Tori Murden McClure - MAC Commencement 2016

COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS Tori Murden McClure, M.Div., J.D., M.F.A. President, Spalding University May 7, 2016 — Athletic Convocation & Wellness Center

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REMARKS OF TORI MURDEN MCCLURE

President of Spalding University

Philosophers like to ask if a tree falls into forest and there’s no one there to hear it, did it make a sound?

The corollary for ocean rowers is if a woman alone in the middle of the ocean in a row boat throws a screaming hissy fit and there’s no one there to hear it, no one there to hear her voice, did she have a voice?

What are you guys looking me at me for? I’m not going to give you the answer. [laughter] For this Commencement Address I will try to do three things. I will touch on your College theme for the year which is Voice. I will tell a story or two, and then I will end with the top ten things I think I know.

First I must congratulate you. Voice is a grand theme.

Voices can be light as a feather yet they can carry the weight of the world. Voices crackle, sizzle and pop.

Voices may be as fuzzy as a box of kittens or as sharp as broken glass. Voices have the power to sour milk, to sugarcoat suffering and to spice up laundry. We can etch voices into marble, chalk them on sidewalk or write them down on napkins. Graduates what do you have to say for yourselves?

Oh sorry you missed the cue! This was the moment you have to go “WOOHOO! YAHOO!” whatever, it’s your time. So graduates what do you have to say for yourselves?

Graduates: WOOHOO! YAHOO! Not bad for beginners.

There are many definitions of Voice: number one — sound produced by vocal chords, number two – a manner of speaking associated with an individual,

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number three – the right of a person to share in decision making or to express an opinion about issues of the day.

The first definition is the least interesting – sound produce by vocal chords. Yesterday morning I was with Diane Rehm, the talk show host from the National Public Radio. She’s in Louisville, Kentucky, my home. Right now Louisville is hosting the Kentucky Derby so everyone else is in Louisville. I was happy to leave. [laughter]

them or become entangled with such people. Do not even bother to have lunch with such people, instead carry the lessons of Mount Aloysius and the Sisters of Mercy.

Spend time with people who do not take jobs they do not enjoy, to purchase things they do not need, to impress people they do not like.

These actions are a form of insanity. It is a form of insanity that is all too common in our culture of conspicuous consumption.

I asked Diane if she had any advice for the graduates of Mount Aloysius College on the subject of Voice. She said, “the sound of your voice is not important.” Diane’s voice by the way is pretty gravely.

But she added, “it’s what you can create with your voice, what you can accomplish with your voice that matters.”

The Sisters of Mercy measure success not by what one takes from life but by what one can give to life. In the end, you must make a living, your parents and guardians are counting on this. But be sure to make a life as well. It is more important to become a person with meaning than it is to be a person of means. What you have in life is not nearly as important as who you have in your lives.

Our very first voices are the cries of infancy. These cries are interminable variations on “I am hungry,” “I am thirsty,” “I need to be changed.”

This brings me to the second and more interesting definition of Voice - Voice, a manner of speaking associated with one individual.

After infancy the voice of childhood is all about defining and redefining the words “I,” “me,” and “mine.”

This definition is one where voices begin to count. I was flattered when President Foley describe me as “a Voice always in transition.” I relish the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote: “Speak what you think today in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again

Some people never outgrow their focus on defining and redefining the words “I,” “me,” and “mine.”

I’m here to tell you that such people are tedious. Do not marry

though it contradict everything you said today.”

Avoid individuals who are knowit-alls. I’m here to tell you that such people are tedious, do not marry them. Do not become entangled with such people, do not even bother to have lunch with such people. Instead spend your time with learn-it-alls. People who are always learning or ever changing and their voices are always in transition.

I cannot abide people who are always saying the same things over and over and over. You all know at least one of these people, they only care about one thing and they’ll tell you about that one thing over and over and over. I’m here to tell you that such people are tedious. Do not marry them. Do

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not become entangled with such people. Do not even bother to have lunch with such people.

My advise to the graduates especially — you must care about and be willing to use your voices to discuss a minimum of three things. The three things about what you may care tomorrow may not match the three things about which you care today. Fear not. Ralph Waldo Emerson also wrote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divines.”

The three things about which I care today are — one, compassion, two, justice, and three, fun.

I will end my remarks this morning with fun, so more about that in a minute.

For now I will tell you only what Hilaire Belloc wrote, “Nothing is worth the wear of winning but laughter and love of friends.” Do not underestimate the boldness, genius and magic to be found in fun.

Now, a word about one of my other things about which I care, which is compassion. I am a great sinner. I paused to allow you to imagine my sin. [laughter] You got it wrong. [laughter] These things I wish to discuss today are about competition. It should not surprise anyone here that I like to win and I usually do. [laughter]

However many years of experience have taught me that I’m not at my best when I act in the spirit of competition. I am at my best when I act in the spirit of compassion.

