24 October 2004, Fort Myers, FL
A moth found its way into our room on Sanibel Island, mirroring the moths stirring in my stomach called nerves. I picked her up, Brooke opened the door, and I released her.
Brooke is here. My father is here. Three friends from Seattle who form the vocal group called Trillium and who have a new CD are here: Trina Willard, Pam Emerson, and Mary McCabe. I felt their voices were important to move the emotion through the student body.
Peter Blaze Corcoran, the director of the Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education picked us all up. His eyes are part Coyote and part Sage. We are all holding the tension of the morning.
Florida Gulf Coast University is an hour or so away from Sanibel Island. Evidence of Hurricane Charley is everywhere. The swampland is rolled back like a carpet. Last night, the air was thick with smoke. A blood red moon rose above the ocean.
While in the car, with everyone talking, I reread John Stuart Mill's essay, "On Liberty," replacing one quote for another, making manic last minute changes.
We arrive at the Student Union. People are walking in. Police are stationed at the entrance. There is an electricity building. I see some of the students and relax. This is for them. This is their time.
I disappear.
Jim and Peter bring in President Merwin. He is -- what to say -- nervous. He still thinks this is going to be a bash Bush rally. I say that he certainly set things in motion. And I ask him if he would do things differently. No is his answer. I ask him some private questions. I am direct in my curiosity.
Peter and Jim move us along. The president says he imagines there will be moments of discomfort. The students have asked that he sit next to my father which he does. My father says nothing. Patrick from the Orion Society is sitting on President Merwin's right. Brooke is sitting next to me. I am sitting next to Graham.
A harpist is playing as people enter. The student organizers look at each other and nod. It is time to begin.
Graham welcomes everyone. There are around 500 people, primarily students. The room is full. He frames the moment in history for Florida Gulf Coast University and why this matters in the name of free speech and the right for students to defend an open education in a free society. Brandon follows Graham and talks about why he wrote the letter inviting me to speak and how the guiding principles of the university were violated and must be maintained. Both students speak with great strength and truth, while embodying a personal dignity and openness. There is no judgment, simply truth.
The students have invited President Merwin to provide a greeting. He welcomes me. He welcomes the audience. He then gives a short talk on the value of service learning in America and the virtues of volunteerism.
Graham resumes his place on the podium and introduces me.
After acknowledging and thanking the students for creating this open space of democracy, I begin...
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To gather together --
To call together --
The act of convening --
the body, the student body convened.
You have created your own Convocation.
Vocare -- the root, the proto-Indo-European root -- vocare -- simply means the voice.
You, the students at Florida Gulf Coast University are speaking, and your voice, your resistance and insistence on what an open society looks like, feels like, and can be, is being heard and recognized and applauded -- not just on this campus, not just in Ft. Myers and Naples, but throughout the United States of America and beyond.
This is true.
But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity for exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
-- John Stuart Mill
"On the Liberty of Thought and Discussion," 1859.
You, the students, young Republicans joined with young Democrats, the Model U.N. Club and the Club for the Race of Women, along with dozens of other on-campus organizations, have reminded us through your courage and goodness what We the People really means.
Thank you for not simply reading The Open Space of Democracy, but embodying it.
The poet Mary Oliver asks, "What are you going to do with your one beautiful life?"
You are doing it --
Rising in the name of justice
Outraged
Outspoken
Out in the real world demonstrating what an authentic power can accomplish.
You have changed the course of events. For the Florida Gulf Coast University, this is history. Your history.
You are living it, here, now, in the state of Florida during this election season -- at a time when we are at war -- your generation's war in Iraq.
Oppression of any kind depends on obedience.
Thank you for your very civil disobedience.
Politics may be a game of power and money to those who have it, but for those of us who don't, politics is the public vehicle by which we exercise our voices within a democratic society.
Albert Camus writes in his essay, "Neither Victims nor Executioners,"
"He who bases his hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of circumstances is a coward. And henceforth, the only honorable course will be to stake everything on a formidable gamble that words are more powerful than munitions."
To Commence: to begin.
To Convene: to call together.
To commit to the open space of democracy is to begin to make room for conversations that can move us toward a personal diplomacy.
By personal diplomacy I mean a flesh and blood encounter with public process that is not an abstraction but grounded in real time and space with people we have to face on our own campuses within our own communities.
I had the great pleasure and privilege of meeting with 15 students yesterday. Wilfredo Reyes asked the questions, "How do we talk to one another? How do we open up the lines of communication between us in the midst of this divisive political rhetoric?"
