KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 5 December
Behold the Lamb of God
The philosopher, Josef Pieper, reminds us of a deep truth which our world has largely forgotten, namely, the proper meaning of leisure. In our culture, we live to work. This is one of our problems which stands in stark contrast to the wisdom of the Hebrews and the Greeks where we work to live. The Greek and Latin words for leisure are skole and scola from which we get the word, school. School, properly understood is leisure, our freedom from the pressing necessities of everyday life. Aristotle literally says “we are un-leisurely in order to have leisure” (Nicomachean Ethics 10. vii). Work is un-leisure, literally, a-scolia. Similarly in the Latin, busyness is neg-otium, literally, the negating of leisure. Thus, leisure is the freedom to contemplate, to wonder at the mysteries of life, and, ultimately, to take delight in the things of God. A profoundly counter-culture idea and yet how necessary and how freeing! Once again, we are freed to God and to the truth of ourselves in God, to our good as found in Him. Without it we are lost in all of the distractions of ourselves, unable to focus; literally, uncollected.
The Advent and Christmas Services of Nine Lessons and Carols simply but profoundly amplifies our regular Chapel services. Sitting and listening, standing and singing, kneeling and praying is what we do, to be sure. At the Carol services there was rather a lot of sitting and listening, standing and singing! Up and down and all around! Yet that pattern speaks to the nature and life of the School as a place of purposeful leisure, a place of contemplation and learning. The Advent pageant of Word and Song is all about ethical, intellectual, and spiritual ideas and principles coming towards us and engaging us, but only if we will sit and listen, stand and sing, kneel and pray. A whole person experience, we might say, and certainly activities which connect to the four pillars of the School: to Academics for we, like Mary, must sit and listen in order to learn and take delight in truth and knowledge; to Athletics for we are embodied beings and our bodies matter whether in sitting to listen or standing to praise; to the Arts through our singing and being in the ambience of the Holy expressed in the architecture of Church and Chapel; and to Service because like Martha we are reminded of our service to one another through our service and commitment to truths held sacred without which all our labours are nothing worth.