Response-Ability

This address accompanies a slide presentation which can be viewed here.

It seems the holidays are over. We all looked forward to Thanksgiving, then we came back for the rush to Christmas. The load was heavy but we knew Santa Claus was coming to town very soon. Then Christmas came and went, but New Year's was still ahead. Even New Year wasn't the end of the fun. Beyond it lay the slower pace of Interterm…for some of you involving exciting trips to Europe , Guatemala , Urbana , even the Caribbean ! But even the end of Interterm wasn't too bad, since at least for some, it brought another small pause. But today the spring semester begins. It's cold, snowy, icy, and for some of you, your thoughts are far away. I say for some, because I've talked to some of you in the past few days who have said how delighted you were to get BACK to Greenville ! Still, they say February is the hardest month of the academic year. We lived in western New York for 6 years where winter is a serious matter. In fact they say they only have TWO seasons; winter and the 4 th of July! Although Ellen and I loved the snow and cold there, I was amazed how many people grew anxious, impatient, surly, and even depressed during the month of February. So I thought today I'd try the little trick my elementary school teachers tried when we came back from vacation. They called it “Show and Tell.” We all brought a little something and a little story, and even if the things and the stories were completely boring, at least it took our minds off the fact we were back to school.

So today I want to do a little “Show and Tell.” [SLIDE #1 - TITLE] Now I realize it's really not quite fair. I mean I'm the only one that gets to “show” and the only one that gets to “tell.” Unfortunately, all I can offer is that you might want to talk to Lori Gaffner about your speaking in chapel sometime. I also confess there is a small “catch.” I mean as usual, I still plan on talking about character development. The fact is that there were two parts of my holidays that left deep impressions on my mind. The first was the wedding of my oldest child, my son, Jim Mannoia IV. The second, was the time I spent with my 80-year old mother, Florence . The wedding reminded me of the power of decisions, life-long commitments that are responses to circumstances. The time with my mother taught me about the limitations of our abilities. So during my “Show and Tell,” I want to talk to you about the character virtue of “response-ability.”

In the past few days since deciding I wanted to talk to you about it, my sensitivity to responsibility has been heightened. I noticed it when Sali, the proud new Russian owner of a small restaurant in town showed off his newly expanded dining room and remarked how he and his staff had a responsibility to keep it clean. “Family dining,” he said, “is not the same as dirty dining.” And I noticed it in the movie Ellen and I watched last night, “Hart's War”, where the initial moral failure by both of the main characters is redeemed in the end by their magnificent responses to the even more magnificent and inspiring example of courage and self-sacrifice by the African-American pilot who had been racially abused. So I want to talk to you about response-ability.

But first let me bring you up to Christmas by showing and telling a bit about Thanksgiving! [Slide #2 - TITLE] Some of you may remember in December I told you Ellen and I spent a wonderful time in Africa over Thanksgiving, combining College business with personal vacation. In fact some of you remember this REALLY well because you were there too! Jesse, Mandy, Amber, Cari, Dave, Jake, Daniel; [Slide #3] I hope at least one or two of you are here. We had a great time with you [Slides #4, 5] eating, talking, and just being together. Then Ellen and I enjoyed our time in that beautiful country too! [Slides #6-13] The Indian Ocean is warm and beautiful. As you can see, we did a lot of diving and a lot of relaxing. Christmas [Slide #14 - TITLE] was wonderful time with family…first here in Greenville [Slide #15 & #16] , then with the extended family in Dallas [Slide #17].

That brings me to the wedding. [Slide #18 - TITLE] It's hard to describe the feeling of seeing your first child marry [Slide #19, 20, 21]. It seems impossible; he couldn't be that old already. It's even harder emotionally when you yourself perform the ceremony! [Slide #22]. Marriage is all about love, but of course love is first and foremost about a decision to commit yourself to another person for life! That decision is a response, a response to circumstances; circumstances of the mind and the heart. It is in effect a response of will, not primarily of either the mind or the heart. We can be people of great passion, and even of great thought. But until we choose to respond to that with a decision, we show no love, and cannot be married. The response of marriage puts our ability to keep a promise—our character—on the line. So it is frightening. I remember how scared I was to ask Ellen. I remember my son Jim's confession of fear in asking Lyla before he did it a year ago in Zagreb Croatia . But “response”-ability begins with the decision to respond to circumstances…including circumstances of fear. [Slide #23 - BLACK]

Now some of you will be married; and perhaps soon. But all of us face the challenge of “response”-ability. We all make choices, responses to the circumstances around us. Greenville College is about studying. How do you respond? How hard do you study? How do you respond to deadlines for assignments? How do you respond to expectations to be somewhere when you say you will be? What about your responses to obligations to pay your bills? How do you respond to unfair or unkind treatment from friends or even teachers? How do you respond to an environment that gives you freedom, when no one is watching, to mistreat property you do not own or to get away with what you know is wrong? How do you respond to temptations to shade or manipulate the truth? Character always shows up when no one else is around! As I saw tears in my son's eyes when he first saw his bride coming down the aisle; when I saw her tears as she looked into his eyes while he pledged his life to her; when I felt my own tears as I charged them and consecrated their mutual commitment, I remembered the struggles they had already endured, imagined the challenges of what I pray will be a lifetime together…..and I thought of responsibility.

