions with an open heart.

And then, the participants say, as participants, may we be open and present with our peers in their own context. May we be willing to experience the unknown. And then, everybody together says, in this time and in this assembly, may we embrace each responsibility with earnestness and compassion for our companions. Though we may travel different paths, may we find solidarity, comfort, and hope in our common purpose as a community of seekers.

Pretty good. I rode that coattail for 15 years. I'm still on it trying to learn. And so that created a space every week in which after we say those vows, the Hindu students may rise up, and we may have a puja. The Jewish students may have a Torah study or a tish. Christian groups may have Eucharist or some kind of devotional practice. We praise a lot.

Our most recent one was a preparation for Ramadan with our Muslim students. It's quite remarkable. And I think in those vows we get at the aspirations of what HDS is trying to be about and trying in this world to be about. I would just call out all of you in the room who are doing this work and some of our current students who should be getting this award.

Katie Gordon-- MTS graduating this year-- founder of Nuns and Nuns. The HDS students started this project here gathering of the religious nuns and women religious, who are largely elderly, to come together around joint missions and shared values. Katie's going to be the very first-- when she graduates in May-- the very first Joan Chittister fellow for the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania. Who knew?

Jaime Drucker, MDiv this year, came here as an educator-- wasn't sure what she wanted to do-- became a proctor in the yard and became so indispensable at Hillel that, in January, they hired her as the director of the reform minyan at Harvard Hillel. She's already full-time employed. She's graduating. She's on her way.

Dr. Christine Mitchell graduated with an MD-- I'm going to cry-- in 2012 and has lived through two open heart surgeries, several strokes, many things going on. She's public about that, so I can say that. Just defended her a PhD at the Chan School last week. She works at the intersection of mass incarceration and public health, and she's off to Oakland, California to continue that work.

Reverend Willie Baldrick II, MDiv '15, associate pastor of the historic 12th Baptist Church here in Roxbury. Founder and CEO of Bold Mold, which takes young, black boys and keeps them alive, and gets them out of high school and into colleges. Remarkable. Ellie Jablonsky, MDiv '17. Unitarian Universalist interfaith chaplain newly appointed at Tufts New England Medical Center working this year to ensure that the institution has, for the first time, an institutional observance of Ramadan.

And on and on and on, like so many of you, the people that-- where is Susan Lawler? There she is. Susan Lawler's team has chronicled through her remarkable library of alumni stories in her career services video. Watch it. It's astonishing. So all of these people living into HDS's aspiration to support the formation of contemplative activists or active contemplatives who know that study without activism risks irrelevance. And activism without study risks despair.

So I pray that when I look into that mirror that Peter gave me, which is the one he left all of us too, I may live up to even some of those aspirations and some of the standards he had and the hopes he had for me. I pray I may live up to and into the image of God that I see reflected in my husband, Jim, who is at my side in every single day of all the work I do. Unpaid labor here at Harvard Divinity School. Happily, happily, happily to do so.

[LAUGHTER]

And that I may look something like all of you. That's what I hope to see. And finally, my third thing and I'm really getting close to the end because, boy, can I shut down a room. Right? I'm here to close things out. Two handfuls of good words. Benedictions. Benedictions or blessings from students.

And this one from a first year MDiv, Sarah Fleming, who is a recent alumna of Williams College. And she wants to be her college chaplain when she grows up. And that person is here today. Rick Spalding. Last month. Sarah and her colleagues in the HDS Socialists were hosting the noon service. And it happened to be on the 51st anniversary of MLK's assassination.

So at the end, she got up and blessed the room with these words. And I bless all of us with these words through Sarah. May we embrace the complexities of our ancestries and our histories looking beyond the versions that are filtered, airbrushed, commercialized, and apoliticized to find their roots. May we disrupt capitalist disruption, rejecting fear and cynicism in favor of an embodied solidarity so that we can build a wholly different future together.

May we fiercely refuse to give up hope, however tempting it may be to do so in the patriarchal, white supremacist society in which we all live. May we, like King, have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can and will have three meals a day to nourish their bodies, education and culture to nourish their minds, and dignity, equality, freedom, and beauty to nourish their spirits. And may we live into this vision addressing the need not only for bread but also for roses. Here at HDS, in our communities, and in our world, may we work to make it so.

And finally, the last blessing from our students over the years at that noon service committee, our words to leave and live by that we always say at the end of each noon service. And I think they are true for today. Today, we have celebrated each other's beauty and complexity with respect and love. Let the power of that love direct and sustain us from this time forth until we meet again. Go in peace.

[APPLAUSE]

QUARDRICOS BERNARD DRISKELL: Thank you, Kerry. Indeed, you are an inspiration to us all. Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, friends, may I present to you, again, Eric, Salma, Varun, Vanessa, and Kerry, the 2019 Peter J. Gomes honorees.

[APPLAUSE]

BJORN SORENSON: Thank you all. Greetings. My name is Bjorn Sorenson. I am the vice chairperson elect of the Alumni/Alumnae Council. This has been an amazing day. Congratulations, again, to all of our nominees. If you'll have a bit more patience, for a continued celebration, we have a little bit more work to do. Being a member of the Alumni/Alumnae Council is quite an honor for me.

I have served on the council for the past several years, and I'm constantly struck by how dedicated this group is to helping HDS and to bring alumni together. Before we conclude our festivities, I want to thank our members finishing their terms of service at the end of this year. Please, come forward when I call your name. John Coggan, MTS, 2011.

[APPLAUSE]

Celine Abraham MDiv, 2011.

[APPLAUSE]

We also thank Gloria White-Hemmon, MDiv 1997, who has represented HDS for six years on the Harvard Alumni Association Board of Directors. Gloria.

[APPLAUSE]

And just a personal note of thanks to Quardricos, who we will honor more specifically in private later with much fanfare.

[LAUGHTER]

It's been a pleasure to serve with you. And it's been an honor to have you as our fearless leader over the last year. We've been so fortunate to have all of these incredible people on our board for the last three years. Thank you John, Celine, Gloria, and one other note, though he's not able to join us today, Bernie Campbell, MTS 1988, is another outgoing member. And I will thank him in person in New York when I see him later this week. So please, join me in thanking all of these wonderful folks.

[APPLAUSE]

QUARDRICOS BERNARD DRISKELL: Thank you, Bjorn, thank you John, thank you Celine, and thank you Gloria for your years of service to the HDS Alumni/Alumnae Council. And thank you to all of you for this celebration today. So let us go forth now inspired by our Gomes honorees. Let us continue to love. Let us continue to listen. Let us continue to act, and to seek, and to help those who are lonely, and to continue the conversation. Congratulations honorees. Here's to the Harvard Divinity School. Blessings to you all. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

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