Last Post

The AGM is over and Chris Darnell (M 1965) has been duly elected as President and the medal handed over. He will be a great President for the school's 150th anniversary and we all wish him well. Meanwhile hearty congratulations are due also to Catherine MacLeod-Smith (Alb & L 1979), who has become the Chairman of the Trustees of the Society, the first woman to hold this office, as she was the first woman President. The President Elect for 2013 is Jane Everard (Alb & L 1976). Joe Davis, the Master, was elected an honorary member of the Society, as was Paul Wilkinson, the Bursar. Both have been great supporters.

This will be the last regular post on the blog now that the Presidency has been handed on. I hope you have enjoyed the miscellany of things. There are some posts which never quite made it, and I still have ideas, but 301 posts (including this one) in sixteen months has been quite busy. Of course the quality has been variable, and sometimes just a picture has had to do. The original idea was to post once a month or so, but I got enthusiastic and it has been much more than that. Sometimes I have had time to post daily, whereas over last summer the rate dropped down to less than once a week for a while.

Readers have come from all the continents except Antarctica, and at the time of writing there have been just under 25,000 page views. The busiest month was February 2011 with 1,645 page views from 1,020 unique visitors. People have stayed on the site too. At any one time according to the tracking software about 15% of my readers stay on the blog for more than 20 minutes, which is a long time for a website.

My family will be pleased that will not be forever taking pictures of Haileybury related things to put up on the blog. I have a set of pictures which did not get used for a series on 'nooks and crannies,' which was rather scorned by a friend who, seeing a photo of the urinal at the back of the pavilion on Lower Pavilion on my phone wondered whether people really want posts on 'places where I urinated when I was a teenager.'

Thank you all for reading. I shall leave the blog on the internet, and you can use the links on the right of the page to read the old posts. I am investigating how to make Haileyburiana available as a book using Print on Demand and will put up a notice if that can be done.

Finally, the Master said in his address to the AGM that in the 150th year he would ask the Director of Music to teach the school the Vivat, which has not, I think been sung at Haileybury for 20 years (the hymn Lift up Your Hearts, having largley taken its place). Here is an attempt at a Sesquicentennial verse:

Now we've been here thrice fifty years

Vivat Haileyburia!

Living out our hopes and fears

Vivat Haileyburia!

Girls have come to join the boys,

In other lands they share our joys,

And still this song our tongue employs

Vivat Haileyburia!

I fear it is not as good as AG Butler's original:

Then close your ranks and lift your song!

Vivat Haileyburia!

That life is short, but love is long;

Vivat Haileyburia!

And all through life, where'er we be

School of our hearts, we'll think of thee

And drink the toast with three times three

Vivat Haileyburia!

Lift Up Your Hearts

The news this week has been full of the sorry business at S Paul's Cathedral. That our economic system brings great benefit is true, as is the fact of terrible inequalities. Yesterday evening the Bishop collated and  I inducted the new vicar of S Paul's church in north Tottenham, serving the Northumberland Park ward where youth unemployment is higher than nearly anywhere else in the country. It is less than sixteen miles from Haileybury.

Writing in 1908 Lionel Milford (L 1867; Staff 1879 - 1919) quoted a speech made by Thomas Hughes in Big School in 1880. Hughes was the author of Tom Brown's Schooldays, and was a friend of Dr Bradby's. Hughes sent his own sons to Haileybury. After making mention of the upheavals in Europe in 1848, Hughes went on:

