Food for the soul

As the new term gets under way, Bryanston Head, Sarah Thomas, looks at the need for us all to explore our spirituality and find a way to feed our souls.

James Norton, thankfully appearing again on our television screens on Sunday evenings in Grantchester, this week spoke about how he felt television did too little to portray faith in a positive light and tended, instead, to focus on either exorcisms or cults. I suppose we should not be surprised on any level, neither that a man who read Theology at Cambridge and was attracted to playing the part of a vicar should raise such a view, nor that television has taken the popular, currently fashionable and, I think, lazy approach to what is by any measure one of the most important areas of our world.

When I was a little girl I went to a convent school and then, at 11, to an avowedly secular school. The Catholicism of the mid '60s was, for me, a puzzle. It involved my class polishing our own desks (because no one else did) and raising money for the starving children in Biafra (a country whose location no one bothered to explain). Vatican 2 meant the Mass was in English and catechisms went out of the window. Then my 11+ school, Birkenhead High School GPDST, taught me that being non denominational meant notices, hymns (admittedly rather better ones than the Catholic versions), a reading and prayer once a week. All in all, it was a bit ‘meh’.

Having spent the years following my mother’s sudden death when I was 11 forgetting all I ever knew of religion or belief, and actively avoiding church, I then taught at Uppingham, where Chapel is at the centre of the school and where the Chaplain, Alan Megahey (the master of the three-minute sermon), and a tradition of superb Chapel music did something totally unexpected: they drew me back to the idea of faith through a sense of belonging.

So I believe schools have a real part to play in allowing pupils to explore their spirituality. By all means we should also teach ecumenical approaches and remove ignorance about world religions. But if we are to prepare our children to be happy in their world, we should, in my view, also allow them to consider the issue of faith both intellectually (who shouldn’t be exposed to credibile est quia ineptum est?) and emotionally. Our lives need mystery. Faith is one way of exploring what we cannot immediately understand; science and philosophy others. I believe all those elements deserve proper consideration and none should be pooh poohed. At Bryanston, our pupils are encouraged and supported to discover their own personal spiritual fuel in a number of ways, for example through one of the diverse extra-curricular activities, the breadth of curricular and sporting options, or through discussions with the Chaplain, who meets with Ds (year 9) once a week in Chapel to prepare them for that freedom of choice in worship which is the normal Bryanston pattern. And, whatever their faith, the Chapel provides pupils a place of warmth and peace for private prayer or simply somewhere to be quiet.

I’m on record in various places as saying I cannot imagine carrying out the role of Head without having my own, often rickety, faith. The idea that there is not something more important than my current preoccupations (which are more than occasionally solipsistic) fills me with gloom; part of keeping my mental well-being on a nearly even keel is attending church and being refreshed weekly, either at the school church with the remarkable Andrew Haviland leading our lively worship, or when I’m on holiday in the still more august setting of Bath Abbey. I’ll never understand what or exactly why I believe, but communion with friends and weekly ritual certainly fills my tank. I know it’s fashionable to sneer at this, as though it were an embarrassing weakness, but I am long past caring what people think of me, certainly in terms of how clever or not they think I am. I do what works for me. And I do my best.

If you can’t do something like this at least weekly then I think it’s harder to fill that tank. You might get your fuel from music, drama, sport, some or all of which can touch the soul at a deep level. You might satisfy that need for mystery through the world of archaeology or molecular biology or neuroscientific study, thereby seeing yourself as the speck in human existence that we each are. You might have the strength of intellect to find this sustenance entirely from humanism. I take my hat off to you if you do especially when you are in extremis. For some, meditation might help (though recent research suggests that’s much more likely if you are female). But for me, the most sincere and immediate way to find sense and hope in life is through trying to make sense of my faith.

So let’s take on board what Mr Norton says and do our bit in school to keep our children educated and emotionally fed with faith, curiosity, and mystery.

Do nothing, Christmas is coming!

In this week’s blog the School Chaplain, Canon Andrew Haviland, suggests we regain our sense of perspective amid the frenzied approach to Christmas.

As I write the Black Friday sales have been and gone, and the Christmas countdown is well underway. The frenzied activity leading up to 25 December is wonderfully exciting. Here at Bryanston, a huge Christmas tree is already dominating the main hall and in millions of homes, schools and businesses across the world people are starting their preparations. Christmas is rightly a great opportunity to decorate, get in touch and to celebrate with family and friends. 

However, for many the preparations can be tough. There are people who are struggling to get everything done, there are those who are finding it hard to make ends meet and there are those who are anxious about being alone when so many others seem to be enjoying themselves. We need to do what we can for all those who will find it difficult and challenging. As a school we know that we can make such a difference when we put our minds to it. This term as a community we have raised a huge amount of money during the Charities Fair, given boxes of food to the Blandford Foodbank at our Harvest Festival, reached out to those who might be on their own through our Tuesday Club, remembered the sacrifice of those who enable us to live in a free country at Remembrance Day and much more.

There is a small book that I discovered a few years ago (and have mentioned before) entitled Do Nothing, Christmas is Coming. How can anyone suggest such a thing – there is so much to do!

What this book dares to suggest is that during this season we should try and slow down. We try so hard to get everything just right for Christmas, but at times we can lose our sense of perspective. Let’s think of Mary and Joseph. Were they ready? Not really. She was engaged but also a pregnant teenager trying to get to Bethlehem. The place where Jesus was born was far from ideal, an unhygienic stable was not the best place to give birth. The shepherds who came to visit the new born baby came straight from the fields with no time to change into their Sunday best. After a few days Joseph and Mary had to flee Bethlehem under threat of death from Herod and became refugees in Egypt for a time. All this was hardly well prepared.

