A special recognition must be extended to the parents, and other family members and friends of this marvelous sea of womenfolks. After all, dear graduates, without the care, the encouragement and the support of your loved ones, you would not have made it to this day of celebration, this great "gettin' up morning," this commencement of the rest of your lives.

Please know that I am deeply honored by the invitation to serve as your commencement speaker. And given the truth in the statement, "a woman is known by the company she keeps," I am ever so elated to receive an honorary degree from the oldest women's college in our nation, and to do so in the company of these mighty four sisters.

As I think about the extraordinary path this college has cut over the course of her 161 years, I am moved to adapt words which were uttered by that awesome 19th-century feminist and abolitionist, Sojourner Truth. "If one woman is said to have turned the world upside down, then these women can help to get it right side up again."

I bet you feel relieved that I fixed Sister Sojourner's words so that all we have to do is to help fix this world of ours. We don't have to do it all by ourselves, for there are so many other womenfolks who can be called on for this incredible task--and of course there are men who can be our allies in this ongoing struggle for a world filled with more peace and more equality and justice too.

And yet, you might still ask...why lay such a heavy responsibility on us, especially on a day of celebration?

The answer is quite simply this: because you are up to the task. That is what your years at this college have prepared you to do.

No one puts the challenge to all of us quite like the Brother President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela as he spoke on the occasion of his inauguration.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the Glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

So my sisters, let's just quickly review matters, let us make certain that we have an understanding about the work ahead of you.

First, and yes, foremost, you must continue to know who you are. Behind that simple sounding statement lurks certain complexities.

You cannot fully know who you are without a knowledge of those with whom you share the responsibility of holding up half the sky--womenfolks.

Your Mount Holyoke education has ensured that you do have a strong sense of history and her--story too. For to adapt the words of an African proverb: a woman can't know where she's going if she doesn't know where her sisters have been.

But your ability to be a responsible, effective woman in the coming century, prepared also not only to live in this world but to make it a more livable place, depends on your knowledge of and your respect for people who are very different from you.

Surely your Mount Holyoke education gave you a jump start in acquiring the skills and the sensibilities to function in this global village of ours--filled with people who do and do not have skin color and hair texture as you do, who do not speak as you do, worship as you do, move about physically as you do, carry out the same kind of work as you do, and partner as you do.

And while knowledge and respect for the diversity of people in this world are becoming a necessity for any kind of effective work, from commerce to cultural expressions, and from science to theology, there is also an incredibly rewarding bonus in store for those of us who manage to do this. And that is, quite simply, that we then come to more fully understand and respect ourselves. In the words of the anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn, "it's scarcely the fish who discovers water."

If you are indeed to help change this world of ours--for the better, the second charge to you, my sisters all, is to make sure you continue to know your place.

Now if there is one thing I know, it is that being at a women's college has awakened you to your place. In countless ways, Mount Holyoke College has taught you that a woman's place is in the house--and in the senate too; in the family room and the board room too. You, my sisters, can and must be in the research laboratory, the pulpit, the cockpit of an airplane and as the surgeon in the operating room. And yes, a woman's place is in the house--the White House, and I mean as the Sister President!

The founder of this college, that magnificent and mighty woman, Mary Lyon, used words that give yet another meaning to the notion of a woman's place: "Go where no one else will go, do what no one else will do."

And so, my sisters, the world needs for you not only to do the work that men have traditionally done--you must do it in new and better ways. For example, once you are on the top floor of a corporate building, you must manage more fairly than has traditionally happened in the world of business and you must help to change the complexion of that floor as you bring more folks there who have been traditionally blocked by one kind of ceiling or another.

The final task I want to lift up for you today, my sisters, is that you must know how to act in the service of others.

Again, your Mount Holyoke education has surely reinforced lessons you heard in your church, your synagogue, your temple or your mosque--that from those who have been given so much, a great deal is expected. To put that in the language of my southern African American upbringing: Doing for others is just the rent you must pay for living on this earth.

Of course volunteerism or community service can never be a substitute for the responsibility of our government to do its part to help fix that which is broken in our communities, to help heal that which hurts--especially what hurts the most vulnerable: our children, our elders, womenfolks and people of color.

But there is so much that we--you and I--can do to help transform American communities into safer, more vibrant and more just places for all of us.

And so, as you do your job in whatever profession, and as you do your community work by volunteering in a homeless shelter, a rape crisis center, a hospice for the victims of the modern plague called AIDS, I emphasize, my young sisters, that you must know how to act in the service of others. If we are to genuinely engage in community building, not simply "do goodism," then we must go into communities as partners in transformation not missionaries of salvation. We must assume that such communities have many assets, not just a string of liabilities. And more than anything else, we must park at the local dump any signs of arrogance and attitudes of "I know it all."

Those then are three ways I ask you to consider, my sisters, as necessary--surely not sufficient--but necessary ways in which you can help to change this world of ours.

And you really can, you know. Hear the words of one of my sheroes, Margaret Mead: "Never doubt the ability of a small and thoughtful group of committed citizens to change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has."

Just in case, just in case you haven't gotten my message so far, let me end with a story. It was a favorite story of my shero, Fannie Lou Hamer. She would tell it at the end of a speech to emphasize who must do the work she had described.

There was a group of young boys who decided to play a trick on an old lady. They would ask her a question, said they, and she would be incapable of answering it. With the arrogance and brashness of some of our youth, they were convinced that they were far wiser than she. So they called for the interrogator, the one who would pose the impossible questions, and asked him to practice.

"I've got it," he said. "I know exactly what to say and do. I will go up to the old lady and say, 'Old lady, old lady, this bird that I hold behind my back, is it dead or is it alive?' And if the old lady says, 'Why the bird is alive,' then I crush it. And if the old lady says, 'Why the bird is dead,' I release my hand and the bird flies away."

Absolutely convinced that she would be stumped by the question, they approached her. With the graciousness that is often associated with our elders, she consented to respond to the question.

"Old lady, old lady," said the interrogator, "this bird that I hold in my hands, is it dead or is it alive?"

The old lady, with wisdom, looked up and said, "The bird, why it's in your hands."

Indeed, my sisters all, the graduates of Mount Holyoke's Class of 1998, the task of helping to make our world better is in your hands, and mine. It's in the hands of all of us.