Something to Remember: A Classical Christian Graduation Address
By Annie Crawford
Annie Crawford, Senior Fellow at the Society for Women of Letters, gives the annual graduation address for Vine Classical Hall. To help us reflect on this season of endings and new beginnings, Shadowlands Dispatch is pleased to feature last year’s speech in written form here. We hope it encourages all readers, regardless of their age, to remember what education is for.
This is a special graduation for me today because you are the first class to finish both my apologetics series and the Great Text sequence with me. We have journeyed together through so many stories, so many ideas, so many good conversations!
Above all, what I have hoped to give you in these classes is a rich, expansive, true vision of Christ — the Logos who creates and forms all things, the one who guides the history of the world, the one in whom all ideas cohere and relate, the one whom all true speech reveals. Flannery O’Conner once called her world the Christ-haunted south. My goal is to make each of you a Christ-haunted soul.
I have endeavored to show you Christ the Logos in a way you will not forget, for what is not retained is not learned. Too often, schools only teach isolated subjects so students pass “the test”; students cram, pass, and then forget, but I have labored to give you something you will remember, something worth remembering. I have endeavored to give you the Great Stories, the Eternal Ideas, and the Dialectical Skills you will need to navigate the adventure before you. Let me remind you of each of these briefly.
First, I hope that in decades to come, you will remember the Great Stories that formed who we are in the West by revealing to us Christ, the true hero with a thousand faces.
In decades to come, I hope you will remember...
● Our reading of Genesis and the God who spoke the world into existence and declared it to be very good, for you are His creation, sustained each moment by the breath of that same Word that formed the heavens and earth.
● The rage of Achilles fighting with his own grief and despair, for you too are Achilles, born for immortality yet doomed to die.
● Achilles dragging Hector’s body round and round the city in his rage, the humility of Priam begging for the body of his son, and the miracle of Achilles and Priam breaking bread together, for you too will be called to share the bread of forgiveness with your enemies.
● Pretty-boy Paris and his leopard skin hot pants, for you too will encounter the meat-headed player and pansy. Do not befriend, date, or be him.
● The perseverance of Odysseus through all his strange wanderings, past the sirens, the cyclops, and Scylla and Charybdis, for you too are Odysseus, a wanderer in this foreign land, longing for the home you struggle to find.
● The virtue, strength, and cunning of Penelope, the pillar of her home, holding off the suitors for 10 years as she waits for the return of the King, for you too are Penelope, fighting to stave off evil and persevere until the King comes home to trample His enemies beneath his feet.
● The madness of Dido consumed by the fire of a false love, for you too are Dido, tempted by uncontrolled, irrational desires that threaten to consume you.
● The courageous, firm resolve of pious Aeneas who carried his father and son, the past and future of his people, out of destruction and to a new land, for you too are Aeneas, called to the suffering of duty and piety amidst a chaotic, violent world.
● Hrunting, the ancient sword that held true as Beowulf battled the monsters of chaos, for you too are Beowulf, best by dark beasts and angry dragons, called to memento mori, to remember that you too shall die, and that a noble death is the one treasure which no man is too poor to buy.
● Our journey with Dante through the just horrors of hell, the purgation of sin, and the weighty wonders of heaven, drawn ever on by the love that moves the worlds, for you too are a pilgrim invited into the Divine Comedy, called to face the judgment and purgation that will prepare you for the joys of heaven.
● Sir Gawain, who compromised his integrity to flirt with adultery and flinched in cowardly fear beneath the Green Knight’s mighty blow, for you too are Gawain, tempted to flirt, to compromise, to cheat. But if you too confess, your shame can also be turned to good laughter.
● The bloody despair of Macbeth, whose life became a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, for you too are Macbeth, sick with ambition and tempted by power.
● The melancholy peace won by Prince Hamlet as he fought the madness of a kingdom ruled by lies, for you too are Hamlet, living in a rotten kingdom and a time out of joint, a world where one may smile and smile and be a villain, and where the truth is only heard by many as madness.
● Mr. Knightley’s firm rebuke of his dearest Emma as she mocked three things very dull indeed, for you too are Emma, a stranger to your own heart and blind to the love right in front of you.
● Sydney Carton, a lost sinner called to decide how he would spend his life in the moment of revolution, for you too are Sydney Carton, born into the best of times and the worst of times, called to do a far, far better thing than you have ever done to find to a far, far better rest than you have ever known.
● The kingly, golden splendor of Pendragon, the wild magnificence of Merlin, and the sweetness of St. Anne’s they triumphed over the grotesque, demonic Head of Belbury, for you too are Jane, you too are Mark, called to choose this day whom you will serve.
I have tried to give you the Great Story, composed as a grand symphony out of many different stories, each playing their part to tell you who you are and where you are going. These good stories create an emotional attachment to goodness and give us examples through which we can imaginatively practice virtue. They shape our desires and give us models to imitate. Remember the Great Stories, for we become the stories we tell.