The word “passion” comes to us from the Latin pati which means suffering. What you are passionate about you are willing to suffer for. The prefix com means with.

Compassion, then, is the willingness to suffer with another. If I’m in a competitive relationship with someone, it doesn’t help me to figure out how we’re the same. It only helps me to figure out how we’re different so I can exploit those differences and grind you into dust. [laughter] If I am in a compassionate relationship with someone, it doesn’t help me to figure out how we’re different. It only helps me to figure out how we’re the same so I can reach across our common ground and support you. Only on this common ground can we reconcile our differences and our diversity and move forward toward the hallowed ground of peace and justice.

The third and final definition of Voice is – the right of a person to share in decision making or to express an opinion about important issues of the day.

Graduates we need you, the world cries out for educated voices. There are too many ignorant people talking about the issues of the day.

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But, I have a warning for you. It’s a lesson I learned in Antarctica about whenever I’m absolutely sure I know the way to go, and I’m absolutely sure that the world should just shut up and follow me.

You don’t go anywhere in the Antarctic without your glacier glasses on because you could go snow-blind. It’s a bummer. [laughter] There were eight different days in Antarctica when snow came horizontally, down the surface, and we were in a whiteout.

In a whiteout, up is white, down is white, left is white, right is white and you literally can’t see the ground in front of you. How you navigate in a whiteout is you send the youngest - I was young then - member of the expedition team out into the mist. If you can see that person standing on the ground, you can see the ground.

It’s all good for you. But if you’re the person out in the mist you look like you’ve been drinking things we don’t talk about to college students. [laughter]

How you navigate is take your compass — it’s a standard mountaineering compass with a sighting mirror. It’s also known as the “idiot’s compass” because the compass shows you who is lost.

You can take your compass and you look for any landmark due south.

So this one day I was really happy.

I had a perfect landmark 180 degrees due south. I skied right for it, skied right for it, and skied right for it. Colonel Ron Milnark was my second that day. It was his job to correct any deviations of

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my course. He said, “Tori, you’re veering right.” No, I’m not — I was young and perfect.

“Tori you’re veering right. That’s it!

He’s a dead man, I’m going to have to kill him.

[laughter]

[laughter]

I checked my compass. No, my landmark was due south. Skied right for it, skied right for it, and skied right for it.

So I turned to give Colonel Ron Milnark of the United States Air Force my very best murder death stare.

“Tori you’re veering right.” No I’m not. I was a graduate of the National Outdoor Leadership School. I knew how to use a compass here by God.

[laughter]

[laughter]

[laughter] [applause]

So I checked again. No my landmark was due south. Skied right for it, skied right for it, and skied right for it.

Vaclav Havel once said, “Keep the company and seek the company of those who are seeking after truth

When I did that I realized my landmark off in the midst was a spot of frost on my glasses.

and run away from those who are sure that they have found it.”

No one of us is perfect. I have often bragged that the best thing about my faults is the joy that my faults bring to others. President Foley knows this to be true.

Presidents understand this. Our faults bring great joy to others.

Each person is a blend of dust and divinity. Each is mortal, each heroic and we must struggle to close the gap between the promise of humanity and the performance of human beings. I firmly believe that if we practice compassion, human beings are capable of traversing the distance between possibility and fact. But we must absolutely keep our glasses clean.

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I spoke of compassion and I will speak of fun very soon. In the middle I had planned to talk about justice. Last night I had dinner with some folks who thought I should talk about row boats, so I’m going to talk about row boats and justice. [laughter] All commencement speakers walk around with row boats. [holds up model of row boat]

tions. My satellite telephone got wet — saltwater and expensive technology don’t go together. So I went for seventy-eight days with no contact with anyone on land, so they couldn’t say, “Tori look out a hurricane is coming.”

The morning Hurricane Daniel arrived — September the 5th, — the boat capsized five or six times.

So you’re thinking — she’s so well educated, does she not know the difference between five and six.

[laughter]

[laughter]

It took me two tries to row a boat alone across the Atlantic Ocean. The first try, I left from North Carolina bound for France.

I rowed three thousand miles.

Eight days out I lost communica-

When you’re inside this cabin bouncing around like a ping pong ball, you just see the ceiling going by. You don’t get to count how many times it went by.

[laughter] So after the fifth or sixth episode I thought, I’m getting out of this cabin, out of my watertight hatch, I’m going to tie into my safety tether to crawl across the deck to get the emergency position indicating radio beacon better known as an EPIR. You turn it on and it says “HELP;” you don’t turn it on, it doesn’t say anything.

And by the time I get out there waves are washing over the boat.

