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Reflection – Epiphany Service
Over the holidays, a little dejectedly, I shelved my planned carol service address and began to think about what I would like to say as we embark on a new term.
I started to wonder what it was like for many of you re-entering old worlds as you headed home for the holidays and, again this week, what it is like for many of you as you switch back into life at Shawnigan.
People often ask me what it is like to be here at Shawnigan, to be Headmaster, to live an ocean and continent away from family and friends. Our family’s approach has been to step into our new world fully and unconditionally – to live and breathe all things in the present and not to look wistfully and nostalgically into the past.
Our past has undoubtedly shaped us and we are grateful for that but, at the same time, our approach is to be in the ‘here and now’ - and excited as to what lies ahead.
On our adventures, we fell in love with Norway and, as we hoped, we have fallen in love with Canada, BC, the island and, most importantly, Shawnigan.
We are all embarking on a new academic term, a new year, a new decade with joys, challenges and transitions on the horizon.
Christmas fades into the past.
Many of you will know the song of the ‘12 Days of Christmas’ and the tradition that Twelfth Night, immortalized by the title of a Shakespeare play, signals the end of revelry - and a time to dismantle the Christmas tree, to pack away festive decorations and to embrace a new year.
Twelfth Night fell on the evening of your return on Sunday - so tonight’s service is more of a Seventeenth Night.
Monday 6th January marked Epiphany - a Christian feast day celebrating the sacred journey of the three kings (also known in Ancient Greek as the magi, the wise men) and the start of a new season.
I have to admit to having become a little bit obsessed in my research on Epiphany since the Rev and I first hatched this plan to launch 2020 with a candlelit service – so much so that I thought the Rev’s invitation, on Tuesday in Chapel, for us to ‘Burn those Babies’, those pieces of paper with our regrets condemned to be burnt, was a seasonal reference to the biblical story of Herod’s ‘Massacre of the Innocents’, a genocidal plan in the bible to assassinate all male babies in and around Bethlehem with the three kings as unwilling accomplices.
Little did I realise that the Rev was, in fact, appealing to the ‘Saturday Night Fever’ in all of us with his reference to ‘Discover Inferno – Burn, Baby Burn’. Ever since Tuesday morning, I have found myself humming this tune and have been troubled with an image of the Rev in the 1970s under a spinning disco ball, floral shirt, pointy collars, bell-bottom pants and silver high heeled shoes.
Move over John Travolta…..
I digress…..
Our wonderful kitchen team baked a giant Kings’ Cake for dessert this evening for our special dinner instead of the traditional Christmas pudding.
The Kings’ Cake is a tradition in many French-speaking families in Quebec for Epiphany - and known as the ‘gateau des Rois’. It is custom that something is hidden in the cake (and non-chokeable), and the person who finds it in their portion is given a crown for the meal and invited to represent the three kings for the rest of the day. To mark this honour, the lucky student was invited to read the first lesson in chapel about the three kings – and we shall deliver a giant hamper to his / her house for a midnight feast fit for a king.
This evening’s readings and hymns have focused on the biblical story of the three kings - imaginatively captured in the staff children’s nativity play with their gifts from the East of gold, frankincense and myrrh with a rogue camel roaming the aisle.
I asked Spencer from Lonsdale’s to read the poem ‘Journey of the Magi’. Spencer has read at every carol service since grade 8 and I didn’t want the norovirus to triumph over this tradition.
This is a poem by the American-British poet, TS Eliot - many of you will know him without realizing it. The December-released film of the musical, ‘Cats’, was based on his Possum poems - with old favourites Mr Mistoffelees, Skimbleshanks, Mungojerrie and (my favourite) Macavity the Mystery Cat.
His poem ‘Journey of the Magi’ explores the journey the wise men took when following the star to Bethlehem where Jesus was born. Through the voice of one of the magi, it captures the struggle of the journey (through ‘the very dead of winter’) and self-doubt (‘and the voices singing in our ears / Saying this was all folly’), the arrival for the birth of Jesus, and the sense of alienation on return to their old country and pagan traditions.
It is a metaphorical poem for Christmas, representing both birth and death, renewal and spiritual rebirth.
Written in 1927, it reflects TS Eliot’s own spiritual journey as he took on British citizenship and converted to Anglo-Catholicism in that year. As an English teacher, I tell my students that ‘out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry’ [WB Yeats] - and relentless editing of drafts. However, TS Eliot wrote this poem before lunch one day and considerably aided by half a bottle of gin! Unrecommended by the Headmaster and, I trust, the English Department.
It has several personal connections: my brother chose it as a reading at his wedding, in snowy Saskatoon in mid-winter, to a Canadian - as he embraced a new life, a new world, new culture.