England has come grandly through that shaking of the nations. But, by all the signs of the time, another great crisis is upon us in these days. How will our country come through it? For myself, I am more and more convinced that that question must be answered in these great Schools. If they are sending out a constant stream of young men, not only of high intelligence because that goes without saying but simple in habits, strong in principle, who have learned that lesson, so hard to learn in this luxurious and self-indulgent time, to say the words 'No' and 'I can't afford,' then I have little fear of our country losing her great place among the nations. If, on the other hand, they are sending out a stream of young men of many wants, hungry for enjoyment of all kinds, greedy of change, without simplicity, without true manliness, then indeed, for my part, I have little hope that the sceptre will not pass as so many say it is already passing from English hands. On which side is Haileybury going to stand ? I hope and believe it will be on that which she has held so staunchly hitherto, during her short life of eighteen years. And how is it to be done ? How is this ground, so well won in the past, to be held well in the future ? Only in one way, only by the old method.  Read your grand motto, which faces you there at the end of this room ' Sursum Corda.' Boys ! Up with your hearts ! Act up to that, be true to that. Lift up your hearts for the strength and help which never fails them who will lift them up honestly and humbly, and you will answer that question in a way which will do honour to your School, and make your country glad and grateful that it has risen up in our midst.

Lift Up Your Hearts

The four roundels or tondi in the pendentives of the chapel dome represent Government, Industry, Learning and the Fine Arts. They are by Sir Charles Wheeler who worked with Sir Herbert Baker on other projects, including the Bank of England and South Africa House.

Government

This Sunday's lectionary readings give as the Gospel Matthew 22, the trap set by the Pharisees and Herodians: is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? It is the great dilemma of all those who would live according to God's Law, or any other set of principles for that matter. Does one follow the Herodians, those who supported the Roman puppet ruler Herod Antipas, and accommodate to the world, follow the dictates of realpolitik and sacrifice one's principles in detail in order to follow them in general? Or is the answer to be scrupulous like the Pharisee: refuse to do anything which compromises the Truth as we understand it, but at the cost of real engagement with the world and the separation into a sect? 

It is a constant struggle to get this right, and the church is guided by her Lord to "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." That is, neither to retreat to the false certainties of pure sectarianism, nor to cease to care about the means in the cause of the ends. 

Industry

Haileyburians are influential in Government, Industry, Learning and the Arts. Where they engage in the struggle to balance the demands of Caesar and God they do well; to stand on either extreme of the dilemma posed by the opponents of Christ is to risk ruin: not perhaps material ruin, but spiritual ruin. 

Lift Up Your Hearts

Tempus fugit! I preached today at the golden jubilee in the priesthood of my training incumbent to whom I went 20 years ago last June. Fr John seems not to have changed at all since then. 

Time sometimes seems to have flown. Then again it can go so slowly. Waiting behind Big School for the team coaches to get back from Rugby with the teams - including no 2 son - it seems very slow. 

Maybe time really does go at different speeds. However that may be, what we do with the time we have is the important thing.

Lift Up Your Hearts

The winter of 1981 was very wet. There were forty rainy days in a row in the south east of England. This led to a correspondence in the Times, and someone from a girls school (I forget which) wrote in asking whether anyone could suggest a place to build an ark.

I wrote a note to the effect that the promise given in Genesis 9:15 meant that even the current wet spell would not necessitate an ark. It was published, my address given as Hailey House, Haileybury. It caused quite a stir in those long gone days before online comments were possible.

I was reminded of that little schoolboy triumph today when the sunshine and showers produced a rainbow whose end appeared to be in Goldings Wood.

For Christians the certitude that whatever happens the God of love is caring for the world, and that beyond the clouds the stars continue to shine allows us to live in joyful hope even in the midst of the suffering of the world. This is not fools' gold at the end of a rainbow, but the living experience of millions.

9/11

The editors of The Haileyburian had to wait until the Summer of 2002 to comment on the events of 9/11. The (unsigned) Editorial took the form of a reflection on the passing of time and the preparation of the writer for leaving school and taking up the responsibilities of adult life. Read in the light of the decade which has passed, it still has much to say.

IN these days of carriage-less horses, one can easily forget the simpler things in life. The rush of anticipation on receiving a letter from Mama and a package of crimble cake from the stable boy's mother. But how soon 1995 sluices like a wet jelly into 2002 - in the blink of seven years, peppered only with achievement and cries of Vivat Haileyburia. How soon we forget that our end is another's beginning. 


Some of us may take the King's Shilling; some will call the City 'home'; others may yet turn to the Cloth. Whatsoever path we choose the shadow of our past will follow us like a beggar in Picadilly. 


