James T. Cleland - "A Love That Wanted Re - Renewing" (June 2, 1968)

Download
- Rights
- No Re-Use
  In Copyright
  More Rights Info
- Files (1)
- MP3
- Please be patient with media downloads. They are often large files.
Share

Embed Code
<iframe src='https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4t14zr19?embed=true' height='125px' width='100%' frameborder='0' marginwidth='0' marginheight='0' scrolling='no' loading='lazy' allowfullscreen></iframe>
Permalink

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4t14zr19
Skip to Item Info

Loading the media player...

Files for this Item

Transcript

Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.

	(Church choir singing)	0:06
	♪ Hallelujah ♪	0:08
	♪ Hallelujah ♪	0:13
	♪ Hallelujah ♪	0:19
	♪ Hallelujah ♪	0:25
	♪ Hallelujah ♪	0:31
	♪ Hallelujah ♪	0:36
	♪ Hallelujah ♪	0:44
	(Church choir singing "Hallelujah" continuously)	0:57
	(Church choir increases tempo)	4:27
	(Church choir increases tempo)	4:43
	(Church choir reverts to normal tempo)	5:23
	(Church choir music ends)	6:22
-	Let us pray.	7:18
	Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts	7:21
	be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord,	7:26
	our strength, and our redeemer.	7:31
	Amen.	7:36
	In the dull and commonplace occurrences	7:46
	of day-to-day academic living,	7:50
	there are occasional happenings and events	7:55
	which carry with them an element of wondering surprise:	7:59
	defeating Georgia Tech in football,	8:05
	developing an Olympic runner,	8:13
	nurturing a Rhodes scholar,	8:18
	organizing a vigil with the concern of a Quaker meeting,	8:23
	and the discipline of a regiment of the guards,	8:30
	graduation.	8:36
	Now, what does want to say at such times beyond,	8:39
	"Jolly good? Three hot cheers? Well done."	8:43
	I do not know if you who are graduating are in this chapel	8:52
	voluntarily or per force,	8:57
	the door into the chapel today used to be the one-way	9:05
	into the indoor stadium on the morrow.	9:10
	I am here by order.	9:15
	The president is sidetracked by illness.	9:22
	The invitation to me to take his place was not a request	9:27
	conveyed by the university marshall, but a command.	9:32
	It was a proper command.	9:39
	I obeyed.	9:43
	My Calvinistic blood being not entirely	9:46
	thinned out by transfusions of Methodism.	9:50
	(Crowd laughing)	9:53
	What do I say to you who probably have no desire to be here	10:00
	looking upon the baccalaureate service as but	10:08
	the second last hurdle to be overcome before graduation.	10:11
	Now I promise you I shall deal with nothing new.	10:19
	You are in no mood to hear anything new.	10:24
	Let us begin right here at Duke,	10:30
	undergraduate Duke,	10:33
	in the field of literature,	10:36
	in the area of American poetry with Robert Frost.	10:39
	In his poetic soliloquy, "A Lone Striker,"	10:47
	Frost has given us a picture of a prodigal son	10:52
	in the far country of factories and time clocks.	10:57
	But before he became a mere cog in the machine,	11:03
	he came to himself by remembering what he had once loved	11:08
	and lost a while.	11:16
	And so headed back for another place, a wood,	11:19
	here's the poem about a textile worker	11:27
	in a New England mill town	11:30
	who was late for his shift and was therefore	11:34
	locked out for 30 minutes with his pay docked.	11:38
	The poem is called "A Lone Striker."	11:45
	The swinging mill bell changed its rate	11:51
	to tolling like the count of fate,	11:54
	and though at that the tardy ran,	11:58
	one failed to make the closing gate.	12:01
	There was a law of God or man	12:06
	that on the one who came too late	12:11
	the gate for half an hour be locked,	12:14
	his time be lost, his pittance docked.	12:18
	He stood rebuked and unemployed.	12:24
	The straining mill began to shake.	12:31
	The mill, though many-many-eyed,	12:35
	had eyes inscrutably opaque	12:38
	so that he couldn't look inside	12:42
