A reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans, Chapter 12, beginning at the first verse.
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Good Morning.
I spent my summer back in my small hometown on the outskirts of Buffalo, NY. I wasn’t conducting life-changing research nor was I interning for a top consulting, investment banking, or venture capital firm like many of my friends here at Harvard.
I worked in a variety of capacities this summer—a brief tenure as an intern in my Senator’s Downtown Buffalo office, a gardener, a house painter, two hectic months as the Interim Executive Director for my town’s Youth Services program following the unexpected passing of the previous director, and, above all, a swim instructor for my five-year-old neighbor, AJ.
Many of my summer evenings and weekends were consumed spending time with AJ. We built his first Lego set. I went to his pre-school graduation. I spent hours with our families on Saturday and Sunday mornings watching his tee-ball team. But of everything we did together, I grew the most helping AJ learn how to swim.
At the beginning of the summer, he couldn’t go much farther than the steps of the pool in his backyard without some sort of flotation device, and it became my mission to have AJ swimming without any help by the time I came back to Harvard and he started kindergarten. How hard could it be to teach somebody how to swim? How quickly I learned…
We started off as elementary as possible: just getting him to put his face in the pool took nearly an hour one afternoon. But as he got the hang of it, AJ’s progress sped up exponentially. By early August, with significant teaching assistance from his family and my family, AJ was swimming laps of the pool without any help. Mission accomplished!
One evening in late August our families were gathered by the pool after spending the afternoon together, and my mom asked me to show AJ how to do a cannonball. I was initially hesitant. Was AJ old enough to do a cannonball? What if he hit his head? What if something went wrong? Was I too old to do a cannonball? Would I make myself look like a fool? What if I messed up my neck or hit my head—I had to go to work the next morning? But my mom and AJ insisted, so I conceded and went for it.
After my cannonball, I asked AJ if he could do the same, but he was already one step ahead of me. He ran as far back in the grass as he could, took off for the pool, leaped into the air, tucked himself into a ball, and made a pretty large splash for somebody not even half my size. As he surfaced and swam to the side, the crowd around the pool let out a collective sigh of relief underneath a copious round of cheers and applause. He did it! The look on his face was a mixture of excitement and shock that I can only call pure joy.
I swam over to give him a high-five, and as I got to the ladder, AJ looked me square in the face and asked, “Ben, did I touch the clouds?”
The Harvard student in me wanted to tell him no, no person’s splash, no less a five-year-old person’s splash, would be able to touch the clouds. I tried first to see if there were no clouds, which would let me off the hook, but such was not the case. I couldn’t say no—this huge leap of faith was the collective success of so many smaller leaps this summer which were filled with so much trust. “Of course you did AJ! I am so proud of you! You did such an amazing job!”
“Did I touch the clouds?”
The question still resounds in my head today, as it has every day since he asked me. By that point in the summer, my job in town hall had worn me out. Rather than being allowed to work on new youth programming or community outreach events, I spent much of my time in my office fighting off the latest political gossip, drama, and maneuvering of the week, and I began to wonder whether my dreams of a career in public service or social justice work were really worth it. The night before AJ did his first cannonball, I was looking at consulting internships for next summer.
“Did I touch the clouds?”
It’s so easy as an adult to be cynical about a question like that, and, I submit to you, it’s even easier to be cynical about a question like that in a place like Harvard—where fixation on practicality and effectiveness, on getting THE grade, THE internship, THE job offer, far outweighs the quest for personal enlightenment, happiness, and spiritual growth.
Too often, I think, we students operate from a perspective of scarcity. What grade do I have to get so that [insert name of Wall Street firm] will hire me over my classmates? Will my concentration actually be cost-effective in the workplace? What extracurriculars will look best on my resume?
This paradigm has to shift in us individually and at Harvard collectively, and it was AJ who showed me that. Rather than wondering why we should be able to do something we love or take a risk on a project or idea, it’s time to shift our thinking and ask why we shouldn’t be able to do it. Why shouldn’t I be able to be a history concentrator? Why shouldn’t I want to be an educator, an aid worker, an academic, a minister, a morally accountable politician, a good family member? Why shouldn’t I be able to advocate for climate justice, racial justice, economic equality, and gender parity at home, on this campus, and out in the real world? Why shouldn’t my splash and your splash and our splash touch the clouds?