In a convocation address that focused on the benefits of sharing intellectual gifts, Barbara J. Busse, dean of the College of Communication and Fine Arts, thanked her college’s community for burnishing and freely sharing what they have with others.
Her talk, “The Gift that Is CFA: Excellence Comes Fully Alive,” focused on the many ways that CFA students, donors and faculty “give ourselves very publicly” to people throughout Los Angeles and the world – through art exhibits on campus to concerts performed in Rome to art therapy done in local clinics.
Busse called Loyola Marymount community members “privileged among all the people on the planet” and said, “We should be grateful. We should not whine. We are, as a community, graced beyond measure.” The noon address in Murphy Recital Hall was attended by nearly 100 and was followed by a short reception.
In retelling poet and author Lewis Hyde’s story of an American Indian peace pipe ceremony, Busse noted that some American colonists appreciated but mistook the nature of the ritual, wanting to take the pipe with them to hang on their mantle as a memento; literally “to take the gift out of circulation.”
“[The colonist] did not understand Indian gift culture,” she said. Noting that the Indians “believed that the gift must always move; that gifts are meant to be shared, to be passed along, to be passed forward or returned. In this kind of gift culture, all are benefited when people give to others, accept gifts from others and then move the gift on … and on … and on.
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April 7, 2011
News Contact: Peter M. Warren | 310.338.2389 | peter.warren@lmu.edu