Open doors to excellence
First Part

I think that from time to time we could be focusing our thoughts on the challenges that Silliman is confronted with in its life and mission. And the figure of the "open door" is a very appropriate starting point for our reflection. When we speak of the Silliman tradition, we mean by it the blending of the two realms of the academic and the spiritual. And this blend opens doors to us in terms of how we may keep shaping our future, in terms of how the youth who come in through our portals may find a rich education for the living of these days. So the word to us from our Lord is: "Behold, I set before you an open door which no man can shut." What are these open doors?

First, I'm sure that here we continue to make possible the open door to the discovery of truth. The greatest gifts that are given us here are intellectual stimulation, knowledge distilled through the centuries, the privilege of being engaged in a common search for deeper insights into things.

Because of the alliance between church and classroom, we are to be committed to the dictum of Jesus, "You will love the Lord your God with your mind." For here on our campus we can declare that to be exposed to new ideas involves one in a kind of rapturous experience, like marriage, like recovery from a serious illness, like a journey to the mountain-top. For in the best academes of the world, something everyday ought to impress, challenge, stimulate us, so that we become, in a sense, new beings.

And then of course there should be the instituting of life-long learning so that graduation is not the peak but an impetus for the great intellectual adventure. The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes was seen reading a book at the age of 92. He was asked what he was doing. He said, "I am improving my mind."

You see, we live in the domain of the "more-yet-to-be." The more we learn, the more we feel a good deal remains to be learned. It was Isaac Newton (after all his scientific achievements) who said: "I seem to have been like a boy playing on the seashore while the great ocean lay all before me." In other words, the larger the body of knowledge we survey, the longer the shoreline of mystery surrounding it. We crave the glory of going on and on because we have caught the tang of the sea that makes it possible.

The intellectual aspect of our tradition reminds me of the words of Thomas Huxley, the famous English biologist: "Sit down before a fact like a little child. Be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and whatever depths nature leads. Otherwise, you shall learn nothing."* To be continued

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