Catawba’s 2015 Baccalaureate Homilist Gregory M. Alcorn ’79 admonished graduates to focus on four dimensions in their lives, the mental, emotional, physical and spiritual that combine to create overall well-being. He called these four, “MEPS.”
For the mental dimension, he advised them to be lifelong learners with a curiosity and an appetite for knowledge about a variety of topics.
For the emotional dimension, he said be positive and encouraging.
For the physical dimension, he recommended that they “be selfish about your body” and be the person who gets up to while others sleep in to focus on a workout.
For the spiritual dimension, “attend church,” because “it’s important for your faith journey and the church needs you.”
He shared a story told to him by the Rev. Don Flick about a contractor, a foreman and building a house. The foreman was retiring and the contractor asked him to oversee the building of one more house for him before he did so. Alcorn said the foreman cut corners, not doing the job properly. He used 6’ x 6’ beams instead of 8’ x 8’s. He used 10-year shingles instead of 30-year shingles, and R12 insulation instead of R24. When the foreman completed the project, the contractor told him, “This is your house, I had it built for you.”
Alcorn asked the students to imagine how the foreman felt to know that the house he had cut corners on was his own. He asked them to consider themselves as foremen of “the house” they symbolically constructed and referred to their house as the “body of work” they completed in the course of their lives.
“God is the contractor,” he said. “I hope you will go out and build the very best house you can.”
And on the subject of houses, Alcorn added an open invitation to the students to visit him and his family in theirs, citing “his wonderful neighborhood and cross-generational friends.” He invited them to attend his church, First United Church of Christ in Salisbury. He also invited them as Catawba alumni to visit him in his business, Global Contact Services in Salisbury, noting that being a Catawba alumnus/alumna merits an “automatic interview with us.”