It was doing this really annoying submarine thing. When the boat goes so far under the surface of the water that your ears pop it is a bad sign. I went back into the cabin and tied this distress beacon to my life-vest.

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The boat went through five or six more capsizes that day. Not setting off that distress beacon is the hardest thing I have ever done.

boat. I set up my distress beacon and was picked up by a container ship named The Independent Spirit.

You can’t make that stuff up.

If you go on to the ocean in a row boat alone, and you get into a hurricane, you cannot ask another human being to come and get you out of the trouble you put yourself in. That is justice.

[laughter]

[laughter] Or at least I had a justice day. I made it through that storm and spent the next day bailing the water out of my boat. Oh, and I left out a really important detail. Two of my capsizes were end over end pitch rolls. One capsize dislocated my shoulder, the next capsize put it back into place. [laughter] This is my definition of a bad day. If you combine this with the fact that I skied to the South Pole, you’ll understand why — as President of Spalding University — I do not decide whether our students get a snow day. [laughter] I make our provost decide whether our students get a snow day.

But I bailed water out of the boat, got it floating again, and that night a hurricane named Earl passed well north of my position. Earl triggered a number of rogue waves and I capsized four more times. I thought, I can’t take this anymore and I’m going to get out of this

I returned home to Louisville, Kentucky - the home of all great ocean rowers. [laughter] There’s no ocean near Kentucky. [laughter] And I took a job working for Muhammad Ali, the boxer. It was Muhammad Ali who said, “Tori, you do not want to go through life as the woman who almost rowed across the ocean.” So I went back.

For the second trip I went the easy way. I left the coast of Africa and rowed to the Caribbean. If you leave the coast of Africa in a barrel, you will get to the Caribbean. [laughter] If you row that barrel it will get there ever so much faster. I successfully landed on the island of Guadalupe, stepped out of the boat, into the arms of a man named Mac McClure and I married him about a month later.

So there, now I’ve talked about row boats. Happy?

how we use our gifts is an act of faith.

We all face obstacles, each and everyone of us. We all have mountains to climb and oceans to traverse. We all tangle with storms, we all face waves. We take on the challenges before us one step at a time, one stroke at a time.

Mount Aloysius College has prepared you well. And where preparation meets opportunity, success is born. In the tradition of the Sisters of Mercy, I know you will integrate critical intelligence with moral action. You will link the life of the mind with the real-world struggle for justice and human dignity. You do not need to earn an academic degree to see the pain on our streets, but I firmly believe that educated people are better equipped to alleviate that pain. As scholars you are creative individuals. You possess a clarity of mind and an energy of will. I’ve no doubt you will meet the challenges of the coming years. I hope that this faculty has prepared you well for your next adventures.

You’ve warmed yourselves by the fires of those who raised you here at Mount Aloysius College. You gathered the tinder of knowledge and the time has come for you to go out and set your own fires. I mean that metaphorically.

[laughter]

[laughter]

One of the greatest tests in life is to make the most of our gifts and for those of us who believe the source of those gifts is some higher power,

I like to end Commencement Addresses with a few platitudes, one or two of which you might actually remember.

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My advice to you is avoid all “stupid” that begins with the phrase,“Hey, hold my beer. Watch this.” [laughter] Number seven is not original to me. It was William Shed who said it, “a ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”

Number eight is one of my personal favorites. If you have to keep something that you are doing a secret, then perhaps you should not be doing it.

Number nine - one that is important for college and university presidents — don’t take yourselves too seriously, no one else does.

Socrates said, “All I know is that I know nothing.” I do not know anything for sure, but I will outline ten things that I think I know.

Number one - do not use your voice in a way that makes others feel small. If making others feels small becomes a habit, it will make you smaller.

Number two - silence is golden and if silence should fail you, duct tape is silver. [laughter] Number three - if the carrot is big enough, you can use it as a stick.

Number four - road blocks only block the road, they do not block the grass, the path, the water or the

way less traveled. Road blocks only block the road.

Number five - it’s never too late to have a happy childhood, I’ve had several and I have many more planned. For the corollary, I may grow old but I will never be old enough to know better.

Number six - learn from the mistakes of others, you cannot live long enough to make them all yourselves. For the corollary, it is difficult to become old and wise if you are not first dumb and stupid, young and stupid.

Now there are gradations of stupid.

Stupid level one gets you hurt.

Stupid level two gets someone else hurt. Stupid level three involves police and lawyers and you might never own your own home.

Number ten - do not believe everything you think. Whereas Socrates said, “All I know is that I know nothing.” I have every confidence that when you leave Mount Aloysius College, you will go out, you will teach, heal, feed, and build. You will inform, advocate, comfort and guide. You will criticize, organize, contribute and in a thousand other ways serve people and causes.