	to see if some forlorn machine	12:44
	was standing idle for his sake.	12:48
	He couldn't hope its heart would break.	12:53
	And yet he thought he saw the scene:	12:57
	The air was full of dust of wool.	12:59
	A thousand yarns were under pull,	13:02
	but pull so slow, with such a twist,	13:05
	all day from spool to lesser spool,	13:10
	it seldom overtaxed their strength.	13:14
	They safely grew in slender length.	13:18
	And if one broke by any chance,	13:22
	the spinner saw it at a glance.	13:26
	The spinner still was there to spin.	13:29
	That's where the human still came in.	13:34
	Her deft hand showed with finger rings	13:38
	among the harplike spread of strings.	13:40
	She caught the pieces end to end	13:43
	and, with a touch that never missed,	13:46
	not so much tied as made them blend.	13:48
	Man's ingenuity was good.	13:54
	He saw it plainly where he stood,	13:59
	yet found it easy to resist.	14:04
	He knew another place, a wood,	14:10
	and in it, tall as trees, were cliffs,	14:15
	and if he stood on one of these,	14:19
	'twould be among the tops of trees,	14:21
	their upper branches round him wreathing,	14:24
	their breathing mingled with his breathing.	14:27
	If he stood.	14:35
	Enough of ifs.	14:38
	He knew a path that wanted walking.	14:41
	He knew a spring that wanted drinking.	14:45
	He knew a thought that wanted further thinking,	14:50
	a love that wanted re-renewing.	14:56
	Nor was this just a way of talking	15:00
	to save him the expense of doing.	15:02
	With him it boded action, deed.	15:05
	The factory was very fine.	15:09
	He wished it all the modern speed.	15:14
	Yet, after all, 'twas not divine,	15:19
	that is to say, 'twas not a church.	15:23
	He never would assume that he'd	15:27
	be any institution's need.	15:30
	But he said then and still would say,	15:32
	if there should ever come a day	15:36
	when industry seemed like to die	15:40
	because he left it in the lurch,	15:44
	or even merely seemed to pine	15:47
	for want of his approval, why,	15:50
	come get him	15:55
	they knew where to search.	15:57
	There are four lines there that have haunted me	16:02
	ever since I heard Robert Frost read that poem	16:03
	when we were colleagues at Amherst College.	16:07
	"He knew a path that wanted walking,	16:12
	he knew a spring that wanted drinking,	16:15
	a thought that wanted further thinking,	16:20
	a love that wanted re-renewing."	16:23
	You see the idea I want to play with.	16:28
	Is there anything in our lives,	16:33
	particularly in your lives, members of the graduating class,	16:36
	which will always be there because of you?	16:41
	Leighton, or Peyton,	16:46
	to be forgotten for a while and to be rediscovered	16:49
	unexpectedly, unintentionally,	16:54
	for better or for worse?	17:00
	Let's think about Duke, not the Duke that will be,	17:05
	but the Duke which surrounded, and nurtured.	17:09
	and angered, and excited, and bored us	17:14
	these past years.	17:19
	The chapel, the stadiums, the libraries,	17:22
	the auditoriums, the labs, the gardens,	17:27
	the union, the Chronicle, the faculty.	17:33
	Allen building.	17:38
	The coffee shop, the theater in the round,	17:46
	the singing groups, the cabin parties, the classrooms,	17:50
	picketing, the vigil.	17:54
	Is there anything there?	17:57
	Any path that's worth walking again,	18:00
	any spring to slate the thirst?	18:05
	Any thought which merits a second thought?	18:09
	Any love worth re-renewing?	18:15
	Let's think about some paths and springs	18:19
	and thoughts and loves.	18:21
	It's a fair supposition that most of you had to sit through	18:25
	some English course, even as elementary	18:28
	a semester survey as From Chaos to Kipling.	18:34
	But surely some folk have been introduced to you	18:42
	that you would gladly meet again,	18:46
	a few with whom you would like to become better acquainted.	18:49
	They're our Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims	18:53
