Speech given by Walter Michael
on November 6th, 2003
on the occasion of receiving
the President's Citation at Capitol College

President Troxler, esteemed faculty, staff, students and proud parents, I am honored to receive this award on this day of celebration. My hearty congratulations go out to you fine scholars who have achieved a level of excellence that merits the recognition of this fine institution of higher learning.

I must tell you that I, an English major, former seminarian and long-time folk musician, am in awe of your gray matter. I admire and deeply respect the skills and talents that you bring to Capitol College and which you have honed here during your time as students. This is a great day in your lives - you should be proud of your accomplishments. I sense this afternoon that I am in a room filled with dreams - not the kind of dreams we experience in sleep, but rather, dreams to which we aspire. I

believe that there are three kinds of dreams among us today. First, there is the dream that has brought you to this place today - the dream that you held in front of you, helping you in your effort to achieve success at Capitol College. These are the fulfilled or achieved dreams we sense here, today. As a part of these fulfilled dreams, we can add your goals of employment and earning the money you need and desire. The fulfilled dreams É.. graduation, employment, future security. Today is the day to celebrate the transformation of dreams into attained, realized goals. You are, as they say, "up and running!"

The second type of dreams living in this room today are the dreams yet to be fulfilled. I imagine that if we were to have a conversation, each of you could tell me about a dream you have had that embodies your talents, imagination, creativity - all of the things that you bring to the table of your chosen professional career. What I have come to believe is that in order to bring a dream into fruition, to make it happen, you MUST be able to tell others about your dream in such a way it that will excite other people. Your dream, therefore, must translate into a vision that will allow other people to join you. You must enlist other people for your purposes. Therefore, your vision must include the needs and aspirations of the people with whom you share your vision.

The great Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote," What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?"

I say to you today, "What then? Then, you must convince others that your dream is real." Now, I donÕt have a roadmap for you today to help launch your dream machine. But, I can tell you how my dream became reality. My thumbnail sketch is this: I was raised in the Washington DC suburbs, son of a Methodist Minister. At age 14, I went to work full time, six days a week as a page in the US Supreme Court during the Kennedy Administration. I saw, up close, the great figures of that era - JFK, RFK, the Mercury Astronauts, poets Robert Frost and Carl SandburgÉit is a long list. Suffice it to say that these were exciting people, visionaries. Certainly, they were fulfilled dreamers and they stoked my fires, my youthful dreams.

In college, as an English and journalism major, after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, I registered African American voters in the Deep South, and worked with disenfranchised rural poor in Appalachia. In 1967, I had the great fortune to fly on a plane with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. É not by design but by chance. Was not Dr. King a dreamer? Did he not share his dream to great effect? These were amazing, visionary times in which to live.

For many of us, those times of lofty, fulfilled dreams and visions quickly shattered and devolved into cynicism and broken dreams --- as assassinations made icons of dreamers and the Vietnam War tragically divided our nation. My alienated response was to play musicÉ.. roots music, folk music. I dropped out of mainstream American life and learned a musical craft. For 25 years I honed my skills, and achieved goals that I set for myself É. I recorded albums (you may know them as CDÕs!), toured internationally, played music with artists I admired.

Yet somewhere inside of me simmered a dream that would not die É.. a dream created by my experiences as a young man É.. that we could live in a society that wasnÕt fragmented, where people shared ideas and dreams to great effect. My dream evolved into a vision of an organization where artists, musicians, writers, actors and students from various and oftentimes opposed cultures would gather to teach workshops in an effort to find common ground, to share dreams, to explore our common humanity É.. and to serve as a model for other communities.

Ibelieve that the arts are our best emissaries. I remember the summer of 1992 when I first met Bill Troxler. He was my student, enrolled in an instrumental class I was teaching. During our week at Davis and Elkins College, we talked into the wee hours of many a morning, and from those conversations, my dream started to take on the aspects of a shared vision. Not only did Bill know how to play the hammered dulcimer, not only did he understand the innate power of roots music, not only did he know how to put together a budget É.. he was an associate and friend of President Robert Chambers É. the president of Western Maryland College É. the very person who would eventually sign-on to housing Common Ground on the Hill.

Bill Troxler helped me transform a pipe dream into a vision and into reality. Common Ground on the Hill now enters its 10th year; it is now an international program with affiliates abroad. If you think this sounds warm and fuzzy, think about a traditional arts program bringing folks together in Omagh, the site of the most recent tragic bombings in Northern Ireland. These ten years represent many, many people dreaming and sharing their visions with one another. I imagine that by now you have figured that I have forgotten to define the third kind of dream that abounds in this room today.

The third kind of dream among us is the dream yet unknown to us. It is the dream that lives, perhaps, in our subconscious, that leads us to develop and prioritize our talents and work. I know that this must sound vague and perhaps ethereal, but allow me to illustrateÉÉ I

n the fifth year of Common Ground on the Hill, my mentor, Dr. Ira G. Zepp, a noted Kingian scholar, came to my tiny office and handed me a letter I had written to him in 1969, from seminary. To my shock, the letter lined out my dream. I do not remember having this dream at that time, but there it was in the letter, proof that the dream was rolling around somewhere beneath the surface 25 years before, and in writing to Dr. Zepp, I had attempted to communicate a vision, albeit a bit premature! My skills were not yet in place, but the dream was kindled.

A few years ago, Pete Seeger, venerable folk musician and Kennedy Center awardee, mailed me a postcard. It reads, "If the world were a global village of 100 people, one third of them would be rich or of moderate income, two thirds would be poor. Of the 100 residents, 47 would be unable to read, and only one would have a college education. About 35 would be suffering from hunger and malnutrition; at least half would be homeless or living in substandard housing. Of the 100 people, 6 of them would be Americans. These 6 would have over a third of the villageÕs entire income, and the other 94 would subsist on the other two thirds. How could the wealthy 6 live in peace with their neighbors?" So my friends, dare to dream. Share a vision. Bring your sorely needed talents and vision to a world that desperately needs your help.

George Bernard Shaw, in his play St. Joan, has Joan of Arc say," I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from God." Robert replies: "No, they come from your imagination. " Joan replies: "Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us."

The great composer, Igor Stravinsky says of work, " Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration."

The contemporary painter, Anna Held Audette says of work, "What you have to do now is work. There is no right way to start." A

gain my friends, thank you and congratulations!

Now, let's get to work.