Welcome students, alumni, faculty, trustees, members of Staff, and Distinguished
guests. I am honored to welcome you to this Inauguration Ceremony on behalf of Naropa
students and the entire Naropa community. I would like to extend a special welcome to
our guest of honor, the new President of Naropa, Dr. Stuart Lord and all of his family.
We are excited and grateful to be celebrating this day with you and look forward to
assisting you with your service and guidance at this university.
I’ve had the privilege of working closely with Dr. Lord since he arrived at Naropa
a few months ago. I’ve only known him for a short time but I’ve already experienced the
force of his dynamic personality. For those of you who don’t know him, he is like a
moving locomotive that never slows down. He is always firing on all cylinders.
Whenever I go up to the President’s Office to see Nancy or Janine, it feels like a tornado
has just ripped through, leaving a wake of ideas and excitement – and a lot more work for
his staff!
Dr. Lord has arrived at a critical moment in our school’s history. We are facing
many challenges. But the challenges are just the texture of the cloth. The fabric of the
Naropa cloth is woven with visionary confidence and tender ecstasy – attributes
embodied by Dr. Lord. We are human beings before we are students, teachers, or
administrators and the Naropa education continually reminds us to reconnect with the
wonder and wisdom of our shared humanity. Naropa is educating the whole person – and
educating the person to become whole. This culture of compassionate transformation is
an incredibly rich and abundant resource that Naropa has been implanting into the hearts
of all of its students, alumni, and friends for 35 years. Now, we are entrusting the
stewardship of this priceless commodity into the hands of Dr. Lord.
By agreeing to become Naropa’s president and custodian of contemplative
education, Dr. Lord is inheriting the potential for contemplative education to grow, and
the responsibility to share this valuable resource with the rest of the world. Naropa is
approaching the point where it is ready to blossom and send its seeds out into the world –
and Dr. Lord is perfectly suited to steer this process. As he likes to say, “Naropa is too
good not to be better.”
Have you ever been on a stopped train and saw another train start to move, only to
discover that it was actually your train that was moving, not the other one? I have had
that feeling a lot lately. I look around and see things changing in Boulder or at other
colleges and there is a brief moment of impatience that thinks, “Why is Naropa sitting
still? Why aren’t we GOING anywhere?!” And then i realize that the Naropa train IS
moving and the other train is sitting still. And i smile because i know that Dr. Lord is the
engine at the front of the train.
Dr. Lord, on behalf of all the students, welcome to Naropa! You will find many
remarkable people in our community and I encourage you to rely on their counsel. I wish
you the best of luck in your presidency and I look forward to all the wonderful things that
you will bring to our university. Thank you.