	who made even a Scottish Presbyterian wished that he	18:57
	were a Roman Catholic.	19:01
	(Crowd laughing)	19:03
	What if Hamlet with his spiritual crap,	19:08
	"To be or not to be?"	19:11
	Then our Falstaff, that rotund and genial rascal,	19:15
	and Porsche, smart, no doubt,	19:21
	but with good stuff in her mind and heart that she	19:25
	successfully challenged male supremacy.	19:28
	Think of Rip van Winkle, Prince of Sleepers, lucky beggar.	19:33
	And Mister Pickwick, a Sunday school edition	19:41
	of Mr. Falstaff.	19:45
	And Diana Vernon, Scott's only real heroine	19:47
	and Martin Adersmith in whom the scientific spirit	19:53
	became flesh.	19:57
	And Nat Turner, a new Negro folk hero	20:00
	created by a Duke man.	20:06
	There are places you will visit because you saw them	20:10
	in fancy here,	20:13
	old New York and old London,	20:15
	the Catskills and the Lake District,	20:20
	Chicago, hog butcher of the world.	20:24
	And Venice, Copenhagen, Paris, and even Edinburgh.	20:28
	Oh, I say that in the subdued tone.	20:37
	Finest thing that ever came out of Edinburgh	20:43
	was the 10 o'clock train to Glasgow.	20:46
	(Crowd laughing)	20:49
	Some of you are acquainted with the literature	20:57
	of other tongues with Greek tragedy	21:00
	and it's interweaving of fate and freewill,	21:03
	that old new riddle	21:08
	with Latin auditory, heavy, but shrewd,	21:12
	with German drama and the problem of every man in Faust,	21:17
	with the imagery of Dante	21:23
	and the logical despair of Camus.	21:26
	Oh, continue in that literary fellowship.	21:30
	Teach them all again, drink deep of some.	21:35
	There is refreshment and satisfaction at these springs.	21:40
	And then there's the whole range of scientific pursuits.	21:48
	You've been exposed to physics and chemistry,	21:52
	to botany and zoology, to geology, to astrophysics,	21:55
	bio-mathematics and neuro-anatomy.	22:02
	Is it wonderful that the Greeks had words in readiness	22:08
	for these new subjects?	22:12
	(Crowd laughing)	22:14
	Some of you, like me, are appalled by the ramifications	22:20
	of science.	22:25
	Others of you are fascinated.	22:26
	Some of you have just creeped through	22:29
	the required number of hours.	22:32
	Others of you are so happily and lively immersed in science	22:36
	as to make it both your profession and	22:40
	your avocation for the rest of your lives.	22:43
	I hope that you are all impressed with its method,	22:49
	to weigh and to measure accurately,	22:54
	to cut and to carve my nuclei,	23:00
	to discover and lay bare secrets with confidence.	23:06
	I hope that we appreciate the faith of the scientist	23:13
	to seek the truth,	23:17
	come whence it may, cost what it will.	23:20
	I hope we know the saints of science,	23:27
	Bacon, Kepler, Newton,	23:30
	Faraday, Darwin, Einstein.	23:35
	Make up your minds that there is a path	23:40
	which you will often walk,	23:43
	recalling over and over again,	23:45
	the perspectives you learned from your scientific studies,	23:47
	a passion for truth,	23:52
	a commitment to honest objective study	23:56
	and above all,	24:01
	a puzzled humility when you realize how little man knows	24:03
	and how much there is to be known.	24:11
	But for others of you,	24:16
	the wide range of the social sciences:	24:18
	history, political philosophy, government,	24:20
	sociology was your major.	24:24
	A few of you have taken part in the various domains of	24:27
	student government in your campus Tammany Halls.	24:31
	You've become sensitive to the interaction of theory and	24:37
	practice and you've run across ideas	24:42
	which keep repeating themselves down the centuries.	24:45
	There are the insistent difficult words,	24:50
	like "freedom."	24:53
	From what, to what?	24:55
	"Loyalty." How much,	25:00
	how wide and to which, what?	25:05
	"Justice." For whom, from whom, by whom.	25:10
