2014 December Commencement: Photogallery
At the annual ceremony on Saturday, December 13, 2014, the Trinity community celebrated the commencement of 84 baccalaureate, Adult Studies, and graduate students.
The Counseling Psychology Graduate Studies program recognized its first graduating class with eight students receiving their master of arts degrees.
“I have long imagined and prayed for this day, and I am so very proud of each of these eight students, their professors, administrators, and staff who took this vision and made it a reality,” said Dr. Michael DeVries ’74, long-time Trinity professor and director of the Counseling Psychology graduate program in his Commencement address. “This is a great moment in Trinity’s history and a highlight of my career as a Trinity professor.”
Families and friends of all the graduates gathered in the Ozinga Chapel Auditorium to witness the presentation of the diplomas. The invocation was delivered by Rick Riddering, director of Adult Studies Business.
The song of response was sung by the Gospel Choir with solos performed by Ciara Deal and Elizabeth Jones, accompanied by Tre Davis and Otis Bowden.
The Commencement litany was led by Bonnie Rauch ’14, an Adult Studies Business graduate.
Alumni greetings were offered by Bill DeRuiter ’09, director of alumni relations, and the benediction was given by Rev. Willis Van Groningen, Ph. D.
Don’t Leave Trinity without Your Imagination
Commencement, December 15, 2014
Dr. Michael DeVries ’74
Trinity Christian College
Thank you Provost Robbert for that gracious introduction. Board of Trustees, President Rudenga, Colleagues, Family and Friends, I am honored to stand before you today at this Commencement Ceremony. And to the students graduating today I say–Congratulations on your achievement! You have run the race, you have finished the course. Praise God!
Graduation is always a special time. I am grateful I am able to share this wonderful celebration with you. I am especially thankful for the opportunity to see a dream come true—the first class of graduate students in the Counseling Psychology program will be awarded master’s degrees here today. Congratulations to this great group of students at this historic moment. I have long imagined and prayed for this day, and I am so very proud of each of these eight students, their professors, administrators, and staff who took this vision and made it a reality. This is a great moment in Trinity’s history and a highlight of my career as a Trinity professor.
On a lighter note. I am also thrilled along with others here today to have one time this semester I can dress up in academic garb like Pastor Bill does every day here at Trinity. I have not noticed others picking up the fashion, but I applaud the effort to raise awareness of our academic identity. Right on Pastor Bill!
Before I share with you a few remarks this morning, I want to be mindful of the importance of keeping my speech short. In all my years attending Commencement ceremonies I have yet to hear anyone say I wish the Commencement speaker had gone on longer. But it is important to begin with a little background of my time here at Trinity. I will skip over the first 25 years of my life, eventful as they were, and start with the year I first began my teaching career at Trinity. It was 1977, and each year was something special, so let’s take the time to review year by year up to the present. Let’s see, after 1977 there was 1978. Oh, that was a great year. And then 1979 came along and 1980. Wow this may go on for a while. Reviewing my 38 years ago may take longer than one of those three or four-hour Adult Studies classes. Well, just summarizing then…
It has been a long strange and wonderful journey these last 38 years and four years as a student. So much has changed at Trinity. I have met and worked with so many wonderful colleagues and students. I have grown up here, taught much, learned much and really loved the journey. There have been great joys but also a few tragedies and heartaches as well. Like a long-term marriage (which I am also blessed with), my love for Trinity has evolved and deepened through the good times, the struggles, and the successes. But this day is really about looking forward with hope and vision for the future-your future as graduates, beginning your journey into greater participation in our society and greater responsibility. With that in mind, I want to make just a few remarks on a theme I hope you will find inspiring as you look back and as you look ahead toward your future.
To set the stage I do want to tell you one Lake Wobegon-like story of a Trinity long ago—unlike Garrison Keillor’s stories this one actually happened. The events of this story took place before 1977 to when I was a student here at Trinity in the early 70s. Back in the early seventies Trinity was caught in a financial squeeze and a philosophical crisis. Enrollment was down, inflation was rampant, money was scarce and students and faculty were uncertain about the “direction” the college should take as a Christian institution of higher learning. There was considerable tension between administration, faculty and students. Being president of Trinity has never been an easy job, but it has probably never been more difficult than during that time.
