Himes inspires hundreds

It is 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday night and hundreds of Boston College students are crowded into the Murray Function Room, anxiously anticipating the "last lecture" of Rev. Michael Himes, a professor of theology. Himes' speech was the inaugural lecture at BC in an ongoing series where top academics are asked to give a talk on what they would communicate if it were their last lecture. These talks were inspired by the life of Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch and his book The Last Lecture.

Pausch became a self-proclaimed accidental celebrity due to a lecture he gave at Carnegie Mellon; he spoke of the wisdom he wished to impart upon the world before his death, due to a battle with pancreatic cancer. The talk was originally intended to be for the benefit of his children. However, it had the effect of inspiring millions, including other academics such as Himes, who are now tackling the challenge of giving their own "last lectures" at colleges across the United States.

Himes began by defining what he determined to be the most important aspects of life. "Thinking of this as the last time I have a chance to think of what matters most to me, I have thought hard about it and wondered, have I uttered the great, definite message definitely?" Himes said.

The entire lecture and Himes' proposed approach toward life was based on a single piece of biblical wisdom. "It is a statement I have spoken, read, and preached about many times; it is repeated in Matthew, Mark, and Luke: The statement of Jesus that if you hold on to your life, you lose it, but if you give your life away, you have everlasting life," Himes said. "I did not understand this statement for a long time; I often thought of it as a commandment. Only after a time did it occur to me that it is not a commandment at all, rather, it is a description, because being and giving oneself turn out to be the same thing."

The primary first step in this process of giving oneself away is to learn to love others, Himes said. "If we're going to exist, we need to give ourselves away, for the reason there is something from nothing, reason anything exists at all, is love and self-giving," Himes said. "The necessary first step in knowing anyone or anything is that you have to love that thing."

Himes did not define the "heart of love" as pertaining to sentimental feelings or warm emotions but rather the process of reaching out, giving of yourself to others, and striving to know their stories. "By the heart of love, I mean an activity, and the activity is to give yourself to something. You have to give it your time, your energy, and your attention. You have to give yourself to it, and only then do you truly understand it," Himes said. "For everything that exists is open and ready to tell you about itself."

A subscriber to the belief that reality was waiting to give itself to us as soon as we afford ourselves to it, Himes said that it is only through building lasting, deep friendships and by teaching others that we can truly know reality. "If to have anything is to give it away, if to exist is to give oneself away, then if you really want to possess reality and let it shape you, you have to give it away," Himes said. "To know anything is a great gift, as knowledge has no limits. We are all hungry to know, and we begin knowing when we begin asking others the right questions."

Himes stressed the importance of friendship between humans and spoke to how the structure of friendship facilitates our aid of others to discern the right questions, as well as helping us personally to define what the right questions are. "Friendship takes the whole person. It is intellectual, and it is about agreement upon all of the most important things in life. It is benevolence and will and genuinely wanting the best for that person," Himes said. "Everything that makes us an individual human being gets tapped in friendship."

Himes also spoke of how, as a professor of theology, he helps people to evaluate their experiences and begin to ask questions. "Theology is not about getting information from God - it is about experiencing God. So one of the things that I have tried to do in teaching theology over my life is to invite people to check their experience," Himes said. "It is first and foremost about understanding our experience, to see if the ways in which people have felt, thought, and entered into friendship have helped illuminate the way they have lived their experience."

The final ways in which to live fully and give of oneself that Himes stressed were to allow experiences and friendships to shape you and to practice integrity. "You don't want to have been in a series of roles or have been wearing a series of masks your entire life. You want to make sure all the people in your life have known the same person - that you were a whole, connected person," Himes said. "If there is one single virtue that I think is integral to people's lives, it is integrity."

Himes concluded his lecture by reflecting upon his own life experience. "I find as I look back over my life that I have surprised myself over and over again with the discovery that I was able to do and feel what I never thought I could do or feel," Himes said. "You have to live life, dedicate yourself to ideas, and you have to give yourself to work if you're going to have anything to reflect upon. Then you can break the center of all of those events that make you who you are and shape that life that you have lived."