Ruff Delivers Commencement Address

12/17/2022

Mark Edward Ruff, Ph.D., the 2022 recipient of the Nancy McNeir Ring Award, delivered the commencement address. It is a SLU tradition to have the winner of the Nancy McNeir Ring Award, SLU's highest honor for teaching, deliver the Midyear Commencement remarks. 

Ruff, a professor of history at SLU since 2004, titled his address “The Power of Radical Generosity in Responding to Crisis.” 

Below is the full text to Ruff's remarks. A watch a video of Ruff's speech can be found on YouTube.

 “The Power of Radical Generosity in Responding to Crisis”

It is a genuine honor to be invited to deliver this commencement address entitled, “The Power of Radical Generosity in Responding to Crisis.”  Bear with me as I address the second half of this topic first — the subject of crisis. But I promise you that this brief immersion in the darkness will lead us to an ennobling conclusion about the power of radical generosity to transform.  

My appearance on this stage stems from one of the more unpleasant realities of my life — and it is undoubtedly one with which a few of you, regardless of whether you are graduating seniors, family, friends or faculty, are more familiar than you would wish to be. This is the reality of chronic illness. In my case, it is not an illness involving pathogens or auto-immune disease but a genetic collagen disorder. I will spare you the details, but since collagen comprises somewhere around 30% of the total proteins in the body, my condition can in theory affect nearly every bodily system.

As those of you who have experienced chronic illness know all too well, chronic conditions are not like normal illnesses that “run their course.” They have an unpredictable pulse. The abnormal becomes the normal, at least until you gain some understanding of your chronic illness’s idiosyncratic melodies and rhythms. 

At some point, depending on whether and how our chronic illness progresses, one is brought to the brink. This moment of existential crisis often occurs when it finally dawns on us that we cannot control the uncontrollable. It might be that moment at 2:59 am in the Barnes Jewish emergency room as you wait for your scan results that will determine whether you will be sent off for a second emergency surgery in three years.  For others, it might be that moment when physical pain becomes unbearable, and you wonder whether pain is the cross you will carry for the rest of your life.  Perhaps it is better to illustrate this confrontation with the absurd with a football analogy. Imagine that you are, like me, a lifelong and diehard Buffalo Bills fan.  Being a Bills fan is absurd in itself!  

It is January 23, 2022, and the Bills have taken the lead by three points against the Kansas City Chiefs with thirteen seconds left in the game. But you know — you just know - that defeat will somehow be snatched from the jaws of victory. 

I mention this disquieting reality of life with a chronic illness (and the absurdity of being a Bills fan!) in order to draw a parallel with what our graduates have just experienced. Staring into the face of absurdity has been our fate as members of the SLU-community since the start of the pandemic in March, 2020. Many of you graduating today — those of you who started your studies at SLU in 2019 - have experienced your own confrontation with the absurd.  

This included an abrupt closure of our campus and dorms, a rapid-fire switch first to Zoom-school and then to painful hybrid instruction, a resumption of in-class learning that suddenly felt awkward, the sudden loss of life on our campus grounds, to say nothing of the personal losses when family members and friends succumbed to COVID or COVID-related illnesses. The abnormal became the new normal. This wasn’t how our college experience was supposed to be.  

I will never forget an anguished conversation with a student from that first COVID semester. She and I met over Zoom just after her father had been put on an ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) machine at Barnes-Jewish hospital.  Her father was a physician and SLU faculty member.

The family had contracted COVID during the mad scramble to return home from Spain at the start of the pandemic.  Her father had already been placed on a ventilator and had been in a coma for weeks. She and her family of physicians all knew that being placed on ECMO, a machine that allows the heart to rest by pumping and oxygenating blood, was usually a prelude to death.   

It turns out that we do have a choice in the aftermaths of anguished moments like this. These points of crisis can be turning points — but not in the cheap ways the self-help industry promotes. The choice is not between optimism and pessimism. There is nothing more infuriating and cynicism-producing than being told that you just have to think happy thoughts to march down that “road to recovery.”    

