“Sabbath, Shabbat and Sabbatical: A Recipe for the Next 150 Years”

Dr. Michael E. Hill, 18th President of Chautauqua Institution

Good evening, Chautauqua. This year marks my eighth time presiding over this closing service that concludes our Summer Assembly, and I hope I never lose the wonder and awe that is created by Joshua Stafford, the Massey Organ, and Largo. It’s a deeply unfair act to follow, and yet, like Groundhog’s Day, I find myself here again. Thank you, Josh, and our amazing choir for the blessing you have been all summer.

We have spent an entire summer celebrating Chautauqua’s 150th birthday. It has truly been a jam-packed set of weeks in which we did what Chautauqua does best: exploring the most pressing issues of the day through an interdisciplinary lens and as an intergenerational community. I’m deeply gratefully to the staff, the artists, our preachers and teachers who made this a summer to remember. From our conclusion this week with Wynton Marsalis to our starting week on the Presidency, and all those illuminating, surprise moments, like staring at the distinct chompers of Gombessa by going underwater with National Geographic or birthing a new play with the Light and the Dark, it’s staggering the journey we have taken together this summer.

Please join me in thanking all those who made this summer possible.

And I couldn’t be more excited that we conclude this season with the news that we have raised the needed funds to start a major renovation on Bellinger Hall, begin work on the new Roe Green Theater Center and enter a new season of caring for our grounds with the same love as our founders brought to create them. It’s been an amazing 150th birthday.

Birthday parties are important rituals in life. They help us mark time. They give us a container within which we can reflect on where we’ve been and a vessel to contemplate where we wish to go. And much like birthdays, each summer we take in two other important processes, that of sabbath, or shabbat, and that of sabbatical.

Sabbath, or Shabbat, is as weekly day of holiness and rest, observed by our Jewish family members on Saturday and our Christian family members on Sunday. Our Muslim family doesn’t have a true corollary, but we might point to the Friday prayer Jumu’ah (Joom-mwah) as a time to offer deeper reflections. These rituals marks both a moment of holiness and rest. We gather each year on this last Sunday night in August to sing sacred songs and to mark our concluding traditions. And we celebrate this moment as a moment of rest, in a way, from our Summer Assembly. We have left it all on the field, as they say, through scores of lectures, concerts, plays, operas, recitals, classes, religious services, games, runs, workouts, walks, literary events, prizes, moments by the fountain or by the lake or on any number of porches.

We have spent weeks drinking in the goodness of humanity and, on occasion, looking at the ugliness of our condition, all to be better humans when we leave this sacred place.

Contralto Marian Anderson, who graced this stage but who was perhaps better known for singing at the Lincoln Memorial when barred from DAR Constitution Hall, prayed this prayer, // “Teach us, dear God, to have compassion enough to realize that all men are created in Thine image. Teach us to understand that man’s ultimate happiness depends upon his concern and desire to seek wisdom and comprehension for living and for sharing with all mankind.”

Each summer we endeavor to seek wisdom and comprehension for living better lives and for making lives better. We hope that as we conclude tonight you were able to drink in this period of sabbath, of shabbat, but that we leave tonight with the belief that all of this has a higher purpose.

One of the great blessings that Peter and I receive each summer is gathering scores of Chautauquans at the President’s Cottage for dinners and at receptions. We get to welcome the special guests that animate our stages, reflect on the lessons of Chautauqua and break bread – literally and metaphorically – with Chautauquans, some here for a few days and others for a few months. Like so many of you, it is our moment to gather in our home on a special porch to celebrate community. It won’t surprise anyone who knows Chautauqua that these gatherings often include a question-and-answer period. // During our week on “Wonder and Awe,” a Chautauquan turned the tables and asked me a question. He asked, “where do you find wonder and awe at Chautauqua?”.

I was taken aback, not because I don’t have countless moments of wonder and awe here — because I do! — but because I was expecting the forthcoming question would be directed at one of our incredible speakers or preachers we were hosting that evening. I think it a fair assumption when seated on the porch were Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, and authors Amy Tan and Dacher Keltner!

I answered by recounting the story of another Chautauquan who just a week prior told me that he was always struck that people struggled to describe Chautauqua. He said that he could do it in one word! One word?, I thought in shock!!! Then he offered this one word: “sabbatical.”

Our table mused that evening on that word: Chautauqua is a sabbatical for people of all ages. Chautauqua is a sabbatical from the frenetic world beyond our gates. Chautauqua is a sabbatical, often, from those things that may make us sad, or worry us, or with which we struggle. But something nagged at me about this line of thinking. Was sabbatical really about avoiding or escaping?

We’ve been talking about our founders a great deal this summer. Miller and Vincent dreamed of creating an avenue for the purposeful use of leisure time. The more I studied the origins of the concept of sabbatical, it became increasingly apt to me to tag Chautauqua in this way. Because in sabbatical, the focus of one’s break is an extensive revitalization that goes beyond the short-term relaxation of a vacation.

