Lift up Your Hearts

Advent - when the church prepares to celebrate the Incarnation by looking not back to Bethlehem but forward to the Second Coming. What follows is from John Burnaby's (B Fr 1905) study of the Nicene Creed, The Belief of Christendom.

Prophets and Apostles alike know that "The Lord is King" - and that, not in spite of what they see happening in the world, but because of it. The story they tell of the coming Kingdom is not a compensation for its present failure, but a corollary of its present reality. As the prophets see in the death of the sinful kingdoms of Israel and Judah at the hands of Assyria and Babylon not a disproof but a vindication of the sovereignty of the Lord, so S Paul finds the righteousness of God supremely triumphant in the Cross of Jesus, the sinless King of the Jews. In the prophets' story, God's unrevoked choice of Israel to be the place in which His sovereignty shall be revealed is pictured in the figure of the anointed Son of David who will rule in righteousness by the Spirit of the Lord. In the Apostles' story the same figure is central - but with the difference that while for the prophets there had been only one that should come, for the Apostles He is one who has come already. …


The Church's belief that Christ will come again in glory is the faith that in that same Jesus … we may hope to see the glory of God. 

ISC

Browsing for Haileybury things I found a site giving some history of the ISC including pictures of the buildings and the redevelopment of the site. The link is on the bar to the right of the blog.

There are pictures of the unveiling of a statue of "ambition," 'believed to be in the possession of Haileybury School.' I wonder if anyone knows where that is?

Neologisms

The Daily Telegraph has run an article congratulating itself on coining 251 new words. The newspaper appeals to the authority of the Oxford English Dictionary which of course provides the first instance in print of a neologism. The Haileyburian is given by the OED as the first source of the term Old Boy to describe a former (male) pupil of a school. Now that we are proudly coeducational we don't speak of Old Boys as much, and we are thankful that the foresighted founders of the Haileybury Society provided us with an androgynous term. "Haileyburian" is also usefully asexual. For a while the development department of my university college would send letters addressed rather cumbersomely to "Dear Alumni and Alumnae." Now their database and mail merge is clever enough to write to "Dear Mr Miller." That is pretty good, especially as the address on the envelope is to "Father L J MIller MA." (Not strictly correct to put the letters after using 'Father', but coping with clerical titles is a lifetime's study.) To return to the Telegraph and its neologisms, one which they claim is 'astroturf,' now a trademark. You may be aware that the development department at Haileybury is appealing to parents and alumni and alumnae all Haileyburians to try to raise funds for a second astroturf pitch at school. There is a blog about it, and you can contribute here. Thinking about it, given that there are people in Canada and Australia who call themselves Haileyburians, that word itself should perhaps be in the next OED.

Snow!

There are some nice pictures of Haileybury in the snow on the school website, here.

More Magenta

In cooking up a plan for a possible dinner in Oxford next term (details soon if it can be pulled off) some discussion of OH blazers has been instigated. Since I don't get to wear ties very much in my state of clerical life I am plotting to retrieve the blazer I had made as an undergraduate from the back of the wardrobe. (I can still get into it - it was a generous fit!) It has only been worn in recent years at the church fete, but could become a 'signature' item. There are those who would like the Society to have some more of the blazer material made and this may happen. But for those who cannot wait, the new school uniform blazer could be an answer. It has a bright magenta lining and maybe that would manage if turned inside out…

Snow Golf

Rudyard Kipling (USC 1878) is credited with the invention of Snow Golf.