Needless to say there were strong opinions and strong personalities on campus during this time. We were a much smaller community, and students as well as faculty were often frustrated by the gap between their expectations and the reality of this fragile flower of a liberal arts college. Back then, it was a college custom at the beginning of the academic year to have a campus-wide picnic. It was a casual affair, an opportunity to mix and mingle held up on the hill above the creek behind what is now Tibstra Hall. Soon after the picnic began, the president of the college arrived in his best suit, looking stiff and out of place in the crowd who were dressed in flannels and jeans. At some point during the festivities, the president wandered a little too close to the creek. Maybe you can guess what happened next. As the president turned his back, a swarm of male students snuck up behind him, picked him up by his limbs and proceeded to throw him into the creek, polished suit and all. I will never forget the look of shock on his face as he sunk into the shallow and muddy waters of the creek. The crowd turned to the source of the ruckus and roared its approval. The president was not pleased, in fact he was downright angry as he climbed dripping wet out of the creek looking like drenched cat. He stormed off. Unfortunately, his inability to take the prank in good humor and laugh at himself did not endear him with the students and it was not long after he left the college.
Now we are in the process of looking for a new President here at Trinity, but something tells me the Search Committee will not share this story as they interview potential candidates for the position of Trinity’s next president.
So why tell this story? As a warning to future presidents not to go near the creek dressed in your best suit and tie? Not really, but the story may show something I hope, graduates, you will take with you. When you leave Trinity with your degree, remember to take your imagination with you. It took imagination for students to seize the moment and execute a symbolic action that revealed the character of the president and his staid and aloof relationship to the college community. Who wears a suit and a tie to a picnic anyway? Now graduating students you may not have done anything quite so extreme as throw your president into the creek, but I hope you have experienced the power of imagination here at Trinity. Let me share with you why imagination and education are so closely linked and so vitally important for the world we live in today.
What is imagination? Simply put, imagination is our capacity to link perceptions and thoughts in meaningful ways. Imagination is productive not merely fanciful. Images are the outcomes of that capacity–some of which are purely psychological as in dreams, and others take on material form as in symbols or actions. There is much talk today in and out of Christian academic circles about imagination, symbols and images. One can turn to philosopher Charles Taylor and his concept of the social imaginary. Christian philosopher, Jamie Smith, speaks of Imagining the Kingdom of God. Walter Brueggemann, Reformed theologian, has highlighted the value of a “prophetic imagination”.
All of these thinkers regard imagination as central to our humanity and to our vocation as followers of Christ. Images gather and compress meanings in ways that extended discourse, sermons, lectures, and the like seem to miss. Today we find ourselves awash in a world of information, but it is images that capture the meaning of our lives. We rely on images when propositional notions of truth often described in terms of principles, rules and procedures fail us. As Jamie Smith has pointed out, the formative power of images shapes how we think and act pre-intellectually, pre-rationally. Images keep us close to the emotional and spiritual heart of things. You will forget much soon after leaving Trinity, but your education at Trinity has been successful if you have been deeply formed by a Christian imagination, expressed in foundational stories, legends and images taken from Scripture, the history of the church and the lives of the saints.
We here at Trinity, in the Protestant wing of Christianity, have been suspicious of visual images of our faith, but once in a while we get it right. Stop and look carefully perhaps for the last time at the stained glass images in this chapel. They tell the story of a world and its creatures, revealed in the images of Creation, Fall, Redemption and New Creation. Don’t leave Trinity without inscribing these images within your heart. Furthermore, keep in your memory the images of professors who go with you as a cloud of witnesses inspiring and guiding you. Hang onto to the vision of a faith that can move mountains of despair, injustice and corruption. Cling to the image of a servant Christ who invites you to be co-workers with him–busy forming and re-forming this world until he comes again.
Finally, let me charge you to go forth today from Trinity and imagine a world where all children have enough to eat, imagine a world in which unarmed black men need not fear white policemen, imagine a world where gay, bisexual and transgendered persons feel loved and accepted in our churches and schools, imagine a world in which women can walk the streets alone without fear of assault, imagine a world where drones deliver mail and not missiles, imagine a world where the gifts of women and girls flower into leadership roles in the church and state, imagine a world where every prisoner, terrorist or not, is treated with human dignity, imagine a world in which the old and the sick can die in peace, imagine a world in which workers make a liveable wage, imagine a world where every pregnancy is celebrated and every child loved, and finally imagine a world without concussions due to violence of football. I had to throw that in there. Sorry football fans.
Graduates–take the images of God the Father, the risen Christ your Redeemer and the Holy Spirit with you and imagine a new heaven and new earth promised to us by a God who cares for this very earth and its starry firmament. On this day you deserve to rejoice at what you have accomplished. You have earned your diploma, but I say to you new graduates: don’t leave Trinity without your imagination. Go, imagine and dream. And may all your dreams of Shalom come true.
Thank you and God bless.