Category: King’s-Edgehill School Sermons

“How readest thou?”

“How came we ashore?” Miranda asks her father, Prospero, in Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest. And perhaps, you and your parents, grandparents and guardians, too, are asking yourselves that very same question. How did you get here? How did you do it? For you have done it! Today you step up and step out. In a short while you will be no longer students but graduates and alumni!

You have done it, to be sure, but how? Simply on your own? Because it’s just you? Think again. Prospero answers Miranda’s question with a wonderfully profound phrase. “By Providence divine.” Something good and wonderful, “a sea-change into something rich and strange,” has happened in spite of the vagaries of time and experience, in spite of our own follies and mistakes, even, as the play reveals, in spite of human wickedness and sin, of betrayal and deceit. And that is the wonder. Miranda is a wonder – both our Miranda, to be sure – but all of you are the wonder on this day. Not just because of each of you by yourselves but because of the wonder of all of you together in the purpose of this place, in the wonder of the education that belongs to the School. “By Providence divine,” indeed.

The events of this day might seem to suggest an ending but the term for this service is Encaenia from a Greek word signifying something new and fresh, a kind of beginning (εγκαινια: εν & καινος). The term is used for festivals of dedication in which there is a renewal of devotion, commitment and consecration to the defining principles and ideas that belong to institutions in their truth and integrity. Originally used for the anniversary dedication of temples and churches, it is associated with “the annual commemoration of founders and benefactors at Oxford University in June” (O.E.D), and by extension to schools and colleges, such as King’s-Edgehill, founded upon those traditions of learning. Sometimes known as Commencement, it means that something begins, not just ends. That, too, is all part of the wonder of this day.

“How readest thou?” In some way or other the wonder has entirely do with our reading and understanding. Ideas have been presented before you, not altogether unlike the story of Ezra reading from a newly discovered book of the Law, probably, Deuteronomy, in the lesson from Nehemiah which Cooper read. That sense of being gathered around words proclaimed and ideas presented is a feature of Judaism, Christianity, and of course, Islam, not to mention the schools of ancient philosophy. There is a sense of awe and wonder. All the people stood and listened attentively to the proclamation of the Word and to its interpretation. I am not going to ask you when was the last time you heard a lesson from The Book of Nehemiah! Suffice to say this is probably the only encaenia service in the world where such a text has been read! Yet how profoundly it captures the wonder of your education. The challenge is about your understanding, about the way in which you have made what has been presented to you your own.

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Fr. David Curry’s Encaenia sermon is posted here with footnotes omitted. Click here to download a pdf version that includes footnotes.

“Take with you words and return to the Lord”

Words? No, Rev, please, no more words! But really, what else is there to take with you from School? To be sure, a plethora of experiences and a myriad of memories. Yet those, too, are carried on the wings of words and may even mean more than the words on a piece of parchment.

Alright, last words. At last, you say. The last day of High School! Hooray! At last, your parents say! Perhaps with great sighs of relief! And for some parents, this is their last graduation day, too! Graduation Day and Ben Mackey’s birthday, to boot! Well, you have all made it! Was there really any doubt? Well, of course. You had to do it and you have done it all!

Today you step up and step out, the graduating class of 2014, the graduating class in the 225^th anniversary year of the founding of King’s Collegiate School, now King’s-Edgehill. You are the pride of your parents and grandparents, of your teachers and coaches, of your friends and families, of your Headmaster and Chaplain. In a matter of a few hours you will no longer be High School students but alumni and graduates. It seems that something has finally and at long last come to an end. But in what sense of an end?

This service is called Encaenia, a Greek word (εγκαινια: εν & καινος) that signifies something new and fresh, a kind of beginning, it might seem. It refers to a festival of dedication and a renewal of devotion, and to the idea of consecration, a kind of holy commitment. Dedications have to do with commitment to what defines you; in other words, to a renewal of a sense of purpose and identity, especially for institutions. Originally used for the anniversary dedication of temples and churches, it has become associated with “the annual commemoration of founders and benefactors at Oxford University in June” (O.E.D.) and, by extension to many other schools and colleges throughout the world, such as King’s-Edgehill, founded upon those traditions. It is more commonly known as Commencement. It conveys the double sense of beginnings and endings.

“In my end is my beginning,”as the poet, T.S. Eliot puts it. For “what we call the beginning is often the end/ And to make an end is to make a beginning./The end is where we start from.” The end really means purpose. The telos or end, as Aristotle teaches, is that for which something exists. Of course, some parents may be very definite about what they think you are meant to be, like a certain lady who was walking down the street with her two grandchildren when a friend stopped to ask her how old they were. To which she replied, “The doctor is five and the lawyer is seven.” Does that sound at all familiar?

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Meditations for the 225^th Anniversary Celebration of King’s Collegiate School,
now King’s-Edgehill,
November 1^st, 2013
Christ Church, Windsor, Nova Scotia

“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

I.

“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” The haunting questions of the poet, T.S. Eliot, reverberate throughout the ups and downs of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries but they also cast light upon what belongs to our eighteenth century beginnings.

