by CCW | 24 May 2018 18:38
I. Teach us to care and not to care
Icons are images that belong to the understanding. They point us to ideas and ways of thinking that shape our ways of doing and being.
The dominant and central icon in the School Chapel is the image of Christ the Good Shepherd. The dominant and central icon in the Chapel at the University of King’s College in Halifax, our sister institution, is an image of the boy Christ as Teacher among the Doctors of the Law. The dominant and central icon here at Christ Church is the image of Christ Crucified. These three images are interrelated and speak to the culture and life of the School.
They contribute to another icon, the images of Christ Pantocrator that are present and visible in the Chapel and here at Christ Church. Pantocrator means the ruler of all, a biblical and philosophical reference to God as the intellectual and spiritual principle of all reality. “God is the king of all creation” as the Psalmist proclaims. In the Christian understanding that is concentrated in the figure of Christ and powerfully so in the icon of Christ Pantocrator. A central aspect of the spiritual imagination of the churches of Eastern Orthodoxy, icons are increasingly found in the churches of western Christianity as well. They help us to think about our life and our world as gathered to God.
As such these icons challenge the ways in which we use and abuse one another and our world through a kind of instrumental or technocratic reason, a reasoning which is about power and action but without regard to an ethical understanding. This is the “new barbarism,” as the French philosopher, Michel Henry terms it, a certain type of knowledge which is destructive of culture and humanity. These icons recall us to the transcendent principle of our knowing and our being that redeems all our doings and all our actions.
As the Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor has noted, the question for our contemporary world is less about the idea of what it is that is right to do and more about what it is that is good to be. This focuses upon a sense of ourselves in relation to the world and to one another that is not simply about using the world and one another which so often leads to abuse and destruction such as the last hundred years have shown in the devastations of war and the degradations of nature.
T.S. Eliot’s poem, Ash Wednesday, explores the possibilities of a return to a principle in the face of all our modern uncertainties and anxieties. “Teach us to care and not to care” serves as the fitting frame for our reflections this afternoon. How to care in the right way.
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still …
Our peace in His Will.
II. Teach us to care and not to care
These icons recall us to the idea of who we are in the sight of God. The icon of Christ Pantocrator is particularly instructive. It depicts the face of Christ with one hand raised in blessing while the other holds an open book. This is Christ Pantocrator as Teacher; hence, the open book. Other images of Christ Pantocratorshow Christ as holding a closed book symbolizing Christ as Judge, the merciful judge of all creation.
The icons in the Chapel and here at Christ Church are copies of Russian Icons so the writing is in Russian and in Cyrillic script. The book is open to a passage from The Gospel according to St. Matthew known as one of “the comfortable words,” meaning words which strengthen us. Jesus says, “come unto me all that labour and are heavy laden and I will refresh you,” but continues with the powerful words, “take my yoke upon you and learn of me.”
Learning. Learning from the divine Teacher of our humanity, the one who at the point of his transition from childhood to manhood in the Gospels is found in the Temple as a place of learning. This is the image of Christ as a teacher among teachers, and as a learner, humanly speaking, among all of us as learners as seen in the central icon at the University Chapel in Halifax.
But it also relates to the icon in our School Chapel, the icon of Christ the Good Shepherd. It is the classic and quintessential image of care. Our School is a community of care where we learn to care for one another and for our world. That means “gentleness and learning” as well as “respect and dignity.” These features of the life of the School all belong to the defining mottoes of Deo, Legi, Regi, Gregi and Fideliter. Learning how to care relates to an education that is for the things that contribute to our life together as a community of care. For God, for the Law, for the King, for the Peopleis the motto of the School and College. The Edgehill motto, fideliter, emblazoned on the crests of the girls’ uniforms, means our faithfulness to those principles that dignify and ennoble our humanity and our life together as a whole community. Such things are very much about our care for one another.
Care is the bestowal of careful thought upon one another, our world and our School. The kind of care which these icons suggest is about a radical kind of care. It means putting ourselves on the line for one another: on the rugby pitch, on the ice, on the basketball court, in track and field, on the stage, in the debating arena, in class, in cadets, and in chapel. It requires a kind of ethical awareness of what is good for one another within the good of the whole community.
