KES Cadet Church Parade – Friday, May 19th, 2017
Reflections: “Fear in a Handful of Dust”
1.
T.S. Eliot’s classic poem The Waste Land written in 1922 begins with a section entitled The Burial of the Dead. It includes a particularly poignant image of the disorders and confusions that have largely defined the last one hundred years, from 1917 to 2017. It is, we might say, the long and disturbing twentieth century, a time of broken images in a broken and disordered world.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
2.
From 1917 to 2017 we contemplate a relentless litany of death and destruction almost beyond calculation and certainly without precedent: the devastations of the First World War and the Second World War, the horrendous parade of deaths under the totalitarian regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, & Mao, the bombing of Dresden and the obliteration of Nagasaki and Hiroshima by democratic regimes, the slaughter in Rwanda, the Srebenica massacre, the ravages of civil war in Syria, the famine in the Sudan, and so on and so on. It is hardly a complete list of the horrors of a century and certainly not a pretty picture. It is the picture of our humanity in destructive disarray.
3.
“How long” was the refrain “pinched from Psalm 6” and shouted out by hundreds of people in the closing song ’40’ at U2 concerts. “How long (to sing this song).” As Bono reflects, “I had thought of it as a nagging question – pulling at the hem of an invisible deity whose presence we glimpse only when we act in love. How long…hunger? How long…hatred? How long until creation grows up and the chaos of its precocious, hell-bent adolescence has been discarded?
4.
And yet the culture of disarray, the culture of death and destruction, is about more than just “a heap of broken images,” however much that has been the dismal reality of the twentieth century and one which we forget at our peril. Eliot’s poem is also about hope and signals redemption, even in the midst of the ruins of an age. “Come in under the shadow of this red rock”. Drawn from the prophet Isaiah, it is an image of divine will and purpose that alone can override human folly.
5.
Where were we as Schools in 1917? There was the Collegiate School, King’s, and there was the Edgehill Church School for Girls; both were caught up in the war effort.
At the back of Hensley Memorial Chapel, there is a small plaque which reads:
These small guns were captured by the Canadian Forces on the western front during the Great War of 1914-1918 in which nearly two hundred Old Boys of the Collegiate School served in the Armies, Navies and Air Forces of the Empire or of her allies.
Of those nearly two hundred, twenty-seven would pay the ultimate sacrifice. The guns were once on the campus, a silent testimony to the sombre realities of the madness of war.
6.
The School Chapel is named after John Manuel Hensley, a professor at the College who died in 1876 just a year before the Chapel which he had promoted was built. It commemorates his “devotion to the College and the School.” In the chancel, the prayer desk commemorates his grandson, also named John Manuel Hensley. He died at Passchendaele in 1917.
The Battle of Vimy Ridge from April 9 to April 12th, 1917 and the Battle of Passchendaele, from July 31st to November 10th, 1917 were two of the defining battles for Canadians caught up in the destructive madness of World War I. They were battles that, paradoxically, contributed greatly to a deepening sense of Canadian nationhood. At Vimy Ridge almost 4,000 men were killed and over 7,000 were wounded; at Passchendaele over 60,000 men lost their lives.
7.
Closer to home, 1917 was the year of the largest man-made explosion before the atom bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, namely, the Halifax explosion in which the Mont Blanc, a cargo ship carrying munitions for the Great War, collided in the narrows of Halifax harbour with a Norwegian relief vessel, the Imo. The result was the obliteration of large parts of Halifax. Close to 2,000 people were killed, 9,000 maimed or blinded and 25, 000 people were rendered homeless.
1917 was the year, too, of the Russian Revolution.
8.
As we learn from the Diary of Clare Gass, Old Girls of Edgehill were also involved in the War effort, sometimes as nurses in the hospitals at the front. Her education at Edgehill in association with King’s College contributed to the high quality of her service and duty in the face of the worst of war. She was an accomplished and disciplined young woman committed to the service of others. From 1915 to 1918 she served as a nurse at the front in Europe where she saw first-hand the horrors of war.
She reports on April 6th, 1917 that there were “rumours of a great attack at Vimy Ridge” and on April 10th, the day after that battle began, her diary says that “this morning hundreds of Canadian wounded [were] admitted” and again on April 12th, “we are still very busy & the wounded are being admitted daily”. She would shortly learn that her second cousin, Laurence Gass and her brother, Blanchard Gass were killed in the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Her diary entry for November 5th, 1917 reports that “this has been a dreadful time at Pas[sc]hendael[e] & our Can[adian] boys have done wonderful feats of endurance & fighting against almost impossible odds.”
9.
How do we face the dark and terrible things of the world? The Canadian novelist, Timothy Findley, in his classic anti-war novel, The Wars, offers a profound reflection that speaks to the disorder and disarray of our own times, a way to face the hard and harsh realities of destruction. How? By undertaking “to clarify who you are by your response to when you lived”. That, too, is part of the educational project of King’s-Edgehill School. It is a question about character, about what kind of person you are.
It is not about getting ahead in the world for oneself; it is about service and sacrifice where the good of oneself is found in the commitment to the good of others. Sometimes, as the German novelist, Alfred Döblin notes after the Second World War, that means “für lange zeit in den Ruinen zu sitzen und sie auf dich wirken zu lassen, und den Schmerz und das Urteil zu fühlen” – “sit[ting] in the ruins for a long time and let them affect you, and feel the pain and the judgment.” It requires us to think more carefully and more thoughtfully about the good of our humanity in the face of our evil. Only so we might begin to recall the principles and ideals of our institutions without which they and we cannot live.
