How It Seems To Me

Who cares?

Who cares how it goes for you at Westmont?

I’ll tell you who cares.

Obviously, you care. And your parents care. And the faculty care.

Not so obviously, though, the staff care. The many people who work in jobs that may be invisible to you during your years at Westmont, are doing so faithfully and gladly behind the scenes to help you have the best possible experience here.

I was invited to share a few things about my connections with Westmont, so I’ve strung together several personal vignettes as connecting points for four things that we, as Westmont staff, care about: your adjustments, your academics, your friendships, and your faith.

First, we care about your adjustment to campus life. Some of you will experience tears of homesickness. Others will experience the thrill of escape. I was among the latter when I showed up over 45 years ago this week. I was a Baptist preacher’s kid. My parents divorced when I was a senior in high school. I “got away from it all” by coming to Westmont. I didn’t have a clue how hurt I was on the inside. And I had no idea there were people on the staff I could turn to for the help I could have used at that point. The Student Life staff, the RDs, the Career & Life Planning staff, the Counseling Center staff—these people are here explicitly, and visibly, to help you in the transitions you’ll be facing in the coming weeks and years. But the invisible staff, like me and many others, are caring about you and your adjustment as well. About a quarter of all our employees are Westmont alums, and many of the rest went to other Christian colleges where their experience of leaving home was not a lot different from yours. We’ve “been there, done that.”

Second, we care about your academics. I arrived as an Honors-at-Entrance hotshot, and it took a whole semester to reality-check me. Instead of studying for my Intro to Psychology final that December, I and a bunch of other students spent the night at Refugio Beach. I had an A going into the final but got a C in the class. Do the math.

Fortunately I was able to pull it out, turn it around, and graduate cum laude as a member of the Omicron Delta Kappa Honor Society. So don’t fret if your study habits aren’t fully refined this coming semester. You’ll have time to get back on track (that is, unless you’re aiming for Summa Cum Laude! 🙂

Third, we care about your friendships. You’ll make friends here for a lifetime. At one point after I graduated, I had Westmont alums as my realtor, my banker, my business partner, my financial advisor, my lawyer, my neighbor in a duplex … and my wife.

BUT, you need to choose your friendships well. I didn’t. I didn’t realize that so much was at stake, and at risk, in choosing my mentors. Westmont was going thru a hard time in the years I was a student. Three presidents, some minor scandals, even just the aftermath of the turbulent 60s. Those were hard years at Westmont, and the commitment to keep Christ preeminent was much thinner then than now. The mentors I chose, rather than keeping me on track in my faith, contributed to my wandering years, to my divorce, to a whole lot of unnecessary pain.

Thankfully, though, that pain is not unredeemable. The purifying God can do thru pain is one of the miracles of life. He retrieved me from the pit so that now I can speak from experience about the importance of your choices about whom you’ll look up to while you’re a student. Maybe one of you, hearing this, will be spared the disappointment of choosing friends and mentors who will drag you down rather than lift you up.

Finally, we care about your faith. One of the traps of religion—all religions and everywhere—is how easily we can pretend the outward things. As a student, I was involved in Sidewalk Sunday School, I attended worship and prayer meetings and the Bill Gothard crusades, I was student body president. I thought I was pretty good at faith, but I was only pretty good at fooling myself. My heart was corrupt. All that stuff was external—my effort to look good on the outside so that I could try to feel good about myself on the inside. I actually didn’t, until years after college, finally “get it,” … realize that I’m loved by God no matter what. We, the staff, hope, and pray, that you’ll be able to avoid detours like mine on the road to genuine faith.

Before I close, I want to tell you a bit more about how the staff can go about caring for you at Westmont, and then I’d like to share a miniature teaching on prayer.

First, about caring for you as a staff member.

I’m glad you’re here. Glad that you’re here at Westmont. That’s why I always look forward to opportunities to connect with you, especially early on.

Like so many other staff, my work behind the scenes doesn’t give me nearly as much opportunity as the faculty have to get to know you. Over the next four years you’ll see me if you study abroad—which most of you will—because I’ll do the safety training segment of your orientation. You may—or may not—notice I have a tent in the field with you at Potter’s Clay. Other than that though, for most of you I’ll simply be one of those familiar strangers whose faces you vaguely recognize around the DC, where I like to connect with students over lunch.