The year was 1788. The day was November 1^st. Our beginnings. This day marks the beginnings of a programme of formal education in what would one day become Canada. It marks the beginnings of a School and, in the following year, a College and an University; institutions committed to the idea that education is not just about information, not just about knowledge, but about the pursuit and love of wisdom.

II.

We celebrate today the 225^th anniversary of King’s Collegiate School, now King’s-Edgehill. It is our birthday! But it is about more than ourselves. This celebration marks an important milestone in Canadian history and in the history of Britain’s Overseas Empire, as it was once called, in the history of the Province of Nova Scotia and in the history of the Town of Windsor. It marks the beginnings of an important chapter about education in our country and province.

III.

Born between two revolutions, the American Revolution and the French Revolution, our many storied history speaks volumes about the hopes and aspirations of a parade of generations and about an education that contributes to public life and service in every way.

IV.

Anniversary celebrations are reminders of who we are and what we stand for. Our beginnings reveal our principles, the very ideals that define us. They are captured in the Motto of the School and College as envisioned by the founder of both, Bishop Charles Inglis. Deo Legi Regi Gregi – for God, for the Law, for the King, and for the People. Words conveying meaning and purpose, they speak to a vision about education that inculcates the qualities of gentleness, learning and humanitas and that leads to service and sacrifice in a great number of different public arenas: government, business, military, education, medicine, church, academia, to mention but a few.

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“I am the vine; ye are the branches … abide in me.”

Somewhere, in the past year, a man or a woman stepped out of the countryside and slipped into one of the world’s cities and, with that one step, the demographics of the world changed from being mostly rural to being predominantly urban. How strange, then, to hear in the Scripture readings about the agrarian themes of seedtime and harvest, of vines and branches, the images of humanity’s engagement with the natural and created world. How strange, too, on this day of leaving to hear about abiding. Yet, we meet this morning in the beauty of the rural landscape of Nova Scotia for your graduation from this School from which you go to into an inescapably urban world.

You made it! In just a few hours you will no longer be students of King’s-Edgehill School but graduates, literally those who have made the grade and now step up and step out as alumni of the School. On this day, you are the pride of the School and the pride of your parents, guardians, grandparents and friends. Today marks a significant milestone in your lives. I suspect, however, that if parents and grandparents, and even you, were honest, it could be said that we hardly recognize you, so much have you changed, and I am not referring to guys in skirts!

We meet in the 225^th year of the founding of this school. You are part of something far greater than yourselves which is now part of you. This School, set in the rural idylls of Nova Scotia, a kind of paradise, you might almost say (forget the bleak mid-winter, at least for the moment!), has been your place of cultivation and learning, your place of abiding. You step out, glad to be free and yet so much of who you are has been shaped by all that you have been a part of here whether for seven years or one. If it has any meaning at all, something abides in you from your time spent here.

These have been some of the most critical years of your formation. Education is nothing if it is not about the formation of character. Nothing could be more counter-culture, yet nothing could be more classical. As soon as education is turned into a means rather than an end it ceases to be education. At issue is what it means to be human. It is a pressing contemporary question. The Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor, points out that our question is not simply about what it is that is right to do but about what it is that is good to be. Morality and metaphysics are inseparable; the ethical is also the philosophical.

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“In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer,
I have overcome the world.”

At last, the last chapel, the last day, the last year! Encaenia. Graduation. What does it mean? Simply this. You are on your own, kid! At last, I hear you say! At last, I sense your parents saying, with a sigh too great for words, Yes! Today, you step up and step out! In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, you will no longer be students but alumni of King’s-Edgehill School, “pure and prepared to leap up to the stars,” as it were. You are on your own, kid!

That may be a frightening idea! No one to prod and push you, no one to coddle and carry you! And it can be altogether frightening especially in the face of a rather fearful and uncertain world, economically and environmentally, socially and politically. But that would be to lose sight of everything that has gone into this moment and milestone in your life.

Because, fortunately, it is not just about you. So much that has been accomplished and done is wonderful and worthy of note, to be sure. It enrolls you in a company of hundreds and hundreds of others in the parade of generations that have gone before you. You are not so much alone now as part of a much larger company. That is the profounder reason to rejoice and give thanks. It means to give thanks for what you have become through what you have embraced and made your own. It is only possible through what has been set before you. And that is altogether about the formation of character, about the ‘you’ that you are becoming.

There is a paradox to this day. Encaenia is the word for this service, even as commencement is the word that belongs to the ceremony that follows. Both words speak of beginnings rather than endings. Both words point us towards the honouring of principles that last, the principles that inform the life and purpose of the School. Encaenia is a Greek word (εν & καινο), referring to a dedication festival, to a renewal of a sense of purpose and identity, that came to be used at “the annual commemoration of founders and benefactors at Oxford University in June”(O.E.D.) and, by extension to many other schools and colleges throughout the world, such as King’s-Edgehill. We are all part of something much larger than ourselves. And that is part of the poignancy of our gatherings today. It all begins to come home to you and to us on this the last day of your high school experience.

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