Dear alumni/ae and friends,
Earlier this month, Vanderbilt Divinity School welcomed 60 new graduates into our family of alumni/ae.
As we reflect on an academic year complete with new avenues for learning and engaging with divinity studies, increased financial opportunities created for students, and a community filled with scholars, leaders, and servants, our graduates are sent out from this place with a charge to do the impossible. A charge to be peacemakers in times of war. To be compassionate in a world where cruelty appears as default. I charged them, as I charge you now, to do the impossible, and in doing so, I charge you to remember that we serve a God of the impossible.
This charge is part of the mystery of theological education. Rejoice in the mystery that assumes that nothing, no experience, is wasted.
And finally, I charge you all, family, friends, alumni, staff, and faculty, to continue this journey with this graduating class as they depart from this place. It is my desire to see this community seek good, resist evil, and remake the structures of injustice into the vision of equity and love on Earth as it will one day be in Heaven.
I wish you all a joyful summer,
Yolanda Pierce, Ph.D.
Dean
University Distinguished Professor of Religion & Literature
University Distinguished Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies
