Lift Up Your Hearts

I was at Marlborough today to give a talk entitled "Speaking in Many Tongues" on the work of my former parish, S Mary's Tottenham, which was founded as the Marlborough College Mission. It was all booked before I knew I would by now have moved, and was part of a day organized by the Old Marlburian Club for OM clergy and their spouses, Clergy who are parents of children at the school and others who work for the church in other ways. We all had a very jolly time, and it is an idea I would like to copy for Haileybury.

Marlborough College Chapel

The themes of service to neighbour and community came up time and time again, notably in Bishop Tom Butler's sermon at the Eucharist with which the day kicked off and in the talk on The Principles of Christian Education by The Rev'd Douglas Dales, chaplain to the College.

I discovered in researching the history of S Mary's that on occasion Haileyburians had come to help with the work of the Mission. After one such visit in which Haileyburians provided an entertainment in one of the Mission Rooms (what this consisted of is not recorded), the editorial of the Marlburian for November 1885 commented:

“That an OM should do all in his power to help any work that has been undertaken by Marlborough is fortunately no new thing; but that in such matters active sympathy should be shown by one Public School towards another is not quite so common. May it in the future become more common, and may the good feeling between Marlborough and Haileybury, of which the Rev’d E. F. Noel Smith [OM, first Vicar] spoke at the end of the entertainment, ever grow to the benefit of both schools.” 

Our Service must be open and transcend the boundaries we tend to fix round things. It is so easy to think we are being generous and offering ourselves to others when in fact we are working well within the comfort zone. Lent is an opportunity to break down the boundaries we put about our generosity, by fasting from our insularity.