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It was here that I shared the story of Commencement with the students, of giving the Commencement address at the University of Utah in the spring of 2003, when my niece Callie was graduating, how this was my school, my community, my family. I tried to define what the open space of democracy looks like, that in the open space of democracy there is room for dissent, in the open space of democracy there is room for differences. I quoted Henry David Thoreau: "Cast not just your vote, but your whole influence." And I told the story of Rachel Bagby singing at the Code Pink Rally prior to the invasion of Iraq, how her heart opened the heart of one of the policemen guarding Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., how he stepped to the side creating the opening we walked through.
I shared how the speech was met with equal boos and applause, how Senator Bennett, also my neighbor and former Mormon bishop, came up to me afterwards and registered his extreme dissent. After a lively conversation, to say the least, he said he was inspired to write me a letter. Three weeks later, I received a four page single-spaced letter, not on official Washington stationary, but from his home computer.
He asked me what I was willing to die for.
For months, that question haunted me -- and I could not respond. Then, one day while walking in the desert, I realized that for me, that was not the question, it wasn't what I was willing to die for, but what I was willing to give my life to.
I sat down and wrote to him:
Senator Bennett, you asked me a critical question in your letter... What am I willing to die for?
Before the war in Iraq, thousands of Americans turned to poetry to voice their opposition to the invasion, creating the largest written protest in the history of this country. Eleven thousand poems were presented to Congress on March 5, 2003, by Sam Hamill and William Merwin. My words were simple ones:
The erosion of speech is the build-up of war.
Silence no longer supports prayers, but lives inside
the open mouths of the dead.
"...After much thought, what I would be willing to die for, and give my life to, is the freedom of speech. It is the open door to all other freedoms...."
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Honest engagement.
Asking the difficult questions.
Deep listening.
Self-reflection
Critical thinking.
Sharing stories.
I believe this is how we begin talking to one another -- and listening -- opening the dialogue within our own hearts.
Democracy invites us to take risks. It asks that we vacate the comfortable seat of certitude, remain pliable, and act, ultimately, on behalf of the common good.
Democracy's only agenda is that we participate.
If we cannot engage in respectful listening there can be no civil dialogue and without civil dialogue, we the people will simply become bullies and brutes, deaf to the truth that we are standing on the edge of a political chasm that is beginning to crumble. We all stand to lose ground.
Democracy is an insecure landscape.
Florida. Four hurricanes in one season. It is hard to imagine the physical, raw force and energy that has circulated through here.
You don't have to imagine it -- you've lived through it.
The home of Mary Bursley Carter, a great supporter of the Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education, is gone.
The loss of vegetation is staggering. Tens of thousands of trees, Austrian pines, in particular, uprooted.
Roads. Businesses. Homes. Turned inside-out. We, the people, turned inside-out.
We are vulnerable, and we are vulnerable together.
And the trauma that took place here with hanging chads, voter chaos, and fraud on the national stage of the 2000 elections -- this cannot be underestimated.
Florida and fear have become synonymous.
An atmosphere of fear and vulnerability is understandable.
We stand inside the natural cycles of change -- radical change -- necessary for deep cultural transformation. It is never easy. We don't know what the outcome will be.
And it is not without its pain.
What are we doing? I hear T.S. Eliot's voice, "...turning shadow into transient beauty."
Fires are burning on Sanibel Island -- piles of trees are burning. It is primal. The smell of transformation is in the air. Roseate spoonbills. White-faced ibises. Woodstorks. The gators and turtles will survive. Wakachobee. Great blue heron. All bearing witness to what endures within the open space of democracy.
If we listen to the land, we will know what to do.
In the western everglades, we will know what to do if we listen to the land.
This is a reversal of our senses and sensibilities.
"To care is neither conservative or radical," writes John Ralston Saul. "It is a form of consciousness."
I would like to share with you a portion of a letter I received from Lauren Thomas. She and Darlene Roney called me on the morning of October 7, the day after I had been told by President Merwin that the freshmen Convocation was being postponed.
These two young women -- alive, alert, and engaged -- wanted to know what had happened. Why? How?
They were seeking balance. They were searching for answers. They were unafraid to look for answers.
Terry Tempest Williams:
I truly want to speak to you before your speech on Sunday, however, I will be out of town and a letter will have to suffice...
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As I began to read the letter, I noticed a young woman in the first row waving her hand, seated next to Darlene. "I'm Lauren she whispered."
I stopped, and to my great delight, introduced her to the audience, both she and Darlene, and asked if she would read an excerpt of her own letter. Because some of the letter was critical of the president and the trustees of FGCU, I didn't want her to read that section.
