What’s your biggest dream?
I suspect most of us want to build something that outlives us. For some, that happens through children. For others, through writing: a story, poem or reflection that may one day offer someone courage, comfort or a new way of seeing.
For me, it is people. That is why I do what I do as an educator: helping people grow and shaping a culture that prepares them for the challenges of the future. People are among the most enduring things we can invest in. Our influence may continue through their choices, relationships and work long after we are gone.
My current dream is to establish a scholarship that enables someone to undertake research they could not otherwise afford to pursue. Some worthwhile work remains undone simply because the opportunity is missing.
I would love the scholarship to support projects that hold together the wisdom of Athens and the wisdom of Jerusalem: reason and revelation, intellectual inquiry and faith, rigorous thought and spiritual depth. A scholarship would allow someone else to ask an important question and follow it faithfully. I would not control the answers or even know where the work might lead.
I want to place something life-giving into the future: an opportunity, a set of values and a question worth pursuing. It would be permission for someone else to think deeply, faithfully and freely.
The Afterword 
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