For there is not a word in my tongue, but law or Lord, thou knewest it all together. 

Thou hast possessed me from behind and before. And laid thy hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain unto it. 

Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence. 

If I ascend up into a heaven, thou are there. 

If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take a wings of the morning, and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand hold me. And thy right hand shall steady me. 

If I say, surely, the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light above me. The darkness and the light are both alike to thee. For thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. And in thy book, all my members were written, which in continuance of fashion, when as yet there was none of them. 

How precious-- 

Are thy thoughts, send to me, oh, God. God. 

How crazy some of them. If I should count them, they are more in number than the sad. When I awake, I am still with thee. Search me, oh God. And to know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. 

And see if there be any wicked way in me, and leave me in the way of everlasting. 

Miss President and everybody else, it takes too much energy to salute everybody. 

I'm very glad. I'm very glad to be in the chapel again. 

There are so many funny kind of memories hanging around these walls that it's hard for me to get my mind together. 

So I'm glad to be here, and I won't waste anymore time on little talk. 

You know, this is a very difficult moment, because I can't get things together. 

So let's go to work. That's much better. 

There is in every person, something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in herself. I should ask you to forgive me for not getting all these sex terms-- persona, and man. Just remember my generation. That's all I ask you to do because I'm trying to be yours. 

There is in you, something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in your self. 

Nobody like you has ever been born. I didn't say, thank goodness. And no one like you would ever be born again. You are the only one. And if you miss the sound of the genuine in you, you will be a cripple all the rest of your life. 

Because you will never be able to get a scent of who you are. Do you remember in the book, Jesus and his disciples were going through the woods, the hills, and there appeared in the turn of the roads, a man who was possessed of devils, as they thought. 

In the full moon and the great tidal waves of energy swept through his organism, and he became as ten man. They would chain him to the rock. And then when a spasm of energy rocked his body, he would punch the chains, and go screaming through the hills like an animal in pain. And then he met Jesus on the road. 

And Jesus asked him one question. 

Who are you? What's your name? And for a moment, his tilted mine righted itself. And he said, that's it. I don't know. There are legions of me, and they riot in my streets. If I only knew, then I would be whole. 

So the [INAUDIBLE] of what I have to say to you this afternoon, young ladies, is, what is your name? 

Who are you? 

And can you find a way to hear the sound of the genuine in yourself? 

There are so many noises going on inside of you. So many echoes of all sorts. So many internalizing of the rumble and the traffic, the confusions, the disorders. By which your environment as people, that I wonder if you can get still enough-- not quite enough-- still enough to hear rumbling up from your unique and essential idiom, the sound of the genuine in you. 

I don't really care. I don't really care. 

But this is your assignment. 

There's a children's story written for adults called The Blue Cat of Castle Town. You may know it. It is built on a New England legend which says that no kept mother wanted to have a kitten that had old blue hairs and pink ears. Because if she had such a kitten, it would be that kitten's fate to hear the song of the river. And if a kitten heard the song of the river, following that melody, he or she would have to leave home, learn the song of the river, and go in quest of a home where the song of the river was recognized. 

So the [INAUDIBLE] of the story was born. All blue hairs, pink ears, except four black hairs in its tail. Now his mother, when she gave him his bed every morning, looked carefully to see whether that four black heads of still there. Because no mother waters a kitten with all blue hairs and pink ears. Because the kitten would have to leave the mother forever, trying to find somebody who knew the song of the river, which he had learned by heart. 

And one by one, the black hairs dropped out. And this last night, the kitten was asleep, and he heard rumbling up under his sleeping consciousness, the song of the river. And in a kind of drunken stupor, he got up, shook himself, and wandered down to the river. And there, the river taught him the song. I want to read it to you. 

Sing your own songs, said the river. Sing. Sing your own song. Out of yesterday's song comes, it goes into tomorrow. Sing your own song. With your life, fashion, beauty, this too, is the song. Riches will pass, and power, but beauty remains. Sing your own song. All that is worth doing, do well, said the river. 

Sing. Sing your own song. Certain and round be the measure, every line graceful and true. Time is the mold, the weaver, the carver. Time and the workman together. Sing your own song. Sing well, the river said. Sing your own song. Sing well. 

So the kitten learned the song, and went in quest of a home. And how would he know when he had found the home. He would walk in, stretch out, and begin singing the song. And if the person who heard him recognize the song, he knew that he found a home. 

Without going into all the details, one of the first places he went was to a pewter maker's house. He walked in, stretched out in front of the hearth, and began singing the song. And as soon as the pewter maker heard the first line of the melody, he froze. And a faraway look came in his eyes. And then he remembered long, long ago, he knew the song of the river. And during the time that he knew the song of the river, every piece of pewter he fashioned was an expression of an inner dream he had about the creative possibilities of a pewter. And he was so proud of it, that he'd put his imprimatur on the bottom of it, so that everybody would know that he who knew the song over the river, had stamped the pewter. 

Then he married. Babies again coming. Tourists began demanding more and more pewter. But it increased, money was hard. So he began grinding out these pewter cups. He was so embarrassed in his psyche, that he didn't want to put his name on it. 

And then he heard the kitten, and he remembered that somewhere along the way, he had forgotten that he knew the sound of the genuine in himself. 

Simple story. There is something in every one of you that waits, listen for the sound of thee genuine in yourself. And if you cannot hear it, you will never find whatever it is for which you're searching. And if you hear it, and then do not follow it, it were better that you had never been born. 

