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"You are a Schola Prophetarum, a School of the Prophets." - the pronouncement in 1875 to the faculty and students of the Biblical Department of Vanderbilt University by Holland Nimmons McTyeire (1824-1889) Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church South; first president of the Vanderbilt University Board of Trust
This weekend, I graduated from the school of the prophets. (No pressure or anything.)
Friends, please see all of my photos from a glorious weekend by clicking below. I particularly enjoy the dinner and party photos toward the end. If you double-click on a photo, you will be able to scroll through them as larger images with captions.click here: Kate's Vanderbilt Photos
There's been something very clean for me to speak about how things are in Haiti or Palestine. In this place, things are this way. There, things are like this or that. In Haiti, children eat dirt cookies. In Palestine children have no plumbing.
In Bangladesh, it is bamboo being labored over and hauled around - - not sugar cane. In Bangladesh, children are not running from bulldozers, rather, they suffer a no-win battle with the rainy season. In Bangladesh I now know that poverty is not specified and particular. Extreme poverty looks almost the same everywhere. And it is heartbreaking. That sweet smell of pollution and human waste crosses political boundaries. The rickshaw, however, is special. Today, while traveling two hours away to interview micro-loan borrowers in villages, I watched hundreds of them on the streets. I likened them to sacred canopies, life-giving and vibrant with color, perhaps serving as shields.
It was my first week of Divinity School at Vanderbilt University, and the professor responded to my comment in a facetious manner - - "Wait, do you actually want to use this stuff?" As an academic with one foot in the ivory tower and another on the ground, I have struggled to make use of what I learn and order out of what I have experienced. Yesterday, with two months remaining in my Masters program, Dr. Muhammad Yunus sat next to me and spoke of the dangers of the university ranging from the hegemonic relationship between student and teacher to the unending elitism associated with higher education. He said, "Universities don't know much about people." Continuing, Dr. Yunus said what I have waited to hear all along, "the answers are known by those on the ground." I live in Nashville, Tennessee and attend Vanderbilt for graduate school, - just like Dr. Yunus once did.
I can only hope to find my own way to utilize what I have learned in order to empower those on the ground who have the answers but lack an access to the opportunity to change circumstances.
