up and have his and her special day recog- nized. Following the prayer, a special birth- day song is sung -- “Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday, we love you! Happy Birthday, and may all your dreams come true. When you blow out the candles, one light stays aglow, It’s the love light in your eyes where e’er you go.” Tis birthday moment epitomizes the in- tegration of an age-relevant tradition and the ethic of love that is at the heart of indepen- dent school education. I particularly loved when Stacey Coates, Lower School theatre arts teacher, described the birthday prayer with the adjective “mystical.” If we can nour- ish moments of mysticism with nine-year- olds, the saints are certainly smiling.
Moving-Up Chapel, which culminates the academic year, is another long-standing tra- dition. In a society generally impatient with ritual, Moving-Up Chapel reveals the emo- tional import of small details. Te ceremony essentially involves moving to a different chair; however, anthropologists would ob- serve that the simple act of switching seats, from say the 7th
to the 8th
have a symbolism analogous to that of the Japanese tea ceremony. 6th
grade rows, can grade English
teacher, JJ Cromer, describes the 8th grade
section, which has the highest rows of the auditorium, as “philosopher kings at their perch.” Imagine the feeling of moving to those seats for the first time. Many seniors
leave their section on the leſt side of Ran- dolph Hall Auditorium with tears in their eyes. Communicated through the power of ritual, the Moving Up Chapel marks the ceremonial transition through each grade of school. Whether it’s lighting the candles from inside-to-out and extinguishing them outside-to-in, refraining from clapping for musicians during a worship service, or shar- ing a moment of silence in prayer, ritual sub- tly shapes the ongoing experience of Chapel.
Community at Its Best
While tradition provides the skeletal struc- ture of Chapel, community is certainly the life force. From the Bell Choir accompany- ing “For All the Saints” to a faculty blue grass ensemble singing “Cup of Sorrow,” from 8th graders sharing exhibitions to seniors deliv- ering sermons, Chapel offers a preeminent forum for a wide variety of student and fac- ulty voices. Perhaps the change I’ve witnessed most in the Chapel program is the increase in student participation. Steve Deupree, history teacher and leader of Middle School Chapel from 1998-2011, describes it well when he refers to Chapel as “drawing from within.” Tis occurs both in the sociological sense of “within” the community and the psychologi- cal sense of “within” our own experience.
When I first came to the Upper School, out- side clergy were a common feature of the Chapel program. While many of these ser- mons were meaningful and scripturally rich, there was the distinct challenge of speaking in a context without an established connection. Message and messenger go together; this is es- pecially true for teenagers. Without realizing the impact it would eventually have, I asked my first class of students to write sermons as the culminating project for the Introduction to Religion: Sacred Literature course. Teir task was to take a passage from any scripture that we had read and to explore a connec- tion to their own lives. From the Confessions of St. Augustine to the Songs of the Tibetan Milarepa, autobiography has a long history in religious instruction. With the class project as the nucleus, student speakers now com- prise nearly half of the sermons in the Upper School; the other half come from faculty.
Macon Gunter '04, occupies a key place in my memories of Chapel. School president dur- ing his senior year, Macon shared a heartfelt sermon about his mom passing away from cancer when he was eight years old and con- cluded with Jesus’ closing words, “remember I am with you always to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). Trough voicing this trag- edy, he opened the door for other students to share their own stories. So many of us re- member the courage with which Ladi Smith
ST. ANNE’S-BELFIELD SCHOOL – 13
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76