Sermon for Encaenia 2011
admin | 18 June 2011“Mary has chosen the better part, which shall not be taken from her”
“’The time has come,’ the Walrus said, ‘To talk of many things:/ Of shoes-and ships-and sealing-wax – Of cabbages-and kings-/And why the sea is boiling hot – /And whether pigs have wings.’” And yet, we have just heard that one thing is needful, unum necessarium. “Mary has chosen the better part, which shall not be taken from her.”
Well, the time has come, if not “to talk of many things,” then, at least to talk of a few things, perhaps not “of shoes or ships,” or “cabbages” or “sealing-wax” unless, perchance, that is somehow on your diploma, but of your graduation today from King’s-Edgehill School. For you are all the talk of this day. As to “why the sea is boiling hot -/ And whether pigs have wings,” we will leave that to the climate specialists and the evolutionary biologists.
Today, you are the pride of the school, your parents and grandparents, your friends and family. We salute you for all that you have accomplished.
We have been through a lot together. Whether you have been here for one year or for six or seven, much has happened that has become, indelibly and indubitably, a part of you (I had to get that in for Jonte’s benefit). We have learned to laugh and sing, to pray and think, to march and run, and perhaps even to sit and listen, sitting even on the back of the Rev’s Vespa (I had to get that in for Kerri’s benefit). And yet, all the many things come down to the moment of your graduation.
Today you step up and step out but only so as to step into new things. Today is really a necessary prelude to other things that will constantly require a kind of thoughtfulness in the serious quest to know and understand, something which, I hope, has been an essential feature of your education here.
It is about taking hold of what has been opened out to you and making it your own. The many things of the many years – the many hours of cadets, sports, classes, chapel, concerts, choir, debates, exams, paddling pumpkins, climbing mountains, digging latrines, TOK, wonderful plays and musicals, IB therefore I am or not to be, that is, indeed, the question – are all concentrated in one thing, the one thing needful. It is this: the realization of ourselves as learners.
It is captured in the readings. You “go out with joy,” in the lesson which Kerri read, because the Word of God has not gone forth in vain but with purpose, a purpose that you can take a hold of in your lives in the understanding and appreciation of that larger world of which you are a part. You have seen something of that in the formative life of the School. For what is education if it is not formative, if it does not draw you out of the raw rudeness of yourself and into the beginnings of erudition, literally, out of rudeness? Behaviours matter, as you know! At the very least, they are about self-control and respect and dignity based upon an awareness of place and situation where thoughts and actions count; a way, surely, of thinking beyond ourselves, a way of thoughtfulness.
The lesson which Jonte read captures that attitude of mind so necessary to education in the figure of Mary, “sitting and listening to Jesus”. Oh, I know, in our pragmatic restlessness we all want to be doers, but doing what? And to what end? Luke’s story here is even more powerful when we realize that it comes hard on the heels of the story of the Good Samaritan which bids us “go and do likewise,” commanding us to be committed to the good of others, for the stranger and the wanderer in our midst is also our neighbour. But the point is that we cannot “go and do likewise,” like Christ the Good Samaritan, without an awareness of the limits of the human condition and the need for divine grace. When we forget that we become monsters, I fear.
Action and contemplation are intrinsic to all of the great religions of the world; the nature of their interrelation is an abiding theme for the cultures shaped by Judaism and Christianity and Islam; a feature, too, of Hinduism and Buddhism. Think of Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, pausing in the midst of a great and difficult battle to try and understand his dharma, his nature. He is a warrior-prince but his activity requires a kind of reflection about his purpose, about who he is and what he is to do.
The Iranian-American literary scholar, Azar Nafisi, in her remarkable book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, shows how the thoughtful attention to literature can provide the real counter to ideological and revolutionary fanaticism. The strength of a culture is found in its own critiques captured in its literature. Rather than the banning or the burning of books by arbitrary and tyrannical authority, the mandarins of political correctness, the challenge is to read them and to read them critically. The challenge is to understand.