Now thinking a little more with me, however uncomfortable you may be sitting there, I am working. So just do the best you can, because that's what I am doing. 

Whatever you may think about the story of your journey-- this is very simple practical thing. I'm not trying to preach of grace or anything of that sort. I just want to talk to you, because I am a man who is a product of a whole chain of ladies. 

Raised by my grandmother and my mother. Sisters, no brothers. Daughters, no son. And the first double teaching job I had was at a woman's college [INAUDIBLE]. So I am glad to pace in scores. 

You-- and please don't be bored of my repeating this over and over-- you are the only you that has ever lived. Your idiom is the only idiom of its kind in all the existences. 

And if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls. 

So I come back. There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. And sometimes, there is so much traffic going on in your mind, so many different kinds of signals, so many minute fast impulses floating through your organism that go back thousands of generations long before you or even a thought in the mind of creation. And you are buffeted by these. And in the midst of all of this, you have got to find out what your name is. Who are you. How does the sound of the genuine come through to you. 

When I was a student at Rochester, New York, late one night, I was coming down Main Street about 12:30, streetcars stopped running, no traffic. And I thought I heard water flowing under Main Street. So the next day, I asked one of my friends who lived in Rochester, is there some water or a river, canal, something on the Main Street? He said, oh yes, a part of the Erie Canal goes on the Main Street. But during the day, so much traffic, streetcars, automobiles, you can't hear it. But when the noise dies, then it comes flooding up from under Main Street. 

The sound of the Erie Canal. 

The sound of the genuine is flowing through you. Don't be deceived, and thrown off by all the noises that are part, even of your dreams, your ambitions. All these things that you don't hear the sound of the genuine in you. Because that is the only true guide that you will ever had. And if you don't have that, you don't have a thing. 

You may be famous. You may be whatever the other ideas that are part of this generation. But you know that you don't have the foggiest notion who you are, where you're going, what you want. 

Cultivate. Whatever that is, it'll take care of itself. Cultivate the discipline of listening to the sound of the genuine in yourself. 

Now there's something in everybody that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in other people. 

And it is so easy to say that anybody who looks like him or her, anybody who acts as this person, acts on the other. Simply, they can't be in the sound of the genuine bell. 

I must wait and listen for the sound of the genuine in you. I must wait. For if I cannot hear it, then in my scheme of things, you are not even present. And everybody wants to feel that everybody else knows that she's dare. 

I have a blind friend who just became blind after he was a grown woman. And I was talking with her the other day. I said, what is the greatest disaster that your blindness is brought to you. She said, when I go to places who are there people, I have a feeling that nobody knows that I'm here. I can't see any recognition, I can't see-- nobody knows it. And if nobody knows that I'm here, it's hard for me to know where I am. There is something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in your mother. 

In your father. 

In the people you can't stand. It if you had the power, you'd wipe them out. But instinctively, you know that if you wipe them out, you go with them. So you fight for your own life, by finding some way to get along with them without killing. 

There's something in you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in other people. And if you can't hear it, if you can't hear it, then you reduced by that much. Now, two more little steps, and I'll stop. I won't be through, but I'll stop. 

If I were to ask you, what is the thing that you desired most in life this afternoon, you say a lot of things off the top of your head. Most of which you wouldn't believe, but you would think that you are saying the thing that I thought you ought to think that you should say. 

But I think that if you were stripped to whatever there is in you that is literal and irreducible, and you try to answer that question, it may be something like this. I want to feel that I am thoroughly and completely understood so that now and then, I can take my guard down, and look out around me, and not feel that I will be destroyed with my defenses down. I want to feel how this is. I want to feel completely vulnerable, completely naked, completely exposed, and absolutely secure. 

This is what you look for in your children when you have. This what you look for in your husband if you get one. 

That I can run the risk of radical exposure and know that the eye that beholds my vulnerability will not step on me. 

That I can feel secure in my awareness of the active presence of my own idiom in me. 

So as I live my life then, this is what I'm trying to fulfill. It doesn't matter whether I become a doctor, lawyer, housewife, house husband-- house wife. 

This is not my afternoon. That I'm secure, because I hear-- I hear the sound of the genuine in myself. 

And having learned to listen to that, I can become quiet enough, still enough, to hear the sound of the genuine in you. 

Now if I hear the sound of the genuine in me, and you hear the sound of the genuine in you, it is possible then for me to go down in me, and come up in you. So that when I look at myself through your eyes, having made that pilgrimage, I see in me what you see in me. And the wall that separates and divides will disappear. And we will become one, because the sound of the genuine makes the same music. 

Now this is your assignment. And you can never say again that nobody told you. 

Now two things I want to read, and I'll stop talking. 

Go thy way, all things say. Thou hast thy way to go. Thou hast thy day to live. Thou hast thy need of thee to make in the heart of others. Do thy thing, and be thou, sure of this, no other can do for thee, that appointed thee of God. 

Not any light shall fall upon thy world for other eyes. Thee, the angel cause as he calls others. And thy life to the is precious as the greatest life can be to him. So live thy life, and go thy way. 

So that God will not have to kill himself for letting you be born. 

There is in every person, that which waits, waits, waits, and listens for the sound of the genuine in himself. There is that in every person that waits, and waits, and listens for the sound of the genuine in other people. And when these two sounds come together, this is music God heard when he said, let us make man in our image. 

Don't defy him. Don't defy him. Your arm might wither. 

[APPLAUSE]