	There's the even more interesting and vexing problem	25:19
	of the interrelatedness of words	25:22
	and the ideas which they convey.	25:24
	This is particularly true when two norms	25:27
	seem to come in conflict like liberty and law.	25:30
	Does one cancel out the other?	25:36
	Do they complement each other?	25:40
	Does law implement or restrict freedom?	25:43
	When? Where? How?	25:49
	what about patriotism and what old brotherhood?	25:56
	Is my loyalty to the United States hampered or sublimated	26:00
	by my allegiance to the United Nations?	26:06
	Can a man have two citizenships?	26:12
	Oh, that was the problem facing the Christian.	26:17
	As Paul put it, "My citizenship is in heaven."	26:21
	All right, what happens then	26:25
	when you come before an earthly court?	26:27
	The vigil has pointed out the clash of loyalties,	26:32
	or the classroom has but introduced you to thoughts	26:37
	that want further thinking to questions which will never	26:41
	be answered in any tidy fashion,	26:46
	which will haunt and fascinate us as long as we live.	26:50
	And think, you see where this last consideration	26:56
	is leading us?	26:59
	Let's do the area where basic questions are asked	27:01
	or should be asked to religion.	27:04
	It is important, maybe inevitable to ask about	27:09
	the quince and the quiver of life	27:13
	and how one should journey from birth to death.	27:19
	That came home to me again a few days ago	27:24
	when one of our medical residents died	27:29
	and his widow gave birth to their second child	27:32
	12 and a half hours after her husband's death.	27:38
	Death and life.	27:43
	Two rooms in the same house.	27:46
	When is death the last enemy, as St. Paul called it?	27:52
	When is death Sister Death, as St. Francis called it?	27:59
	Does it make any difference to how we live now	28:04
	if we believe that death is finny	28:08
	or if we believe that death is a doorway to another,	28:13
	but continuing life.	28:18
	One of the obvious facts of contemporary life,	28:22
	a frightening commonplace,	28:25
	is the awesome advance in man's mastery	28:28
	of his physical environment	28:32
	without a corresponding progress in spiritual sensitivity	28:34
	so as to discipline and direct that mastery.	28:42
	Science with its resolute will for discovery	28:48
	with its courage to discard outworn hypothesis	28:52
	with its exuberance in achievement has given us	28:57
	almost unimaginable power.	29:00
	But we do not know even theoretically	29:06
	what to do with that power	29:13
	for our salvation,	29:17
	that is for our good health.	29:19
	Oh, it's not enough that you all must graduates	29:23
	be as good as your fathers.	29:27
	You probably are as good as your fathers and mothers.	29:30
	I think you're better.	29:36
	But better enough for survival?	29:40
	Does our religious heritage offer us any guidance?	29:46
	Our spiritual heritage is the Judeo-Christian faith,	29:51
	which faith Duke University has symbolized in this chapel.	29:56
	This religious tradition environment is recognized this	30:02
	very day in the fact that an alumni service,	30:08
	this baccalaureate service, the Hippocratic Oath ceremony,	30:12
	the pinning ceremony for graduating nurses	30:18
	and the Divinity School closing service of	30:22
	Holy Communion are all taking place today in this building	30:24
	erected to the glory of God	30:32
	in the name of his son, Jesus, the Christ.	30:35
	Now Jesus was a Jew.	30:39
	I've told you before that my mother	30:44
	could never understand that.	30:45
	How could Jesus have been a Jew when God was a Presbyterian?	30:50
	(Crowd laughing)	30:54
	I'm sure the first question she asked	31:00
	when she got to heaven,	31:02
	and I'm sure she was disappointed with the answer.	31:02
	She may have left, in fact.	31:05
	Jesus was a Jew and when he summed up his creed	31:10
	in one sentence,	31:14
	he did what Frost's lone striker decided he should do.	31:17
