Augsburg College - Augsburgian Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

Page 11 text:

always just a step ahead of me INTRODUCTION 7

Page 10 text:

Tomorrow is a dream that leads me onward 6 INTRODUCTION

Page 12 text:

Once again, it is a pleasure to put down a few words for the Augsbur- gian. Your theme, which focuses on the future, is very attractive to me because as a theologian and a teacher in the church I have always been drawn to the tasks of relating the past to the future. It is in the continuing dialogue between the events and insights of the past and the challenges of the present that the future is shaped This exchange must continue. If we ignore the past we are destined to repeat its mis- takes; if we try to live in the past by romantically retreating we are ren- dered incapable of meaningful life today. The concern for our religious roots that is apparent in this volume is also most appropriate to your fu- ture orientation. What can be said about this place and our work together? At the very outset it is appropriate to note that Augsburg College was founded and has been sustained by a dream; not only a dream about to- morrow. but a dream that it should be possible to educate men and women of good will so that they are not embarassed by their history, nor overwhelmed by the present, nor afraid of their future It should be possible to help open persons up to themselves, to others and the wbrld. and to God so that they are enabled to be servants and leaders m society and in the church. Our history has always been fu- ture oriented Our founders, the im- migrants from Norway who came to southern Wisconsin and Minnesota, always looked to the future At the same time their ties to the past were strong They remembered the homeland with its mountains and fjords They held fast to the faith that God was indeed gracious and that his purpose for humans was best seen in the person and work of Jesus Our forbears were neither embar- rassed nor encumbered by the past They were made for the future Ev- ery child born m a sod hut. every baptism in a woodland or prairie church every family meal, every death and buria with children and grandchildren standing by. every- thing looked somehow to the future Tomorrow was as near as the next sunrise or nse m the road, it was as imminent as the next plant- ing or harvest, the next death and CHARLES S. President 8 INTRODUC” ON