Perhaps what this book is suggesting is that we do the things that really matter and not try too hard to make everything perfect. The world was certainly not ready for Jesus’ arrival, but he came anyway.

My hope and prayer for this Advent, as we lead ever quickly to Christmas Day, is that we can all slow down just a little, take our time to focus on things that really matter and those we love, and to help those who have so very little. If we can do that then maybe, just maybe, the true Christmas gift, the message of love of God through Jesus, can sustain the world even more effectively in 2017.

People, not things

Another summer term has drawn to a close and another successful Speech Day has allowed us to send off with love and every best wish both departing staff and 150 or so departing A2s. It’s always a time of nostalgia (how can you forget those 18 year-olds as their 13-year-old selves, bright eyed, bushy tailed and very nervous, five short years ago?). But mostly this time of year is a time of looking forward, we hope not too sentimentally, to the great things ahead of them in life. It’s what makes this job of mine the best in the world.

Speech Day allows me to see these young men and women ready to move on and ready to achieve still more. It allows me too to say to them my final words as their Head. This year I spoke of David Foster Wallace, Ken Robinson and Gillian Lynne. The theme, as mine so often is, was about what really matters in life.

There can’t be anyone on the planet who has children in a school who hasn’t listened to Ken Robinson’s TED Talk. But those of you who don’t know David Foster Wallace’s This is Water might like to add it to your own summer reading list. It’s short because it’s a commencement speech (a graduation speech, I think, in British English) and it’s a really good read. He talks about the absolute necessity of knowing what it is that matters to you. Of never ignoring the blazingly obvious. Of looking after your inner self so that you can be a social and happy self too. I recommend it to you in the warmest terms. Here’s its opening, to whet your appetite:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning boys. How’s the water?”

And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

It’s important in life that we work out what we really need and what it is that really matters. It won’t be the size of your house or how much you earn that makes you happy. It will be how you feel about yourself and how you then interrelate with others. As David Foster Wallace puts it, “In the twenty years since my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand … that the liberal arts cliché about ‘teaching you to think’ was actually shorthand for a very deep and important truth. ‘Learning to think’ really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.”

For me, how I keep that control is by reminding myself of an old friend’s wonderfully simple, rather hippy mantra, “People, not things”. By reading and immersing myself, whenever I can, in an internal imaginative landscape. By spending time with my husband and daughters. By walking the dogs and finding time for quiet reflection.

The A2s, as they leave this wonderful garden, will go on to play their part in the world. We hope very much that they will take Bryanston with them. As part of them. Take with them the memories of their friends, their teachers, their (best in the world) Chaplain. We very much hope that they have learned to enjoy learning, of course; but more than that, that they have learned the importance of friendship, of shared experiences, of their own emotional and spiritual well-being. That they have real goals, not fake, hollow goals. That they know how to love life. That they put people before things.

I am about to sign off for a little while and head off for a summer holiday. I’m taking a pile of books up a long lane in Devon (with no internet connection, I hope), re-establishing my link with quiet, and having fun with family and friends too. I wish you all a wonderful and fun-filled summer too. See you all back refreshed in September.

Intelligent Life: David Foster Wallace, in his own words
Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
Huffington Post: People, not things, bring happiness, study shows

A time to reflect

The Rev'd Andrew Haviland

We welcome the Reverend Andrew Haviland, Chaplain at Bryanston, with his guest blog considering life’s important questions.

“Remember that thou are dust and to dust thou shalt return...”

What a charming thought! Who wants to be reminded of our mortality? These words were said at our Ash Wednesday service which marks the beginning of the period Christians call Lent – 40 days of preparation that ultimately culminate in the glorious festival of Easter. This reminder that our life on this earth will come to an end seems an incongruous thing to do, especially when so much of society is concerned with valuing the individual’s youthful exterior. Just seeing the adverts on TV or in the papers for skin or hair care seems to suggest that we value being young and hanging onto life for as long as we can. There surely is nothing wrong with that as long as we accept that no matter what we will all get older.

Of course these words said in the context of a school seem even more strange: what is the purpose of telling those who have their whole life ahead of them that life will come to an end? Surely we have an obligation to protect young people from their mortality until much later. We need, some may suggest, to wrap them up securely and let them learn and grow without the anxiety that considering one’s mortality brings.

Any school that thought that would be doing its pupils a significant disservice. Young people are surrounded by their mortality much more than we would like to think: grandparents die, at times parents die and occasionally a young person they know might die unexpectedly. At times like this, those who are bereaved and those around them grieve and need support, and being able to talk appropriately about death with all people is essential.

Whatever one’s faith or persuasion, being aware of our limited life on earth is an important thing to consider every now and then; it focuses the mind upon the important questions in life: what am I here for, what is the purpose of my existence and how might I be remembered when I am gone? And while it is important to understand one’s own significance as an individual, it is by considering these questions and realising one’s own role in something bigger and more important even than oneself that leads to true emotional, spiritual and mental well-being.

At Bryanston we encourage all pupils to consider their roles in life, not only to the school community, but also to the world at large; whether by encouraging them to find their talent that will allow them to make a difference to their world, or by giving them occasions, like the recent A2 Charity Day, to appreciate the difference they can make to the lives of others.

We all have a need for spiritual thought and sustenance and, whether we find it through religion or a personal, humanist spirituality, it is what gives meaning and purpose to our lives. During the time of Lent perhaps we can all spend a little time thinking on these questions. While there are no easy answers, talking to each other can’t be a bad thing and, once we have started the thinking, whoever we are and whatever we believe, it might spur us into action.

Whatever you may do this Lent, may it be productive, thoughtful and lead you to a glorious celebration at Easter.