Our choice instead is utterly counter-intuitive. It is just as absurd as the absurdity engulfing us. That choice is to give — to give radically, and to give generously. It is giving with no expectation of anything in return. It is giving with no strings attached. Call it radical generosity, radical because it uproots any expectations we might place on it.  

On the surface, radical generosity makes no sense whatsoever. We give when we are the ones most in need of sustenance. This is because we, facing despair, have no other choice but to give.

 What we seek - health, wholeness, or simply a return to normality - is not something that can be given to us by others. We cannot gift these to ourselves. We can only give to others.   

For those with chronic illnesses, radical generosity often first takes the form of helping those suffering with our own illnesses and ailments. It does not entail solving their problems. It often means something as humble as bringing a meal, providing hospitality, telling our story, providing a listening ear, and posing questions: answers can come later. We guide. We do not prescribe.  

For those in the SLU community during the worst of the pandemic, such radical generosity often first took the form of helping those struggling to cope.  I remain astounded by how many faculty, students, administrators (and even their pets!) stepped up to assist. Some of the most heroic individuals at SLU amid the Delta and Omicron outbreaks of 2021-22 were the RAs.

These Resident Assistants were fighting on multiple fronts. They had to enforce public health edicts and mask mandates. They made themselves very popular by breaking up parties. They were the first line of defense against mental health breakdowns. They were rescuers who themselves were often struggling with the same challenges facing those entrusted to them.  

Radical generosity, though, rarely begins with such heroic achievements. Expectations of unceasing heroism produce burnout.  Radical generosity instead begins with baby steps. It does not and cannot develop overnight. It has to be cultivated. While arising easily out of crisis, it has to become a habit, something engraved into our very being. It is not the same as what is often called enabling, as when one “enables” the behavior of someone with an addiction. In fact, it is the opposite. Enabling is merely succumbing to pressure from others.  Radical generosity, in contrast, is not something that can be imposed on us or expected of us: it has to be given freely. 

The beauty of radical generosity — and the paradox at its core — is that we find ourselves transformed as much as its intended recipients. Radical generosity transforms self-pity into empathy. For one, it takes the focus off ourselves.  For another, we find ourselves, having suffered, more capable of comprehending the suffering of others. We no longer dismiss it with attitudes like “buck up and deal with it.” We feel that warm inner glow after giving. We become joyful. More importantly, we find ourselves enriched by the presence of others. Our social communities grow. Almost all research on this paradox — there is a wonderful book called “The Paradox of Giving” - shows that individuals with a supportive community around them are happier and more fulfilled.   We have seen how isolation causes us to wither. When chronic illness or the pandemic no longer force us to retreat from others, we cease turning on ourselves with terrible consequences for our emotional well-being and the health of our communities.  Instead, generosity builds community. The giver paradoxically becomes the recipient.   

I would rather not see radical generosity as transactional: we give and therefore receive.  I prefer to see this “paradox of giving” as a holy mystery with profound religious roots. Is not one man’s act of selfless giving at the core of Christianity? Are not giving and community at the heart of so many religious traditions, including Islam and Judaism?  Radical generosity is ultimately a crucial step in finding and developing our true selves and partaking in a much greater and higher mystery.  

I would like to close by returning to the story of my student’s father who had been placed on ECMO. In what was nothing short of a miracle, he recovered and is back to practicing medicine. Over Zoom and in tears, he told me of his tremendous gratitude toward the nurses and doctors who saved his life. His understanding of what it means to practice medicine was fundamentally transformed.  

All of my examples suggest that it takes a crisis — an existential crisis at that — for radical generosity to bloom. But I would like to leave you with an even more radical suggestion: is it not also possible for us to become agents of radical generosity under ordinary circumstances?  I urge us to cultivate generosity and compassion not just because “tis the season.” Rather, I would invite us to make it a lifelong pursuit along the lines of the old adage: Tis better to give than to receive.  

Thank you.