In 2009, at the end of the last decade, I returned from a stunningly educational teaching exchange in Swaziland (now eSwatini) in Southern Africa and distinctly remember my slight sense of discomfort at my return to be Head of the English Faculty at Marlborough College, a co-educational boarding school in England, very similar and quite a lot larger than Shawnigan.
The last lines of the poem resonated profoundly for me at the time - ‘no longer at ease [t]here, in the old dispensation’.
I needed to decompress and learnt that it is sometimes very hard going back to our old worlds - my active approach was to take what I learnt in Swaziland and to do my utmost to build the best of it (student initiative and voice, genuine community service, the celebration of difference and much more) into Marlborough. My experiences in Swaziland proved a guiding star as they led me then to the fjords of Norway and now to Shawnigan.
‘Journey of the Magi’ is a poem that talks about the inner journey within all of us - the end of one chapter and the opening of another.
This new year, 2020, marks the end of a decade and the opening of another.
I wonder what will go into the history books as the defining images of 2019 - the fire that ravaged Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, street protests in Hong Kong, the impeachment of Donald Trump, Brexit and a Divided rather than United Kingdom, trends of polarization, uncertainly and insecurity, the face of activist Greta Thunberg.....
My favourite image last year was of a black South African captain holding aloft the trophy of the Rugby World Cup. I wonder which global and sporting moments resonate for you.....
I am sure that many of you will have celebrated and will remember 2019 for the Raptors bringing the NBA title to Canada for the first time ever.
All decades have a distinctive essence, moods, colours and stereotypes. Defining decades helps us momentarily to reflect and then to resolve on new directions.
The 2010s have been the decade of increasing disconnection; a time when we have grown farther apart from each other, from nature, from shared experiences. A time when ‘convenience and technology have conspired to inch us away from some of the most satisfying parts of being human’ [Clare Foges – The Times, UK].
One journalist perceptively wrote that if we were packing a time capsule to capture the decade it would probably contain one item: a smartphone - with a visitor from another planet or archaeologist probably assuming these ‘ubiquitous rectangles were portals to our gods’.
The siren-call of our phones (in our pockets, at the movies, in the washroom (don’t deny it!) promises connection but we find that they are also the sources of over-stimulation, of loneliness, of the debilitating FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), and of anxiety.
We are too absorbed to look up, sacrificing nourishing face-to-face social interaction for an artificial world of online interaction, physical escape and potential isolation.
A number of times at this lectern, I have encouraged us to respond to the novelist EM Forster’s imperative: ‘Only connect!’
And that is not through wifi and our devices but through authentic personal connection.
I firmly believe that, for me, the 4Cs ‘Conversation, Compassion, Community - and Courage’ define Shawnigan, past, present and future.
‘Conversation’ is at the heart of this -
I cherish the conversations we have across generations and cultures - in lessons, in corridors, in our special and protected places such as Marion and Mitchell Halls where we connect, day in day out, where we give our undiluted attention to those around us, and where we invest in the people, places and experiences we share.
As we launch into 2020 and together define our strategic directions here at Shawnigan, ‘conversation’, storytelling and what it means to be human will be at the heart of our vision. In the spirit of the journey of the magi, we are on this journey together.
Our word for this academic year is ‘Hope’, as illustrated by our T-shirts. Last term, we all had our moments of ‘triumph’ and ‘disaster’ and now, refreshed, wiser and with new year’s resolutions in mind, we must trust in the potential of hope, both personal and collective.
We have very exciting opportunities ahead - from the Shawnigan House of Commons to the last January at Shawnigan for Grade 12s, from the much anticipated Inter-House Spelling Bee to Ski Week. I am looking forward to conversations on the Manning Park chair lift with students and staff alike - hearing about your stories, your here and now, your hopes.
And maybe I shall be able to convince some of you of digital detox and JOMO, the Joy of Missing Out.
At the beginning of a fresh new decade here at Shawnigan, this evening’s reflection amidst this candlelit service is a trumpet call to ‘conversation’, to what makes this place unique, and to the future.
Richard D A Lamont
Headmaster
January 10th 2020
We acknowledge with respect the Coast Salish Peoples on whose traditional lands and waterways we live, learn and play. We are grateful for the opportunity to share in this beautiful region, and we aspire to healthy and respectful relationships with those who have lived on and cared for these lands for millennia.
Shawnigan Lake School is an independent co-educational boarding school for ages 13 –18 on Canada’s beautiful Pacific Coast. Our diverse, interdisciplinary and innovative programming helps shape the next generation of global leaders.
