by CCW | 13 June 2010 15:07
“Take with you words,” the great love-prophet of the Hebrew Scriptures, Hosea, exhorts us. In a way, what else is there to take but words from your years at King’s-Edgehill? And yet it is the struggle, the agone, of intellectual life, to take the words which we have heard into ourselves and to let them shape our lives. It has been the challenge and the goal of your time here.
Today you are the pride of your parents and grandparents, your teachers and coaches, your chaplain and headmaster. In just a few hours you will no longer be students but alumni of this School which, in one way or another, has been so much a part of your life whether for six years or one. What you take with you are, indeed, words which, like seeds planted in the soul of your being, shall in time “flourish as a garden” and “blossom as a vine” whose “fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon.” Let’s not be too literal about that last metaphor!
But Hosea’s point in the lesson which Victoria read is wonderfully clear. Words that return us to truth keep us in the truth which they signify. They live and grow in us like flowers in a garden. But only if we attend to them regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
The year was 524 AD. The place was Pavia, Italy. In a prison. Therein languished a most remarkable figure whose name was Boethius. At once a scholar and a dedicated public servant, he was thrown into prison, arraigned on false charges by the Arian King, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, awaiting execution. He was a victim of the vagaries of the politics and power in the days of the waning and decay of the Roman Empire. And, just like all of us when we are having what is a little bit more than a bad hair day (okay, so some don’t have bad hair days!), he was feeling rather sorry for himself.
His ambition had been twofold; first, to translate all the works of Plato and Aristotle into Latin and secondly, to serve the public good both as a Christian and in accord with Plato’s concept that philosophers cannot ignore the demands of the practical and the political. Reason or learning should govern both in the soul and in the body politic. And yet, for all of that, Boethius, falsely accused, faced execution.
It was in these grim and dire circumstances of hideous misfortune and injustice that he wrote a much celebrated work known as The Consolation of Philosophy. Therein Lady Philosophy comes to him in a vision. She seems at once constrained to “the ordinary measure of man,” that is to say, human, and yet also divine, for her head seemed to penetrate the heavens themselves. Her dress is embroidered with two Greek Letters, Π and Θ, signifying the practical and the theoretical. The letters are connected by a ladder reaching from the lower, the practical, to the higher, the theoretical. But her dress is torn. And no, she had not just come from prom rugby!
The point is that the practical and the theoretical have been torn asunder by violent hands. She holds in her right hand, a book, and in her left hand, a sceptre; wisdom and power respectively.
Lady Philosophy proceeds to upbraid Boethius for forgetting who he is, for forgetting his essential humanity in his self-pity. And so through a process of philosophical discourse and poetic reflection, through a mix of poetry and philosophy which is itself instructive, Lady Philosophy brings Boethius back to himself, carefully distinguishing between providence and fate, between necessity and free will and, importantly, between the different forms of knowing, showing how human reasoning (ratio) participates in the divine understanding (intellectus).
How to understand the relation of the practical and the theoretical remains a perennial question. Boethius never fulfilled his scholarly ambition; it would be through Arabic Islamic philosophers that the texts of Aristotle and Plato would enter into the west almost seven centuries later. Nonetheless, the treatises which he wrote, along with the Consolatio, shaped much of the discourse of western culture. Aquinas’ Discourse on the Divisions and Methods of the Sciences, for example, is indebted to Boethius and belongs to the medieval origins of modern science, while Boethius’ use of the word “person,” originally used with respect to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, has carried over into the various forms of our contemporary discourse, politically, economically, psychologically and legally.
His words have been taken up by others after him. Translated or englished, for example, by Alfred the Great in Anglo-Saxon, by Geoffrey Chaucer in Middle English, by Queen Elizabeth the First in Early Modern English and in the contemporary world by a host of others, his work has proved to be a consolation to many. Boethius shows us what it means to take words with us. Sometimes it is all we have. We are, whether we realise it or not, part of a world shaped by words.
The practical and the theoretical. The challenge for us and for you is about the understanding of their relation. Not everything that you have learned is to be measured by the practical; there is not always a one-to-one correspondence between theoretical concepts and practical expressions. Your parents probably don’t want to hear this. Yet, it is precisely when we demand such an equation that our reason becomes monstrous and dangerous. But learning how to reason critically and carefully has been, I hope, an important part of your learning. Just consider.
The celebrated Sherlock Holmes and his loyal companion, Dr. Watson, were on a camping trip. In the middle of the night, Holmes wakes up and gives Watson a nudge. “Watson,” he says, “look up in the sky and tell me what you see.”
“I see millions of stars, Holmes,” says Watson.
“And what do you conclude from that, Watson?” Watson thinks for a moment, like a good King’s-Edgehill student, and says, “Well, astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Theologically, I see that God is all-powerful, and we are small and insignificant. Uh, what does it tell you, Holmes?”
“Watson, you idiot! Someone has stolen our tent!”
Well, I hope that you will have the freedom to contemplate the stars and even more “the love that moves the sun and the other stars,” but without having your tent stolen.
The challenges of your schooling have been very much about the theoretical and the practical. We have begun each day in a contemplative moment, striving to take words with us into the busyness of each day. In a way, a school is a community shaped by words, by words that retain their intellectual integrity and become flesh in action and in care and compassion. Only so is it a school worthy of that name.
The dominant icon in the Chapel captures the story of Christ the Good Shepherd which Ciaran read. It signals something of what words in action mean. It is an image of care and compassion but it is the care and compassion that has to do with sacrifice and commitment. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Your life here has required at once your sacrificial commitment to your studies and your compassionate care for one another and for our world.
It would be remiss not to commend you for your many accomplishments: to the IB Diploma Class, for instance, for completing a most gruelling programme and exam schedule and doing so with the grace of humility and learning, wondering at times, whether “I think, therefore IB” or not; to all who took IB exams in various subjects and who then turned around to tutor and help their fellow students; to all who have completed their last exams in various subjects in these last two weeks and have done so with real determination and purpose; to the student leadership so splendidly demonstrated in our head boy and head girl this year, Ciaran and Victoria. Perhaps in the remarkable busyness of the year, there have been times when you have felt like Alfred did in the ninth century, namely that “when he had time to learn, he had no teachers, but when he had teachers, he had no time.”
Care and compassion. I hope that you will take those words with you. You have all become very dear to us and we are caught in that emotional ambiguity of being both sad and glad to see you go. We have laughed and cried, even giggled and guffawed, argued and thought, prayed and sung together. That is the wonder and the miracle; such is the magic of the words which we have shared together.
There is just one last thing. For some of you, there is someone who is not here who would have been graduating with you on this day had it not been for an accident which claimed his life. I speak of Brandon Smith. We have often spoken about the quality of living beyond oneself, a quality which Brandon himself embodied. May I simply ask those of you who knew Brandon in your Grade Ten year and before, to take a moment in the busyness of this day, to go to the little memorial garden which honours him and there remember him to God. Brandon’s motto was “Life’s a garden, dig it” – once again, let’s not be too literal about that, at least not there!
I wish you all the best and pray God’s blessing upon all your future endeavours. Go with God – Adieu; Adios, amigos; Auf Wiedersehen; Grüss Gott, and all that other holy jazz, but above all else,
(Rev’d) David Curry,
Chaplain
Encaenia 2010
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2010/06/13/sermon-for-encaenia-2010/
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