That brings me to the second part of my holidays. [Slide #24] The wedding took place on the Royal Caribbean ship Mariner of the Seas. [Slide #25] And believe it or not, my son and his new wife invited me and 17 other family members and friends along on their honeymoon cruise! [Slide #26] In fact our cabins were right in a row! Coach Johnson tells me his son Cole did the same with their week long honeymoon over Christmas too, so maybe we're starting a new fad! “Take your folks on your honeymoon!” Or perhaps it's just another illustration of the name that is given to the parents of today's “Millennial Generation” of students. Their parents are called “Helicopter Parents” who hover over their children….including apparently even the honeymoon! Of course we had some good fun! [Slides #27, 28, VERY QUICKLY show #29 and move on #30] In any case, even Grandma Mannoia came along. My mother Florence is a woman of sterling character, [Slide #31] infinite patience, amazing discernment, [Slide #32] and unending love for her children. She had to be most of that just to put up with me. [Slide #33] . Now her memory has grown weaker. So as she accompanied us for the wedding and the cruise, we were privileged to escort her, to help her remember to bring along this or that, to guide her along the way, and to use pictures to help her recall even sometimes the events of the previous day. [Slide #34] Even as I found it hard to describe the feelings seeing my son marry, it is also hard to describe my feelings seeing the mother that covered for me in my days of childish non-response-ability, now standing in need of help herself.

The second half of the word “response-ability” is “ability.” With my mother, often now it is I who am the one who is “response-able.” When the circumstances of life, whether of youth or old age deny us the ability to respond, then we cannot be response-able. The same is of course true for circumstances of other kinds. When we are ignorant of crucial facts, we cannot be held “responsible” for choices that turn out badly. When we are not physically able to reach out to save a child, or a friend, we are not response-able. When we are bound with chains of one kind or another, we are again not response-able. [Slide #35 – BLACK]

So of course the crucial question, even before we ask whether we have responded to circumstances, is whether we are able to do so. Many times this is used as an excuse. Some will say they could not have been responsible because they were not able. I was raised badly, I am too poor, my girl friend was flirting with me, my boyfriend was pressuring me, I was drunk, everyone else was doing it, no one else was doing it. In other words, it was not within my ability to respond, so I must not have been response-able.

But of course the truth of the matter is that our response and our ability to respond are tied together. Paradoxically, our responses depend upon our ability to respond, but our ability to respond often also depends on our responses. We shape our abilities by our choices. We choose what we drink or eat. We choose where we will hang out. We choose who we will hang out with. We choose what we read and what we see and what we hear. We choose the habits we form. And these choices often determine our ability to respond when the need arises. Often the procrastinating or underperforming student cannot avoid responsibility by saying they were unable to be on time or study more. His choices over a period of time built habits that made him unable to respond. The athlete that “runs out of gas” on the field sometimes cannot avoid responsibility because they chose not to practice hard and build strength. Usually, the drunk cannot avoid response-ability by saying she was unable to respond. Her choices made her unable to do so. The sexual addict also usually cannot avoid response-ability by saying he was unable to respond differently. His choices on dates and on the Internet have made him unable to do so. The angry driver or athlete, the rebellious, discourteous, surly student, and even the impatient administrator, teacher, or secretary must also remember that one's “response-ability” depends on the choices we make to shape our ability to respond. Feeling the emotional pain of my dear mother's loss of abilities, and knowing her history of unselfish service to many as a teacher and pastor's wife as well as her sacrificial nurturing for me and for her husband of 54 years,…..I thought of responsibility.

This brings me to what is probably the most boring part of my “Show and Tell.” But I think it may also be the most important. Over the past 10 weeks I have traveled over 25,000 miles; equivalent to the circumference of the earth! A lot by air, a lot by sea, and far more than I care to recall…by car! [Slide #36 and then 37 – LAST SLIDE] . As I thought about talking to you today, I realized that in at least one very simple way, I was thinking about “response-ability” all the while I was driving. To be a response-able driver, I needed first, as I've said in reflecting on the wedding, to be able to “respond” to the circumstances around me. To make decisions, to go this way or that, to speed up or to slow down….sometimes quickly. But of course, by analogy with my reflections about my mother, to be a response-“able” driver I also had to be “able” to make those responses. I had to have good habits of driving, I had to be alert, I had to avoid putting myself in the wrong circumstances. All the desire to make the right responses would be of no avail if I were untrained in driving, intoxicated, distracted, or just sleepy. I was only responsible if I had cultivated the ability to drive right.

But as I thought back about those thousands of miles on the road, perhaps the most important insight I gained was that I realized nothing in what I've said today tells you WHICH responses to make, or WHICH abilities to cultivate. As a driver, if I simply set my own definition of those responses or those abilities, I can hardly be considered a “response-able” driver. I spent a lot of time behind the wheel thinking about how fast I should drive. Sometimes I thought, “Well I'm personally quite comfortable driving 80mph.” At other times, I thought, “Well, everyone else is driving faster than the speed limit.” Had I chosen either of those approaches, I could hardly be considered a “response-able” driver; even if it seemed I had both the will and the ability to respond. In each case the problem was where to find a standard. Neither our own individual choices, nor the fact that everyone else around us chooses in a particular way, makes us responsible. During those countless hours on the road, I realized that responsibility requires our response, requires our ability, but also depends on our willingness to set aside our personal prerogatives.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we know that the fundamental truth about His life and death and resurrection is the fact that he gave up his prerogatives and submitted himself to the standards of His Father. It was not His will be done…nor was it the will of his disciples be done…or even the will of God's people be done. It was “Thy Will Be Done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” If we seek to be “response-able” people, as He was response-able, I urge you to follow His example. I pray you will respond to the circumstances around you and shape your abilities by those responses by setting aside your own standards, and following Him.