Second, I hope that in decades to come, you will remember the Great Ideas, the principles and patterns of truth that we have learned. In decades to come, I hope you will remember...
● That all truth is God’s truth.
● That nothing comes from nothing; there must be a transcendent cause, for in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
● That the medium is the message, for we communicate through form and action as much as we do through words.
● That where you see design in the world, you see evidence of the Creator’s Hand, for the heavens declare the glory of God.
● That sex is a sacred icon of the marriage between heaven and earth, between Christ and His church, and you are commanded to honor this icon and keep it holy.
● In decades to come, I especially hope you will remember the Cosmic Mountain, for this symbol integrates all true ideas.
○ It shows the truth of hierarchy, for God is King and we are not, and yet it also shows the truth of equality, for Christ fills all things and is fully present everywhere.
○ From above it shows us the cosmic circle with its center and margin, for Christ is the high center around which all things gather.
○ It is the ascent out of Plato’s Cave, leading us up from the dust of dreams to the light of Divine Good.
○ It is the pattern of Plato’s tripartite soul, for man is a microcosm, a being stretched between heaven and earth.
○ It is the great story pattern that shows how great men fall and redeemed men rise.
○ It is the Hero’s Journey shaped by Christ, who descended from heaven to the bottom of Sheol, that He might rescue and fill all things, returning them to righteousness and the well-ordered rule of God.
○ It is the marriage of heaven and earth, of the ordering masculine and the receptive feminine, made one together by the love that unites the world.
○ It is the map of Teleology or purpose — the integrative principle that binds form and matter, pointing all things in heaven and earth toward their ultimate goal: Christ the King.
○ For He is the circle, the center, the margin, the way, the truth, the life. Praise Him!
I have said these things over and over and over because they are ideas faithful and true; they will not fail you. As the prophet Jeremiah told us, if you remember the “ancient paths — where the good way is — and walk in it, then you shall find rest for your souls.”
Third, I hope you will remember what it is like to be part of a community where words were aimed at truth, not manipulation; where real questions were welcomed; where we admitted when we were wrong; where we were free to change our minds; where there was not my truth or your truth but only The Truth. I have sought to model for you the dialectic of heaven, the conversation of saints and friends.
Such an honest, open, free dialectic is essential to the human spirit, for language is the medium by which God created the world; it is the medium by which He reveals Himself to us; it is the medium through which we know the reality; and it is the medium by which we reveal ourselves to each other.
All that you have learned with me in literature and philosophy and theology was possible only because of the foundation you were given in those early years of grammar and logic and rhetoric; it is the study of language itself that prepared your mind to perceive and receive the eternal ideas.
Philosopher Josef Pieper explains that “word and language form the medium that sustains the common existence of the human spirit as such. … And so, if the word becomes corrupted, human existence itself will not remain unaffected and untainted.”[1]
Pieper goes on to say that whoever speaks to another person without being explicitly committed to the truth “no longer considers the other person as a partner, as equal. In fact, he no longer respects the other as a human person."[2] From the moment that one is no longer committed to truth, all conversation, all fellowship, all communion ceases. The other has become “an object to be manipulated, possibly to be dominated, to be handled and controlled.” Conversation has been turned into “an instrument of power."[3]
This means that the corruption of language is the abolition of man as man, as a being made in the image of God and purposed for communion with each other in the goodness, truth, and beauty of God.
Therefore, I urge you, imitate Jesus, who refused to participate in conversations dominated by power. Speak with all who desire genuine conversation and all who ask questions aimed at the knowledge of truth, but do not be bullied into sophistry and manipulation, into equivocation and ad hominem, into straw men and red herrings. Refuse to speak or live by lies. And take heart, for as Solzhenitsyn, that great Russian, reminds us, “one word of truth shall overcome the world,” for that one word of truth is always an incarnation of the victorious Christ who is the Truth.
In conclusion, REMEMBER — so long as memory holds a seat in your distracted globe — REMEMBER the heroic stories old, the eternal ideas, the dialectic of truth. Return to these always. Let the seeds of goodness, truth, and beauty continue to grow and shape how you see the world and what you choose to love. REMEMBER who you are.
REMEMBER, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. For to whom else shall you go? He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He has given us the words of eternal life. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ, King of endless glory.
—Annie Crawford is a cultural apologist and classical educator with a Master of Arts in Cultural Apologetics from Houston Christian University. She teaches apologetics and humanities courses and is co-founder of The Society for Women of Letters where she serves as Senior Fellow. She has written for Salvo, The Symbolic World, Circe Institute, The Worldview Bulletin, Classical Academic Press, and An Unexpected Journal. Learn more at anniecrawford.net.
[1] Josef Pieper, Abuse of Language — Abuse of Power (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 15.
[2] Ibid., 22.
[3] Ibid., 20.