“A garden enclosed is my sister … a paradise of pomegranates”
I did not think that I would see you again. I have wanted to “hear your voices,” even if muffled, and to see your comely faces, even if masked! So what is this? A carnival? A masquerade? Mirabile dictu, we are at this special Encaenia service; the real rather than the virtual. We are missing some of your friends and fellow graduates who are not able to be here owing to the restrictions and limitations of these ‘Covidious’ times. But they are with us in intent and in spirit. We embrace them in our gathering as companions in the garden of learning.
It may seem odd, and to use the overworked word, ‘unprecedented,’ but as such historic, to have Encaenia in August rather than June. But to be gathered here at what I call the ‘big Chapel,’ Christ Church, is not without precedent. Encaenia and graduation services were held here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nor are you strangers to this place where you have gathered for Advent & Christmas Services of Lessons and Carols in years past and for the Cadet Church Parade; the latter, a casualty this year of Covid. But never mind, here you are! It may seem trite but ss Bobby McFerrin puts it, “Don’t worry, be happy! In every life we have some trouble but when you worry you make it double”.
One other thing is different. Officially you are already graduates of King’s-Edgehill rather than standing on the edge of that momentous transition from students to alumni. But Encaenia is more than a milestone, a rite of passage. It signals and recalls us to the foundational principles that belong to the life of the School.
The term derives originally from ancient religious festivals but has migrated to the annual celebrations of the intellectual and spiritual traditions that belong to the foundations of schools and universities, particularly those derived from the great medieval universities of Oxford and Cambridge, such as King’s-Edgehill. At a time when our institutions are in disarray and confusion, we do well to recall the principles that belong to their truth and character for they are about things which are greater than ourselves and which hold us to account in the face of our many, many failings. Schools are only as strong as their commitment to their foundational ideals which have, in their truth, a corrective and reformative aspect. For you as graduates, it is about your experience of being at the School, as being part of the School, and as being shaped by the School. As such it is about your experience as grounded in School’s life and history.
Our gathering is not simply defined by Covid-19. You are more than Covid-19 victims. I would caution against such a way of thinking; to define yourself as a victim is to be a victim twice over. Our current epidemiological uncertainties are just as much about our epistemological confusions, that is to say, about how we think about ourselves and the world around us. Encaenia, in recalling us to the principles which define and shape the life of the School, reminds us of things which are greater than the circumstances and events of our world and day. That has been a constant point of emphasis in Chapel. We have, time and time again, considered questions about the self and the other, about how we look upon one another, and, consequently, about how we deal with one another within a wider consideration of reality, intellectually and spiritually understood. The word is respect which is, literally, about looking at things. It relates to our present experience of so-called social distancing and the wearing of masks. Such things are about a kind of respect for one another; looking at one another as more than walking pathogens. Looking at one another with respect, not out of the fear of the other.
You are more than your selfies, too, more than the images which you project and which proliferate on social media and which distract and confound you in a kind of emotional narcissism. The element of distraction is not unlike the scattered busyness of Martha in the second lesson; as distracted, she is, quite literally, unable to focus, unable to look at things clearly. At least, you have been challenged about such things. To have grasped something of this is to have learned something. If education is in any way possible in our present times, it is about character. And while the foundational principles of our institutions in their truth shape culture they are also profoundly counter-culture, especially when such ideals and principles are forgotten or denied, as in our time. At issue is respect for learning.
“The winter is past,” as the Song of Songs says, in the lesson which Ava read. We meet in the hot days of August, to be sure, at the time of “the closing down of summer,” to use Alistair MacLeod’s great maritime metaphor for times of profound changes in culture. We meet, too, in the lovely imagery of the Song of Songs, in the garden paradise of the Valley, and in this garden, a garden enclosed, despite the hovering and invisible cloud of Covid, the lingering presence of the winter of our discontent. The Song of Songs is one of the few texts from the Hebrew Scriptures that uses an ancient Persian word, “paradise”; it appears only six times (three times in Genesis, twice in Ezekiel and once in the Song of Songs). A closed park or garden, the word has entered into the imaginary of the Euro-Mediterranean cultures of pagan antiquity, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thought in their interaction and interrelation and so into our global world. It has a special relation to our spiritual and intellectual institutions.
The garden enclosed is paradise, the garden of delights; such is the garden of God associated with the mythical garden of Eden. The longing for paradise conditions and shapes our wandering in the various wildernesses of the world. Such wildernesses are all of our making in a biblical, ancient, and theological view. Paradise is something more. It belongs to our being recalled to our origins and to a sense of purpose. Hortus conclusus, a garden enclosed, a paradise, came to be associated with the monastic traditions which shaped Europe and beyond and from them to our schools and universities as cloisters of learning. A cloister is a garden enclosed.