III. Teach us to care and not to care
That idea of putting oneself on the line is captured in the icon of Christ crucified here at Christ Church. It is the image of sacrificial love, the love which is about the radical nature of God’s infinite goodness even in the face of our indifference and evil. It illumines more fully the meaning of Christ the Good Shepherd. “The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.” To learn how to care is to learn about sacrificial love. It means denying our immediate self-interest and committing ourselves instead to the good of the whole community. It means bestowing careful thought upon the things that belong to our life together.
The Cadet Corps symbolizes the School as a whole and as a corps, a body, a living body, and not a dead body, a corpse. Bodies, by definition, are divisible which is to say they have parts. Each part needs to know its place within the whole. Only then is it an integral part, a part of the whole. Under the leadership of Captain Hynes, the School as a Corps is on parade. Why? To be a spectacle? To provide a pretty background for selfies? No. The Corps especially is about care; our care for one another, our care for the School, our care for our world and day. The Corps, too, is where we learn about the radical care of the Good Shepherd, about sacrificial love.
It is not just guys in skirts and gals with rifles. Though how cool is that?! It is about the discipline of learning that belongs to Christ Pantocrator as Teacher. It is about paying attention to one another at once individually and as a whole. Only so can we keep in step together and be one body. But only if we care enough to care.
IV. Teach us to care and not to care
Learning how to care in the right way is about education and maturity, factors which are constantly before us and which are on display here this afternoon.
Guarda e escolta, Beatrice bids the pilgrim, Dante, in the Purgatorio of Dante’s Divine Comedy. It means look and listen. Look and listen to what? To the pageant of images and ideas which in the poem are paraded before him and from which he is to learn. In other words, the pageant of images and words teach and, if we pay attention to the teaching, we shall learn. It will mean learning to care and about how to care in the right way and for the right end. Such are life-long lessons.
Look and listen then to what has been unfolded before you and of which you are an integral part. The Lesson which Arturo read from Genesis is the ancient Story of the Tower of Babel. The Lesson which Meredith read from The Acts of the Apostles is the Story of Pentecost. The two stories are connected and profoundly so. But like so many things we are often mistaken about the meaning of these narratives. In a way, these stories reflect on the nature of unity and order and true freedom and dignity.
V. Teach us to care and not to care
The story of the Tower of Babel is not a just-so story about the origins of different languages and cultures. It is really the story of human presumption and tyranny. It complements the Story of the Flood and together they present us with the problems of freedom without order and order without freedom.
The Story of the Flood arises out of human wickedness in the absence of order and law within us. It results in God’s rescue and clean-up mission by renewing creation and establishing an explicit form of order in a Covenant symbolized by the rainbow. The Story of the Tower of Babel is about the attempt to impose one language upon all peoples. The assumption of one language for everyone is a human and utopian ideal. Yet it is a false universal at the expense of the God-given differences between peoples and cultures which Genesis has already affirmed. The imposition of one language and culture denies the diversity of cultures and languages; it is tyranny. It is order without freedom that arises from human presumption and arrogance. It results in domination and the misuse of power. Such is the impulse of imperialism, the impulse to impose.
Babel is about confusing the things of God with the vanity of ourselves.
The Story of Pentecost is the fullest possible redemption of the Story of the Tower of Babel and speaks profoundly to the unity of the human community through the diversity of cultures and languages. One thing is understood – the wonderful works of God, not man – but only through the diversity of tongues and languages. That is the Pentecostal mystery and miracle. “We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.”
The human community in itself has no unity apart from tyranny which is a false and destructive unity and one which has no regard for the radical nature of creation. Truth and unity are found in and through our diversity. They are found in and through the things which make for our true individuality and the true forms of our communal and collective life. Truth and unity are far more and far greater than our arrogant pretensions. We are recalled to God in whom we find our truth and unity, the one who is the ruler of all.But only if we look and listen. Only if we learn to care and care to learn.
There are things to see and things to hear; in short, things to learn. Such things belong to the formation of character, to the shaping of who we are, the things which make us more fully ourselves. How? By our response to the challenges of learning, by our commitment to an education that requires our engagement with things seen and heard, things taught and learned, the things about which we learn to care.
Teach us to care and not to care
Reflections for KES 254 Cadet Corps Church Parade
Wednesday, May 23rd, 3:00pm at Christ Church
(Rev’d) David Curry
Readers: Sebastian Parsons Hall, Rayannah Hwang, Calvin Shen, Benjamin Lohr, Luis Espinosa, Julia Strickey, Antonia Ziegler and Joanna Bond.
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