It offers a mind shift to help one figure out what’s next. The journey is critical, but the destination is about what comes after. What do we do with this Chautauqua time we’ve been so fortunate to experience together? What does that tell us about what is ours to do in the coming years to ensure Chautauqua is relevant for its NEXT 150 years?

Indeed, as Miller reminds us in our reading tonight, “How pleasing the thought, the world is asked to a survey of the foundations of Chautauqua …”.

And how do we acknowledge that there are those who come into community with us who do not experience respite? How do we find the courage to admit that too many who come here feel othered or less than? How do we find the humility to acknowledge that there are still far too many pockets of entitlement that leave some devoid of feeling the fullness of our mission? This is not a new problem and it is not one unique TO Chautauqua, but we must also face that it is one that is OF Chautauqua.

I spend a lot of time thinking about these kinds of questions in my role as President. Chautauqua has always evolved, and each generation asks questions anew about what should come next. I’m certain this is precisely WHY we made it to this milestone birthday. But to simply celebrate without asking the tough questions of what’s to come is a little like looking at sabbatical as simply a time to stop without contemplating what’s on the other side.

So as we close out this 150th anniversary, this 151th Assembly, I find myself asking what we are called to do in a world that so often feels chaotic. And while that calling can and must be a shared one, I hope you’ll join me in in some imagining tonight.

I find myself worried about who is not yet invited to the shared calling that is to come. Chautauqua still seems out of reach to too many. That can be because of cost or, to be frank, because we don’t know yet how to be a community that includes those who may feel like they don’t belong in what is still a very homogenous community of communities.

In John Schmitz’s book, Chautauqwhat? A Brief History of a Place and an Idea, he notes of the early 20th Century Chautauqua:

“…there was no effort to bring new immigrants into the Chautauqua Movement. No translations of the CLSC readings (except in a rare case for missionary work), no outreach to immigrant ghettos, no instruction in English offered, and only a brief attempt at citizenship classes. Had Chautauqua and the Chautauqua Movement somehow been able to bring new immigrants on board, Chautauqua would be a very different place today … but, at the time, the future Chautauquans looked ahead to what was their own.”

Chautauqua, again, sits at a very critical decision point. As we start our next 150 years, imagine if we decide to work together to make this Chautauqua a place not of privilege but of possibility, to truly welcome new “immigrants” into this movement and to have this movement shaped together.

If Chautauqua can be a place where we might bring our vulnerabilities to bear, might we create the conditions that lead to a world not of desperation but one of dreams?

And if we’re to do that, how do we welcome all our vulnerabilities versus having some feel left out while others feel embraced?

Imagine if we connect to Chautauqua’s founding promise of all that is possible not because we view this endeavor as a spreadsheet but rather a new vision board that dares dream not of what was realistic or responsible but what was essential for an era that has lost hope. Imagine if we understand mission as the most precious bottom line pursuit.

Imagine what it might look like if we accepted the charge to be a symbol hope for a fractured world… because society’s “exhausted middle” demands sabbath, and we find ways to create it even more here.

Sabbath, Shabbat…an invitation to begin again, to face that which may already seem too daunting. What if we declare “enough!” — not because it’s easy but precisely because it’s hard, and we dare not ignore the call?

And here’s the thing: it’s not because Chautauqua has the answers but more so that we have the courage to admit we, too, are too broken and too tired, and the only way out is to look inward together. Too often we describe Chautauqua as a utopia, but that does it a disservice. It is not that. All of the world’s ugliness still exists here, because Chautauqua is a human-infused institution. But imagine what it would look like if we went back to our founding language and declared Chautauqua “an experiment,” one in which we know we will fail more than we succeed but that we will get there because we agreed to try?

As we conclude our 150th year, what does it mean to declare a celebration of beginning again for the next 150 years?

That is our inheritance. That is our mandate. That is our messy reality. We dishonor these first 150 years if we say it’s too hard. We call forth the courage of our past ghosts and invite them to infuse us with the tenacity to pursue the next impossible dream for Chautauqua, not for Chautauqua’s sake, but for humanity’s sake, acknowledging that the reason so many come here is to escape that which seems too frightening beyond these gates while others come here for similar reasons and yet find too much frightening still within them.

The poet Amanda Gorman concludes her piece “The Miracle of Morning” with these words:

We’ll observe how the burdens braved by humankind
Are also the moments that make us humans kind;
Let each morning find us courageous, brought closer;
Heeding the light before the fight is over.
When this ends, we’ll smile sweetly, finally seeing
In testing times, we became the best of beings.

We conclude a celebration of 150 years this evening, and we have celebrated. Now we turn our eyes to the next 150 years. What will we declare is ours to do in this experiment called Chautauqua?

Our inheritance calls us to become the best of beings. If not here, where? If not now, when? Generations have paid the downpayment. Will we emerge from this shabbat, this sabbatical, not only contemplating what’s on the other side but embracing the challenge to clasp hands and walk there together?

May we each contribute to the miracle of the morning that can come if we accept nothing less than the best in human values, the very best in one another.

I tap the gavel three times …

Chautauqua 2024, this sabbath, this shabbat, this sabbatical, invites us in these testing times to become the best of beings.