	Jesus took two thoughts that wanted further thinking,	31:24
	combined them and gave them to his disciples	31:31
	as a love that has to be constantly renewed.	31:37
	He took the central thought of Israel, the Shamar,	31:43
	the Lord, our God is one Lord and thou shalt love the Lord	31:49
	like God with all thy heart, soul, mind,	31:55
	and strength,	31:59
	or as the medics would put it psychosomatically.	32:02
	(Crowd laughing)	32:05
	But the new thing that Jesus did was to link that	32:10
	with another verse, not from Deuteronomy,	32:15
	but from Leviticus,	32:19
	thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge	32:21
	against the children of thy people,	32:27
	but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself	32:29
	and having indissoluble united them,	32:34
	Jesus added, "There is no other commandment	32:39
	greater than these."	32:45
	These two now made into one.	32:48
	But Jesus did not complete the job of rethinking.	32:54
	He left that to his followers in every generation.	33:01
	Those of us who take him seriously,	33:06
	though not literally, have to ask,	33:09
	and so seeking questions,	33:13
	"What is the meaning of love?	33:16
	How can love be commanded?	33:19
	What is the relation of love to truth?	33:26
	Which has the priority, when?	33:31
	Who is my neighbor?	33:38
	How wide is the neighborliness, which is brotherhood?	33:41
	Does love include both justice and mercy,	33:49
	and which is stressed when?	33:55
	How far is my personal freedom subordinated to goodwill	34:00
	for the brethren?	34:05
	Can they ever be one and the same?	34:07
	Is self-love assumed or denied by Jesus?"	34:11
	Now these are thoughts that want further thinking.	34:21
	And then more thinking after that.	34:26
	If you think on them,	34:32
	you may decide to discard them and seek elsewhere	34:34
	for your guidance in your pilgrimage	34:41
	between birth and death.	34:44
	If you wrestle with them until they bless you,	34:47
	you may find here a love renewed,	34:53
	a spring that gives us the water of life.	34:58
	And so, goodbye,	35:05
	and good luck to you all.	35:10
	In the name of the Lord.	35:14
	And now let the congregation rise	35:18
	and receive the blessing of God.	35:21
	Unto God's gracious mercy and protection	35:32
	do we commit you.	35:38
	The Lord bless you	35:41
	and keep you.	35:45
	The Lord make his face to shine upon you	35:48
	and be gracious unto you.	35:52
	The Lord lift up his countenance upon you	35:55
	and give you peace and joy	35:59
	this day and forevermore.	36:04

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "A Love That Wanted Re - Renewing" (June 2, 1968)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4t14zr19

Date:

June 2, 1968

Speaker:

Cleland, James T. (James Tough), 1903-1974

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0437
ref6077_zcr
uachapelsermaud
duke:628560
dcrau002428
ark:/87924/r4t14zr19
88219344-63f1-4081-936d-1174c396d315

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Related Resources:

See below

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

No Re-Use

In Copyright

Rights Note:

This material is made available for research, scholarship, and private study. Copyright in this material has not been transferred to Duke University. For reuses of this material beyond those permitted by fair use or otherwise allowed under the Copyright Act, please see our page on copyright and citations: https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

Sponsor:

Sponsor this Digital Collection

James T. Cleland - "A Love That Wanted Re - Renewing" (June 2, 1968)

Transcript

Item Info

1. James T. Cleland - "A Love That Wanted Re-Renewing: The Baccalaureate Sermon" (June 2, 1968)

Duke University Archives

More Info & Options

James T. Cleland - "A Love That Wanted Re - Renewing" (June 2, 1968)

Transcript

Item Info

Related Item

Duke University Archives

More Info & Options