We have all endured the policies of lockdown and isolation, terms which are negative in their expression and intent. A garden enclosed, a cloister, is about something positive, a community of spiritual intent in which we seek the Good and the good for one another. Such ideas counter and correct a merely instrumental view of education. Your KES diploma is more than a credential, more than a means to an end. That would be a “lowering of ourselves,” as the American novelist and theologian Marilynne Robinson notes, to “a calculus of self-interest,” at once “self-serving” and “materialist,” and at the expense of “mutual respect” and a “willingness to take responsibility for our life as a community and a culture” (‘The Human Spirit and the Good Society’ in When I Was a Child I Read Books, 2012). Such is the death of our schools as institutions of learning.
The Song of Songs is the great love-poem of the Scriptures. Its voice is the voice of lover and beloved, of God and the Soul, of Christ and the Church for that is how it has been received even though God by name is not mentioned anywhere in it. Yet images from the Song of Songs have had a great influence on literature and thought far disproportionate to its length. “I am black and beautiful” challenges our current ideological conflicts just as such phrases as “many waters cannot quench love”; “love is as strong as death”; “his banner over me was love”; “O you who dwell in the gardens, my companions are listening for your voice”; fire the poetic and philosophical imagination. But perhaps the greatest image is that of “a garden enclosed,” “a paradise” – with or without pomegranates, at least here in the Valley, at least so far!
It complements the reading from Luke which Evan read, the story of Martha and Mary. ‘Don’t just do something, sit there’, we might say, ‘and think’. Certainly that is counter-culture. Perhaps it is something which we have been learning to do. But the story of Martha and Mary is more than a simple opposition between action and contemplation. It is about their reciprocity and mutual relation. “Mary has chosen the better part,” but that doesn’t negate the truth of Martha’s activity of serving. The question is, ‘for what end?’ Such is the wisdom of Mary acknowledged by Jesus; wisdom is humility. Something of the nature of the reciprocal relationship between thinking and doing is grasped when we recall that this story follows immediately upon the story of the Good Samaritan. “Go and do thou likewise” is about compassion and charity towards the other, the stranger in our midst. The Good Samaritan signals the ethic of compassion and care but as grounded in contemplation as everything ultimately is. “How do you read?” Jesus asks the lawyer before answering the subsequent question about “who is my neighbour?” with the illustration of the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
The point is very simple. It is about what moves in us in our lives and relations with one another. That is a matter of thought, of the contemplation of the Good which acts at once as a check on our presumptions and assertions and as a guiding principle for our actions. Yet only by way of intent. Our actions are meaningless without the consideration of intent. Even more, it is about the divine contemplation itself: God’s own thinking and loving by which all things exist and move;
We meet in this hortus conclusus, this garden enclosed. Such, too, has been the nature of our gathering at the School. Perhaps, just perhaps, in the course of your time at King’s-Edgehill, whether it has been one year or seven, something of that contemplative quality of the understanding has been glimpsed and grasped and continues with you. Such is the meaning of our faithfulness, Fideliter, the motto of Edgehill, as married to the Deo Legi Regi Gregi, the motto of King’s. Such is the educational intent in the shaping of character “For God, For the Law, For the King, For the People.”
The contemporary black American poet, Nikki Grimes, in her poem “You Still Dream” (2020) captures something of these principles of intent that belong to our institutions in their truth and beauty.
Cleanse our stubborn hearts.
Show each of us what part to play.
Broken as Judah and Jerusalem,
we cry and come bending our will
toward the good
You dream for us still,
no matter our sin,
no matter what skin
we’re in.
Encaenia is an emotional time. We have been through so much together. There are so many things and so many memories; all of which go to the question of education, of character. It is all part of you. We have sung and danced, cried and laughed, marched and complained, run and skated, slipped and crashed, skied and wrestled, shot hoops and dreamed of glory in the scrum, sat and listened, talked and talked and talked, in the busy and demanding life of the School. We have even zoomed. Somehow you have found ways to get through the challenges of these times and for that I thank you and commend you. I only hope that some things will not just stay with you but grow in you. “Arise my love, my fair one, and come away” is not about escape but about continuing the journey. That journey is about learning to love, about learning to see yourselves and one another in contemplation.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, observes that tragedy is a failure of the imagination, the inability to see ourselves in the other, the failure to imagine their situation (The Tragic Imagination, 2016). Such a view turns on how we see one another – in friendship or in opposition? My hope and prayer is that you have glimpsed something of the radical nature of friendship, our friendship with the Good as Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus and Augustine, and a host of others have taught and which is the ground of our activity and life with one another. For this is what belongs to the life of the cloister in its truth and beauty, a garden enclosed, a paradise of delight. “You dream for us still” is God’s dream for us and in us “no matter our sin, no matter what skin we’re in.” Such is the better part. Such is contemplation.
May God’s dream live in you. We are at once sad and glad to see you go. You leave us as graduates and graduating with you, as it were, is Mr. John Naugler whose forty years of service as a teacher at KES bears ample testimony to the cloistered life that belongs to the contemplative principles of the School. We wish you and him Godspeed and God’s blessing. Go with the dream of God in you.
“A garden enclosed is my sister … a paradise of pomegranates”
(Rev’d) David Curry
Special Encaenia Service for King’s-Edgehill School, August 22nd, 2020
Christ Church, Windsor, NS