That’s how it was for me as a student. Of course I saw the mailroom staff, and the maintenance staff, and the bookstore staff, and the registrar staff—but all and only with my peripheral vision. (I didn’t realize then, as now, that the dining commons staff work for another company, where the personal faith commitments of the people they hire is not a matter of prime concern for the contract management company.)

I had no idea that Westmont’s staff were caring about me. That they might interrupt their day for me, as I did last semester, when a student I was acquainted with answered my casual “How are you?” with unhappy eyes—so we went to a bench on Kerrwood Lawn and took time to pray about some of life’s troubles.

As staff, we consider it a real privilege to have occasional opportunities for caring like that, for they’re a blessing in both the giving and the receiving.

There’s another part of our caring that’s mostly invisible. Now that I’ve been back at Westmont for many years, and I’ve seen a couple of graduating classes come and go, I’ve started to anticipate the pain of caring—in the grieving that comes during finals week in the spring, when it bubbles up to my awareness that you—not just as a member of a “class”, but individually, personally, uniquely you—will be leaving.

Joanne in the bookstore. Courtney in the mailroom. Bill, who helps the college buy its supplies (you’ll have less chance to meet him than even me!). All of these people, and many others, will have been praying for you over those years—privately as well as in our staff meetings—for your adjustments, for your academics, for your friendships, and for your faith. All of these people will have been available to love and support and encourage you when you needed it. And all these hidden servants will grieve their loss when you—individually, personally, uniquely you—graduate.

And now, a very brief teaching on prayer. My wife and I (my second wife now of 25+ years; she’s a Westmont alum too; we re-met at our 15-year reunion)—my wife and I have discovered the ancient Christian faith called Orthodoxy.

A 75-year-old Orthodox priest was interviewed for a magazine article. Here was the question, and his answer (paraphrasing here and there):

Question: Is it possible in our hectic, frenzied world to have the sort of prayer-life you’re describing?

Answer: Yes, it is possible. The whole of life is a situation in which God has placed us: to bring our faith where there is no faith, to bring hope when there is no hope, to bring light—even if its a very dim light, a spark—where there is only darkness or twilight, to be salt to prevent corruption, to bring a flicker of love where there is lovelessness. There is no evil or distracting situation into which we cannot enter in a prayerful way.

And here is how we can develop that abiding prayerfulness.

Before we try to be with God in serenity and peace and stillness, we should turn to him and say, “Lord, here are a few things that worry and torment me.” Someone’s illness, a breakup with a special friend, even the smaller worry of preparing for an exam—there’s nothing too small for God. Present the whole thing to God in detail, saying everything that you’ve got to say. And then make and act of faith, and say to God, “I have put it in your hands, I will now leave it in your hands for a short while.”

You can add, if you are honest, “I don’t think that I’ll be able to leave it for long, because I don’t trust you enough. I will take it back because I feel, in my worry, that this problem is more central, perhaps, than you do.” (You will discover later that this not true, but still we must often start that way.) And then, once you have given it to God, say, “Now Lord, let us be together for a short while.”

You would do precisely the same thing, would you not, with your family, or with a friend or a roommate. You would come loaded with worry, and you couldn’t simply enjoy their company, the happiness of being together. You would first say, “My day sucked,” and you would tell your family or friend or roommate all about the worry of the day. Having unburdened yourself, you could then sit back and say, “Ah, isn’t it great to be together?” [End Quote]

You’ll have many worries in the coming semesters, but you’ll be able, too, to relish how great it is to be together. I hope you’ll receive the love of the staff members who are also glad to be together with you.

Mine is only a small voice among the many you’ll hear before you start your first college class. And what I want you to hear is … who cares. At Westmont you are surrounded by a mostly invisible cadre of people—the staff—who are caring for you, praying for you.

And so, as one of those staff members caring and praying for you, let me close with the simplest of Orthodox blessings.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages, Amen.

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Who Cares? by Posit