see below

¶ … university is, as Fr. Lawton believes, a sacred place where you find "your imagination, develop your skills, and enrich your compassion," then it has an enormous task in the world as we know it today. In the world as we know it today, the very term sacred is on the endangered species list. And yet, sacred is perhaps the underpinning of it all.

There are any number of vaguely similar definitions of sacred in any number of dictionaries. The one that I think applies best here is this one:

regarded with the same respect and reverence accorded holy things; venerated; hallowed. (Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language)

Universities were, in the early days, almost monastic in that there was total dedication of the professors and those being professed to -- the students -- to what they were learning. And what they were learning was, first and foremost, how to think, and they learned what great thinkers who had come before them had thought.

That still applies to the university experience today, although it has, along with everything else, lightened up a bit. Professors and students alike tear around the campus in running shoes and casual wear rather than hot, heavy academic robes. Still, under it all is the spirit of inquiry and the spirit of passing knowledge along so that it may be enjoyed and possible increased.

That this tradition has been going on for centuries and even survived transplantation from Europe to a new continent pretty much intact makes it venerable. That it originated in the monastic tradition of Europe makes it worthy of the same respect and reverence accorded to other holy things.

Should it be, also, regarded as hallowed? Hallowed is a term usually reserved for the ground into which heroes and saints have been buried. Or into a space, such as Gettysburg, that has seen so much suffering that to do other than to hallow the ground would be to desecrate it.

So should a university, then, be considered hallowed? That may be too strong a term, except if one moves it from the exterior to the interior concept of the university, the second part of what Father Lawson was speaking of.

At a university, he says, a student has a chance to find his or her imagination, develop his or her skills, and enrich his or her compassion.

The imagination is that which allows human beings to go beyond where they are now to where they will end up. It allows humans to create things as simple as the fork, as complex as the computer. It allows people to imagine ways to use the things they create in new ways. OF course, skills are necessary to that task as well, and the modern university -- perhaps more so than the ivied historic piles of ancient stone -- also provide for that.

Ultimately, though, neither the imagination nor abundant skill is worth anything without enriched compassion. A computer used wrongly is an instrument of enormous destructive power. Anything used wrongly is an instrument of destruction. So it is incumbent upon any university student to pay as close attention to the humanities, and not just the courses bearing that name. It is essential to develop a deep understanding of ethics and morality, of reverence for all life and for all things, and a deep love of the place from which all things -- all things -- have come.

The course of study I have chosen is one that people rarely think of in the same breath as compassion. People are beginning to understand that business requires imagination and skill. But it is in that third concept -- compassion -- that I intend to concentrate. There is so much flux in the business world now that it is necessary, at last, for someone to come forth who can put the wonders of technology and economics into a compassionate framework, a framework that will enable nations and individuals alike to achieve an abundant life on earth. By that, I mean abundant in every way, not just monetarily. It is possible for business to help individuals achieve their personal spiritual goals, and to completely alter the spiritual tenor of nations. I expect to learn from my humanities courses how to think abut doing this, how to imagine how it can be done. I expect to develop the skills to translate those thoughts into compassionate business for the good of anyone I meet in the course of my life.

I have also been fortunate enough to have earned a golf scholarship. And here, it would seem, skill would be the prime pursuit for me. But that would be limited, and wrong. Tiger Woods showed the way with his own imagination, visualizing every stroke, visualizing winning.