When this Commencement service ends, let your service to the world begin anew. Go out and make Mount Aloysius College, it’s faculty, staff, trustees and President Foley proud. Make your friends and families proud too. And for this, I thank you.

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TORI MURDEN MCCLURE

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Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters

Tori Murden McClure is a master of the art of the journey. Whether that journey is rowing alone across the ocean; skiing an icebound continent; scaling a formidable peak or plumbing the depths of the human soul. For Tori Murden McClure, the journey, however arduous, is always about transformation. If the world sees in her first-inhistory feats an amazing adventurer, they are certainly right. But if that is all they see then they are missing the more important truth. Tori Murden McClure is, above all else, the voice of the seeker. Her feats of exploration and adventure include — the first American and first woman to ski the 750 miles across Antarctica from the ice shelf to the geographic South Pole, the first woman and first American to conquer the summit of Antarctic’s snow-clad LewisNunatak Mountain, and the first woman and first American to row solo across the Atlantic—an eighty-one day journey aboard the 23-foot boat American Pearl that brought her over 3,300 miles and through one hurricane.

To those singular achievements can be added ice climbing in Alaska, kayaking in the Indian Ocean and even a stint living with the Maasai people of Kenya. For these accomplishments, she has been honored by the governments of France and Russia, the International Rowing Society, and both the American and European Academies of Sports. And in 2009, Tori Murden McClure’s book about her transatlantic crossing A Pearl in the Storm was published to much acclaim, and has since been adapted for the stage as the musical Row. As impressive as her journeys of physical courage are, they are equaled by Dr. Murden McClure’s personal and professional journeys for their similar tests of endurance, character and faith.

At fifteen, a young Tori Murden ventured alone from Pennsylvania to Kentucky and moved in with her grandmother in order to attend the prestigious Louisville Collegiate School. She later received a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Smith College, followed by a Master of Divinity from Harvard , a juris doctorate from the University of Louisville Law School, and incredibly, topped it all off with a Master’s of Fine Arts in Writing From Spalding University—a truly remarkable list of educational summits scaled.

Tori Murden McClure has used her education and talents in a career of serving those in need. For this she is rightly recognized as a humanitarian. This passion likely dates back to her role as a protector and later advocate for her special-needs brother Lamar, perhaps one of her greatest teachers. In her work life, she has served the homeless in several capacities, tended to the sick and dying as Chaplain of Boston City Hospital, and sought to revitalize distressed neighborhoods through her work with the City of Louisville Empowerment Zone.

It is no surprise that Tori Murden McClure’s life journey brought her to higher education and eventually to the presidency of Spalding University. She is the ideal model for the core mission of higher education which is to introduce young people to the idea of a search for meaning, encourage them to test their limits and redefine boundaries, and to launch them on their own journeys of discovery.

Since becoming a college president, Tori Murden McClure has claimed one more world’s first. In 2011 Spalding University was declared the world’s first certified Compassionate University—a designation conceived by renowned religion scholar Karen Armstrong and awarded by the Compassionate Action Network. Since then other institutions have followed but Spalding University blazed the trail.

To return to the idea of journey, one sees a convergence between Tori Murden McClure’s journeys of physical adventure and her journeys of mental and spiritual formation. That her athletic feats were always about more than adventure for adventure’s sake is revealed in the title of her Harvard Master’s thesis “The Theology of Adventure.”

Both kinds of challenges are paths to self-knowledge, journeys to discover one’s own unique voice. While the former is a distilled, hyper-intense experience and the latter an extended act of discipline, both require the same tools: endurance, faith in self, and curiosity about the world. And their purposes are the same: self-discovery and insights into our human condition. To the seeker, it matters not whether an Illumination comes in a literal flash of lightning or a perspective is won from a lone voice echoing off a mountain top, or if it comes from scholarly explorations on the nature of God, the role of law, or the power of art. For the seeker, to be human is to be on the journey.

And through her book, Pearl in a Storm: How I found my Heart in the Middle of the Ocean, we learn something else about Tori Murden McClure: she doesn’t want to make the journey alone—she wants her voice to inspire other voices. In sharing her great adventure with us, she is calling us all to follow her. Not in a small boat on an empty ocean, or on skis atop an ice pack but on the journeys that our own heart desires—on the path to the discovery of our own voices so that we too can experience that life lived to the fullest.

Victoria Murden McClure, for your heroic modeling of the art of the journey, for the courageous voice you so exemplify, for the hope you inspire in each of us, and for your compassionate embrace of your brothers and sisters, Mount Aloysius College proudly confers upon you this Seventh Day of May, Two Thousand and Sixteen the degree Doctor of Social Justice honoris causa.

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Est. 1853

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Est. 1853