Several years ago, Christopher Haw decided to heed Mahatma Gandhi's advice and, on Tuesday, he urged Bluffton University students to do likewise.
"Be the change you wish to see in the world," Haw, quoting the Indian leader, told students at Bluffton's opening convocation in Founders Hall. The university welcomed about 270 new first-year and transfer students during the annual ceremony.
Haw, a theologian and co-author of the 2008 book Jesus for President, said students have a unique opportunity to expand their minds and seek solutions to problems, including the one he addressed-poverty. He called on his listeners to "find ways to be the hands and feet of Jesus," reminding them that even simple acts can be important. "If you search, you will find."
Haw's presentation launched Bluffton's 2010-11 civic engagement theme, "Living with Enough: Responding to Global Poverty." Each year, the university focuses on a significant contemporary issue that is related to its mission and becomes the subject of cross-disciplinary exploration.
For incoming first-year students, that exploration begins with a common summer reading. This year's book is The Emptiness of Our Hands: A Lent Lived on the Streets, authors Phyllis Cole-Dai and James Murray's account of spending Lent and Holy Week 1999 on the streets of Columbus, Ohio.
Haw related stories of street life he has seen in his native Chicago, Philadelphia and in Camden, N.J., "America's most dangerous city" in 2009 based on crime statistics-and where he lives with his wife Cassie and their infant son.
He said 40-50 people are murdered yearly in the city of 80,000, and at the root of the senseless violence is poverty. When he walks his dog, he explained, he passes properties abandoned years ago by companies that went overseas, as well as capable but unemployed men sitting on the streets, drinking, while their abilities wither.
After seeing similar scenes, and people, during a few nights with a friend on the streets of neighboring Philadelphia, "I wondered how they really might ever find the energy and organization to get off the streets," Haw said.
"To see the world as it really is, is to enter the world of wounds," he added, noting that 3 billion people worldwide live on less than $2 per day, and 20,000 children die daily as a result of poverty.
For years, Haw said, he searched for answers to questions of "Why?" and if there is a better way to care for the poor. Part of that time was spent in Belize, where he studied "ecological disaster," he said, suggesting that "the way we treat the earth is the way we treat the poor."
Taking Gandhi's advice to heart in 2003, he said "I joined together with a few like-minded deviants" and formed the multi-house community in Camden where he continues to live. There, residents plant gardens whose produce is shared with others, and "put our lives in position to reconcile with those from other racial backgrounds," Haw said.
That's the kind of change Bluffton advocates, he pointed out, saying the university hopes to instill in students "the courage to resist the tsunami of consumerism."
Earlier, Dr. James M. Harder, the university's president, welcomed its 111th incoming class of new students. He reminded the assembly that Bluffton's motto, "The Truth Makes Free, a paraphrase of John 8:31-32, refers to the truth as revealed through the life and ministry of Jesus. "May that truth be our constant guide," he said.
The traditional introduction of each new student to faculty, staff and peers at the convocation is "a way of symbolizing their inclusion as full-fledged members of Bluffton's community of learners," the president added.
