“You are no longer a slave but a son!
And the fact that you are a son makes you an heir,
by God’s design.” - Galatians 4:7
Henceforth comes the random interior ramblings of a school leader on this day which marks the thirty ninth year of his existence…
Sometimes I ask myself what is actually going on in my head. In the spirit of goofy awkwardness, I will sometimes ask a student, “What do you think about when you are working at the pharmacy?” Part of me is genuinely curious what goes on in the adolescent mind. Part of me is asking myself what goes on inside my own head.
Yesterday another school leader in the diocese asked me a pretty standard question at this moment in the academic year: “How is it all going up there?”
That word all caught me off guard. How do I articulate all that is going on? I am honestly repulsed by that question because I find it impossible to articulate all this is going on.
My mind is too simple at this stage of life to answer such a complex question. I find myself living from one person in front of me to another, and the people always keep changing minute by minute. And when I am perplexed by something I prefer to go back to what is most simple.
Here is my now prepared, after the fact response, to my dear friend’s question: “Everything is absolutely beautiful up here.” Beauty was a reality that kept coming to me at commencement last year and it does not cease to leave me. Beauty is not perfect but it sure does strike that soul chord which amplifies our desire to be in the presence of that which is simply inexplicable.
I find it beautiful that every day those kneelers in our adoration chapel are in the downward position. There is evidence of some real wear and tear in that chapel. I walk in that chapel and make sure all the bibles are present and the holy water is filled for the day. I sit there to start the day in silence and ask our Lord what He wants me to do. I ask him what He wants me to say to each and every person I am supposed to love. I ask him to purify my heart of any pride, vain, or selfish ambition. I give him all of those conversations that will be hardest to handle. And then the most beautiful thing happens. I hear the door open. I hear it open again. I hear it open another time.
I am not the only one starting my day that way. There is nothing more unifying than our Lord Jesus Christ.
The most beautiful part of our school is that teachers and students see it the same way and decide to surrender their day to him. Hearing that door open is the best part of my day!
To the extent that the oratory door opens, everything is going great on Seven Hearths Lane.
There is another beautiful part of our mission that I want to emphasize, and it goes back to that word all. I keep thinking of all of God’s children.
Forming the heart to love what is truly good by God’s design is what distinguishes a Catholic education from its secular counterpart. And it would be truly counter mission to reject any of God’s children, so long as the partnership and vision are mutually embraced between parents and teachers. In the coming newsletters I intend to offer more for us to think about along these lines, but for now here are some excerpts from a text I’ve been reading and will continue to share:
“... people with the strange vocations of disabilities and learning differences often bear witness to the futility of working for the general good while neglecting to attend to the person in front of us. Disability - in ourselves or in others - demands that we attend to particularity. And its presence in human lives reminds us that we cannot love an abstraction, nor change our world for the good by the exercise of rational power alone.”
“Human vulnerability is universally recognized across time and place. But ‘disability’ as we currently conceive it does not carve nature at its joints. It may be a useful category, but it is not an inevitable nor an eternal one.”
In our adoration chapel we all kneel before the eternal made present in the Eucharist. He who descends to us shows us how to be present to the particularity of another person. This is really beautiful to me! - Mr. Derek Tremblay, Headmaster