KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 16 February
Stories in Glass
The stained glass windows in the Chapel tell a story of history and education with respect to the School’s life and purpose. This week’s reading from Hosea, the great love-prophet of the Jewish scriptures, speaks about the divine love which leads us with “the cords of compassion and the bands of love” in spite of our frequent betrayals of love. But God is God and not man. Divine love seeks the perfection of our human loves, as we saw last week with Paul’s great hymn to love. Just so the windows open us out to the larger dimensions of an ethical, intellectual, and spiritual way of thinking and being.
The window in the choir, just behind the organ, depicts the founder of the School, Bishop Charles Inglis. It is based on an actual portrait of him by Robert Field (1810) which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London. The School was founded out of the turbulence of the American Revolution by those who were committed to the English monarchy, thus known as Loyalists. One of the first things Charles Inglis did as Bishop was to found the School and the College in 1788 and 1789 respectively, recognizing the importance of an education that would contribute to public life and service, hence the motto Deo Legi Regi Gregi, for God, for the Law, for the King, and for the People. Thus the window points us to the Buckle window in the nave about Christ as a child of twelve being found in the temple both as student and teacher but then going down to Nazareth and entering into public service.
That window in the nave is framed by the beginning of what I like to call the Canterbury Connection. Why Canterbury? Because the School comes out of a Christian and Anglican background; Canterbury is the seat of the religious head of the Anglican Churches. Bishop Inglis was consecrated and sent to Nova Scotia by the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Moore, in 1787. Thus the first window on your right in the nave depicts Augustine of Canterbury, sent as a missionary to England by Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th century. He had seen in the Roman marketplace some slaves. He asked who they were and was told they were ‘Angles,’ a tribe in ancient Britain. He famously remarked, non Angles sed Angeli, “not Angles but Angels,” and thereupon sent Augustine as a missionary. He became the first Archbishop of Canterbury.