Dearest colleagues and friends,
This day was coming...I fear that even after years of preparation, the words I put forth to you during this last informal speech will still be inadequate to full your expectations. Still, I shall try.
Over the years I have been blessed with many great things...a loving family, great friends and very lovely women who loved me despite all my faults as a human, and more importantly, as a man. Mostly importantly is the loving God who cherishes my life and wants nothing but my best, every day that he chooses to bless me with breath. It is here that I feel I have failed...though God has blessed me with all the things listed above for many more years than I've deserved, still do I remain a hypocrite at the end. Still I try to tell people how to live their lives, when for years I have lived in a fantasy realm--a realm where my actions have no equal and opposite reaction. In doing so, I have hurt those whom I love most and wished only to call friend. I have abused their trust, their love, more times than I care to remember, yet they always return to me with arms wide open.
As a man of academia, I fear that religion has been one area of the academic world that is sorely lacking in clarity within my own life. Though I have great knowledge of multitudes of culutures and their corresponding religions and could eshew you their virtues with the tide and time, my own sense of conviction has been as weak as the C student who merely glides through classes, ignorant of the impending doom that awaits him upon application to any reputable graduate program.
This is the first and imminantly most important reason that I am giving my Final Lecture during this week...I seek closure within my own heart as to my status in my claimed religion of Christianity.
(more to come)