Commenting on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, The Great Gatsby, she calls attention to one of its central themes, the destruction wrought by carelessness. “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy,“ Fitzgerald writes, “- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…” You might have thought he was talking about Vancouver!
Carelessness is really a kind of thoughtlessness. Martha, in the Gospel story, reflects an aspect of our own culture of distraction, distraction occasioned by a thoughtless busyness that is unable to stop and think, to sit and listen. And yet, that is the one thing needful.
That has been, I hope, an aspect of your time here in the lessons of life learned in the almost overwhelming busyness of the school year; learning through mistakes and bad decisions sometimes, but learning nonetheless. “There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repents,” Jesus says, “than over the ninety-nine that need no repentance.” You have recently seen that parable re-enacted here at the School. As to the ninety-nine that need no repentance, well, that is dominical irony, we might say, the irony of Christ, for none of us are perfect; our presumption is our delusion. There is a reason for confession!
There has been learning because of the care of teachers and coaches who have taken the time to help you come to a clearer sense of yourselves whether it be through confrontation, consolation, comfort or cheer. There has been, I hope, the constant challenge to be more thoughtful.
Of course, that, too, has its dangers. Consider the story of George.
George thought he was dead, when in reality he was very much alive and well. His delusion became such a problem that it was arranged for him to see a psychiatrist.
The psychiatrist spent many laborious sessions trying to convince George that he was still alive. Nothing seemed to work. Finally, the doctor tried one last approach. Taking out his medical books, he proceeded to show George, case by case, that dead men don’t bleed. After hours, of tedious and hard study, George seemed convinced that dead men, in fact, don’t bleed.
“Do you now agree that dead men don’t bleed?” the doctor asked.
“Yes, I do,” replied George.
“Very well, then,” the doctor said. He took out a pin and pricked George’s finger. Out came a trickle of blood. The doctor asked, “What does that tell you?”
“Oh, my God!” George exclaimed, starring incredulously at his finger: “Dead men do bleed!!”
Nothing like going after the major premise! A kind of thoughtfulness, I suppose.
Perhaps, there have been times such as during the crunch of the IB exams and papers or on the Rugby pitch at provincials when you have felt like George, dead yet bleeding!
But only because you have given yourself to the task at hand, to the one thing needful. It requires sacrifice. Only so can there be any real learning. Odysseus in his quest to achieve Ithaca, his homeland, the place where he truly is who he is, has to learn from Teiresias who is in Hades. Yet the voices of the past cannot speak without blood, without the commitment of the living to the task of learning. Like Odysseus, many of you have learned something about that kind of intellectual sacrifice of your whole being, body and soul, to the one thing necessary.
You may have noticed the combs of purple, reddish-pink and white flowers spreading in profusion along our highways and fields, a carpet of colour complementing the viridescence of grass and leaves. They are lupines. They remind me of a children’s story. I conclude with the story of Miss Rumphius.
There were three things that Alice thought she had to do with her life: to travel all over the world; to live by the sea; and to do something to make the world more beautiful. She did. She travelled and met all kinds of interesting people and cultures. She returned to live by the sea. And she made the world a more beautiful place, planting lupines that grew and spread.
Well, you have been here in this little world by the sea. Many of you have travelled, literally, by plane and train, by dogsled and camel, in pumpkins and canoes, and metaphorically in books, in conversation and in the exchange of ideas. You have met and made many friends from far off lands and different cultures. It remains for you wherever you go to make the world a more beautiful place. The seeds for doing so have been planted in you, the seeds of thoughtfulness and learning. And so my tale ends even as yours is about to begin.
Embrace your dharma, your nature and calling to be more thoughtful and so make the world a more beautiful place.
You have all become quite dear to us. We are both sad and glad to see you go. Adios, Adieu, Grüß Gott; in short, Go with God, attentive, like Mary, to the one thing needful. May it never be taken from you.
“Mary has chosen the better part, which shall not be taken from her”
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain
Encaenia 2011