But for tonight, I’m all you have. So I have distilled a few things that I think are true; things that are true about the human heart; things that I want to share with you tonight.And the most basic truth—most basic for us in this time and place because it is the onemost obscured by the society we inhabit—is the truth articulated most poignantly byBooker T. Washington. Washinton was born into slavery and rose to prominence afterthe Civil War as a leader of Southern blacks. In 1895, speaking to an American Southstill struggling with Reconstruction, Washington wanted to urge blacks to stop looking tothe North for their needs and for their future, so he told this story.
There was a ship lost at sea for many days which suddenly sighted a friendly vessel.From the mast of the stranded ship was seen a signal: “Water, water. We die of thirst.”The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back: “Cast down your bucket whereyou are.” A second time, the signal, “Water, send us water!” went up from the distressedvessel. And was answered: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A third and fourthsignal for water was answered: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain ofthe distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket and it came upfull of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River.
Cast down your bucket where you are!
In less poetic language, this is what I have sometimes called practicing the discipline ofplace. To practice this discipline is to believe that to suffer one’s place and one’s peoplein the particularity of its and their needs is the primary basis for finding love, friendship,and an authentic, meaningful life. This is nothing less, I would argue, than the key to thepursuit of Christian holiness, which is the whole of the Christian adventure: to live inlove with the frailty and limits of one’s existence, suffering the places, customs, rites,joys, and sorrows of the people who are in close relation to you by family, friendship, andcommunity—all in service of the truth, goodness, and beauty that is best experienced directly.
Now, what am I saying? Does this mean that I think you should always stay in one place,that you cannot be called elsewhere, or that you ought to forever limit your own horizons.No. I am neither foolish nor naïve enough to think that this is either possible or even agood thing. What it does mean is that the human heart, your heart, will never flourishand blossom if it is forever pining after the next thing, or captured by the false promise ofsomething better just out of grasp, always seeking satisfaction somewhere other thanwhere it is. Rather, it is that marriage between the endless internal horizon of your heartand the limited, restrained, concrete life of geography and community that has borne themost delightful and satisfying fruits of human history.
So cast down your bucket where you are.
This is at once the most radical and the most conservative thing you can do with your life.Yet you are heading out into a very conventional, middling, controlled world. Oh, theywill tell you that their marches for progress and rights are daring, that they are radical.Or they will tell you that their religious revivals are conservative, that they are the moralcenter. You will hear it all, but the truth is that for the most part, people are in the gripsof a boring, lifeless ideology of personal fulfillment, choice, and upward mobility. Welive in a society of tourists—and if tourists have one thing in common it is this—that theyare not at home.
Many if not all of you are off to college somewhere to further your education. This is nota bad thing, and may become a very good thing for you, but I am here tonight with awarning. The world of higher education is a strip mining operation, plain and simple, andyou will become the raw resource being mined. This is the result of a system designed todiscover and refine the most meritorious among you and ship you off to whatever spot inthe world you will be most “productive.”
You will hear over and over and over again, in many different forms, that nothing mustget in the way of making the most of your social and economic opportunities. No ancientbonds of tradition must hold you back (look to the Future, they will say); no loyalties toyour home, to the place of your memory and your belonging must interfere (you can be aJayhawk anywhere, they will say); no sentimental attachment to those who havebefriended and loved you can count (think of all the diverse experiences you will miss,they will say).
I say, resist! Resist the spirit of the age. It does not have your welfare in mind.
Castdown your bucket.
If you do, they will say you are crazy, or foolish, or worse. You will be a heretic in thechurch of convenience and exploitation and false freedom which feeds at a trough ofwaste and ruin.
See also what Sharon Astyk would say to our graduates: As You Go Out Into the World…
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