KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 10 June
I am the vine, ye are the branches … abide in my love
We had hoped that the school year would not end this way but there are sometimes things that are beyond our control. At issue is how we face them. And so, too, with Encaenia which, like last year, will have to be delayed formally. It would have been wonderful to gather in the Chapel on the last day of the year and to hear Righo Etou read Isaiah 55. 6-12 and Sarah Bell read John 15. 1-14. They are powerful readings which contribute to our thinking about the graduating class of 2021 and about the nature of their time at King’s-Edgehill School. Encaenia reminds us of the foundational principles and ideals that belong to our abiding in the intellectual community of the School.
Many of you who are graduating have been physically abiding for several years here at the School but Encaenia is also about our metaphysical abiding, our abiding in the things that are beyond the physical, to take the word in its most literal meaning (μετα φυσισ). Chapel speaks to all of the pillars of the school: the athletic, the academic, the artistic, and to leadership. In that sense it has been a reminder to you about an education which concerns the whole person in relation to a whole community, the School in its purpose and intent. Encaenia is really the celebration of those principles and ideals as they have shaped and formed you over your time here at the School and have become an important part of your experience.
I want to commend all of you for your spirit and determination over the course of the last year and a half. It has not always been easy for some of you to be isolated and separated from your families for such long periods of time, whether it be your homes in the other Atlantic provinces or on the other side of the world. This place has been your place of abiding in a more than usual sense. It has become, if anything, more intense, more concentrated. I commend you on how well you have borne with all of the ups and downs, changes and alterations of this unusual year. We have been, I think, very fortunate – blessed, really – here at King’s-Edgehill over the past year. Some of you have faced more risks of COVID-19 in your travels home than here in Nova Scotia and especially here at the School. There are lessons, no doubt, to be learned about ourselves and about our communities in and through these challenges.