The poets and musicians, philosophers and preachers are the Cassandras of our age, speaking truths to those who will not hear nor believe. For it may be, as Döblin discovered, we don’t hear and see “because [we] don’t want to.” This, as Alberto Manguel observes, is a feature of contemporary culture, namely, “the readers unwillingness to hear.”
10.
In every way 1917 was a dark year of danger and destruction but one which contributed to a renewed sense of Canadian identity and to a new sense of Canada’s place in the Commonwealth. It was only fifty years after the birth of the Dominion, the founding of Canada as a nation state in 1867. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the founding of Canada as a sovereign nation. Canada is 150 years young and King’s was part of that enterprise as well.
Three Old Boys of the College and School were among the Fathers of Confederation: Martin Isaac Wilkins, Robert Barry Dickey, and John Hamilton Gray. Wilkins was actually opposed to Confederation but that, too, is part of the debate and discussion that ultimately contributed to its establishment.
11.
King’s predates Confederation by seventy-nine years. Convocation Hall is one of the few pre-confederation buildings in Nova Scotia. The oldest building on the campus, it was built between 1861-1863 to be the School’s library, museum, and assembly hall. Architecturally, it is a creative blend of styles: on the outside, Romanesque windows, stepped buttresses of the Decorated Gothic period, and dentilled cornices of the Classical Revival; inside, small interior columns and a marvellous hammer-beamed ceiling reminiscent of medieval English Norman style churches. This building is one of one hundred and fifty buildings in Nova Scotia that are being celebrated in a photo exhibit at Government House in Halifax this June as part of the 150 year celebrations of Confederation.
Though Convocation Hall and the Chapel survived the 1920 fire at King’s that resulted in the University relocating to Halifax, Con Hall suffered from considerable neglect and misuse throughout most of the twentieth century. It was only just rescued from becoming a ruin and was only restored in 1993. The restored building is a reminder of what can come out of the ruins of an age through a return to the principles that define and dignify human life.
12.
It means a return to the primacy of the ethical and the intellectual in our own lives, something which the great religions and philosophies of the world have constantly emphasised. It means a way to live in the world without becoming defined by the agendas of rivalry and power divorced from truth.
We may not be able to be taught how to be good but we can learn something about the nature of the good and so strive to be better people. It will always require something from each of us, a kind of response to the True, the Good and the Beautiful, the ideals which inform and shape our lives. It belongs to our life together.
13.
K’ung Fu Tzu, known in the West in its Latinized form as Confucius, the Master, says [delivered in Mandarin and then translated],
“even when walking in a party of no more than three I can always be certain of learning from those I am with. There will be good qualities that I can select for imitation and bad ones that will teach me what requires correction in myself.” (Analects, Book VII, 21).
Jesus, too, runs out after two disciples on the Road to Emmaus to engage them in conversation, providing them with a way to understand the greater goodness of God in and through his passion and resurrection. “Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures?”
When asked about “goodness” [delivered in Mandarin and then translated],
“The Master said, Behave when away from home as though you were in the presence of an important guest. Deal with the common people as though you were officiating at an important sacrifice. Do not do to others what you would not like yourself” (Analects, Book XII, 2).
It will mean learning something about what the Good means [delivered in Mandarin and then translated].
“The Master said, Shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing to recognize that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to recognize that you do not know it. That is knowledge” (Analects, Book II, 17).
14.
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” a certain Lawyer asks Jesus. “How do you read? What does the Law say?” Jesus asks him, in good Socratic fashion, to which he replies by way of reference to passages in Leviticus and Deuteronomy: to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself”. “You have answered right,” Jesus says; “this do and you shall live.” But he then asks, “and who is my neighbour?” Jesus responds by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan which ends with the exhortation to “go and do thou likewise.”
You have to act out of the Good that is shown to you by letting the Good act in you. It is all part of the task of “clarify[ing] who you are by your response to when you lived.”
15.
In the lesson which Jillian read, Isaiah recalls us to joy and delight in the world as God’s world that stands in such stark contrast to the nihilism of a world that has denied the sacred ground and truth of its own being.
In the New Testament, there are two figures named Lazarus, one who is raised from the dead by Jesus and the other who in the parable is raised from being a beggar at the gate of the rich man into the bosom of Abraham, an image of heaven. That is the lesson which Tristan read from Luke’s Gospel. Lazarus lies in the dust. Do we ignore him and walk over him as if he is nothing? We, too, are Lazarus, lying in the dust of a dark century. It reminds us that how we look upon one another turns upon how we look upon God. Our thoughts and our actions are intimately connected; never more so than when we are turned to God as to the beginning and end of our lives.
Only then can “fear in a handful of dust” be turned to hope and joy. The hope and joy of the Resurrection leads to the hope of the possibilities of a renewed relation to the land and to one another. It speaks to the recovery of our common humanity out of the ruins of an age. It means to “clarify who you are by your response to when you lived”.
The prayer In Paradisum, which is sometimes used at funerals, reflects upon the readings and speaks to our hopes and joys even in difficult times. A prayer for hope and joy that counters the darkness of despair.
In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctuam Ierusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam pauper aeternam habeas requiem. Amen.
Into the Paradise of God may the Angels lead thee; and at thy coming may the Martyrs receive thee, and take thee into the holy City Jerusalem. May all the Choirs of Angels welcome thee; and with Lazarus once a beggar, may God grant thee rest eternal. Amen.
Reflections: “Fear in a Handful of Dust”
254 KES Cadet Corps Church Parade
May 19th, 2017
(Rev’d) David Curry
Readers: Korolos Sawires, Ella Jollymore, Charlotte Hache, Julia Strickey, Michael Hilborn, Andrew Canete, Johanna Große, Sebastian Parsons-Hall, Vanessa Li and Evan Xie