Pacesetter - Spring/Summer 2010 - President's Message

President's Message

Do Something that Won’t Compute

If you live for better pay and want all the conveniences, if you don’t have the time or interest to get to know your neighbors, if you lack courage enough to face the fact that you will die, then Wendell Berry, the Kentucky poet-farmer, worries about you.

This man has a patch of land close to the Kentucky River. He loves its hills and hollows. He works his land, and when harvest comes around, he gathers its bounty.

Besides farming, Berry writes poems, stories and essays that celebrate simple things — the things that have integrity and give us hope. The poems, stories and essays warn, on the other hand, against those things that distract us from God’s gifts and from one another, those things that make us reckless and self-centered.

In one of his poems, Berry says: Do something every day that “won’t compute.”

I think what he means is this: Do something every day that some people, or even most people, will scratch their heads about. He gives examples: “Love the Lord.” Lots of New Atheists, by the way, think that’s stupid. Another: “Love someone who does not deserve it.” Even some Christians think or act as if that’s stupid.

In this issue of Pacesetter, you will read about how men and women at Kettering College do things so out of the ordinary that many people go through all of their life without having a similar experience. One story is about faculty member Paula Reams, whose life practically compels us to use that mouthful of a word, “indefatigable.” She has the skills, the experience and the purpose — and also, of course, the energy — to show up in places like Haiti just when the need is greatest.

Plus, she has a day job!

Here, you’ll read about Paula’s adventure and about other Kettering faculty, staff and students who step beyond commonplace responsibility in order to do something that … well … “won’t compute.”

It might make better sense to stay home and ace the next test or schedule the next job interview — or pay more attention to the kids or get some rest. But our mission statement says that the college “educates students to make service a life calling.” It turns out that the spirit of those words is alive in the hearts and in the actual deeds of many people who work and study here.

That same spirit is alive among our alumni, too. Perhaps, by God’s grace, it is the Kettering way. It’s not that we live the Kettering way as consistently as we might. It’s just that the goal is there, as compelling as a beacon in the night.

Every example of faithfulness to that goal is motivation for the rest of us — motivation to do something every day that “won’t compute.”