Yes, I was censoring her...out of my own fears. As we were negotiating our way privately through the letter, she said, "I'm fine." And I sat down.
She read the first paragraph and then jumped to the forbidden one.
"...there were 13 thorns that did not do their research, and I want you to know that I am truly sorry you got pricked."
The audience burst into laughter. Truth. It was the word pricked that infiltrated the careful controlled words -- and suddenly, all the energy shifted. Youth had prevailed. Truth had been spoken. Freshness entered the room.
She finished the last paragraph., "Your language has also taught me a thing or two about the time I live in. I have learned that my classmates at Florida Gulf Coast University are the open space of democracy: we are different, we have been shaped by the diversity of America's landscapes, we are cooperative not competitive, we are beautiful, we are discouraging conformity, we are messy and chaotic, we require patience and persistence, and our vote counts."
And then she ended the letter, "I have also learned that I agree with Robert Frost. When his neighbor explains that, 'Good fences make good neighbors.' Mr. Frost responds, 'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out, and to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, that wants it down.' Which could not be truer: fences are for cows, they sever communication, I do not love walls, and I want the great wall of America down. With the aid of your language, I want to tear the wall down until there is 'not one stone on a stone.' "
The audience burst into applause.
The last two words of Lauren's letter were "wounds healed."
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When my brother Steve returned home from Commonweal, a place where those with cancer can go to learn about healing practices other than traditional means, where they can share the depths of their experience with other cancer survivors, we gathered as a family around the dinner table. There were 14 of us who wanted to hear what Steve had learned.
He spoke of healing not cure. He passed around a bowl of stones he had gathered on the beach at Point Reyes. Each stone had a hole in it.
"We all have a hole in our hearts. A wound. The wound can become a window.
"It is our way out."
A wound. Our collective wound, here, now, at Florida Gulf Coast University and in this nation. Our inability to speak to one another. Our fear of what we might say or not say. May we see this wound as a window. The place of our healing. A true convocation of the Spirit.
Open space. Open minds. Open hearts.
The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up -- ever -- trusting our fellow citizens to join with us in our determined pursuit of a living democracy?
The heart is the house of empathy whose door opens when we receive the pain of others. This is where bravery lives, where we find our mettle to give and receive, to love and be loved, to stand in the center of uncertainty with strength, not fear, understanding this is all there is. The heart is the path to wisdom because it dares to be vulnerable in the presence of power. Our power lies in our love of our homelands.
We have all been transformed by this experience. President Merwin, thank you for being here to bear witness to the power of these students. The faculty has been brave, helping the students to create an atmosphere of inquiry not fear. Democracy asks us to engage our highest selves in civic dialogue: to listen, to grow, to change, and forgive.
Yesterday, Professor Jim Wohlpart asked the students two questions:
Have you ever felt more alive?
Have you ever experienced democracy in such a personal way?
Rebecca Magurean-Kaley, a freshman, said, "Never have I experienced something in my life that I could stand up for."
Graham Bearden quoted from John Lewis, the great civil rights activist and congressman from Georgia, who spoke on campus Friday.
"Let your heart and soul be the feet that mobilize you."
This you have done. In the name of free speech, this is what you are doing.
And it is ongoing.
Courage is ongoing.
Remember this moment for it will inform all others in your life.
Something has been set in motion. The winds of change are here.
In advocating for yourselves as students of Florida Gulf Coast University and demanding academic freedom with all the rights secured for you under the First Amendment, you have advocated for and protected the freedom of speech for every citizen in the United States of America.
The power of your voice, your beautiful voice -- rejoined in a chorus -- resisting, insisting that the open space of democracy remain open, not closed.
This you have done and it is ongoing....
And what is most threatening to power?
The singular beauty of a naked voice.
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* * *
Trina Willard and Trillium sang, "Prayer" with Trina's raw, pure voice exposed.
Questions were asked in the form of a town meeting. Donna Roberts, a graduate student from the Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education, spoke about the intrinsic connection between the health of the land and our own, calling for an evocation of life.
Trillium sang again. Gently, like water. The lyrics speaking of how water can crack open stone.
As we held the communal space that once bore pain and anger, now transformed by the students' courage, it felt more like a ceremony than an anti-anything during an election year cycle.
Students were recognized as teachers.
5:30 p.m. Ding Darling Wildlife Refuge: Jim, Patrick, Dad, Brooke, and I take a walk on a path between a mangrove-lined slough. We see rose petals in the pond and recognize them as roseate spoonbills. As long as the world can support the delicacy of pink wings against blue, even after a hurricane, there is hope.
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