On the wider scale it has of course been a hugely difficult year for many people. A sense of change, of fragility, of transience, is all too inevitable in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, in the state of heightening tensions in the Sub Continent and the Middle East and nearer home. The rise of the Right, the acceptance of intolerance and bigotry must be resisted. So our little lives pale against this backdrop. it has nonetheless been cheering to see the sense of camaraderie that infused the Jubilee celebrations and so far, as we go to press, the progress of the England team.


So, how will we leave Haileybury? For myself I am more and more convinced that that question must be answered in these great schools. If they are sending out a constant stream of young men and women, not only of high intelligence (because that goes without saying) but also in habits strong in principle, who have learned that lesson so hard to learn in this luxuriant and self-indulgent time, to say the words "no," and "I can't afford," then I have little fear of our Country losing her great place among the nations. Sursum Corda! Up With Your Hearts!

Back after a Long Time

It has been an extended time in which I have not posted. Holidays have been one thing, and then the riots, which started in my former parish. The carpet store with the block of flats above which became the symbol of the rioting was just opposite the church and Vicarage where I lived until February. I have been incredibly proud of S Mary's. The faithful had the church open 16 hours a day, and the positive way in which the whole community has responded has been fantastic. Enfield Town and Ponders End are also in the Archdeaconry as is Chalk Farm where there was extensive looting of shops. 

The rioters are a tiny minority of the population, but what damage they have done to the prospects and reputation of whole sections of the communities. Young people in Tottenham have said to me that they now feel much less likely to find jobs and are angry with those who have made life so much more difficult for them. 

Police and young people in Tottenham - the real story

A century and a bit ago there were fears, sparked by Chartism, of revolution in Britain. Part of the response then was the Public School Mission movement in which the great schools set up work in the poorest parts of the great cities. Marlborough founded S Mary's Tottenham; Haileybury had the Boys' Club in Stepney; others had their parishes and initiatives. In fact most of the work was initiated and led by those who felt not so much a social need as a spiritual call, but it was certainly supported by many whose motives were socio-political rather than religious. 

Visiting the Tottenham Rest Centre last week and seeing the generosity which has provided material help for those who have been burned out I was moved. Medium term help is being provided by the local authority whose advice and help is being praised by the shop keepers and others who are in need. There will be a need for the long term staying power which only commitment to living and working in the communities affected can bring about. I pray that among those whose A Level results come out this week will be some who will make that commitment for the good of us all.  

Lift Up Your Hearts

The General Committee met on Wednesday and the Council (for three hours!) on Thursday, so I have had a Haileybury week.

Tomorrow is Trinity Sunday. The following quotes are from John Burnaby's (BFr 1905) The Belief of Christendom (London 1959).

To acknowledge with the creed that our Lord is of one substance with the Father, is to acknowledged that what God gave in the giving of His Son was himself - and that nothing less than God's giving of Himself could bring into this world of change, sin and death, the power of His own endless life.

The Spirit does not suppress or replace the individuality of the man in whom His presence is shown. His power is active in the measure in which the chosen individual responds to His promptings. Only in the Elect One who appears in the fullness of time, only in Jesus, is the Spirit present "without measure", because the response is full and absolute. In this one Man, God and man through the Spirit are completely one.


The doctrine of the Trinity is no superfluous piece of theologizing, but an expression of what is most fundamental in the revelation of God in Christ. If love means a personal relationship, and if love is the very being of God, we cannot think  of God as existing in unrelated loneliness, realizing Himself only in His acts of creation and redemption. The glory of the Love of God is a glory that belongs to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.

Lift Up Your Hearts

A happy day today presiding at the Wedding of Ben Tett (Th 1994) and Kate in the Haileybury Chapel. I was standing in for the Chaplain, Rev Chris Briggs. There were loads of other OHs there including Suellen Bartlett (Alb & Ha 1995) who sang beautifully during the signing of the registers, and best man Luke Bretherton (L 1994).

In order to get into the safe and to have the key to Chapel I was lent a Haileybury pass key. That really is the key to all doors in the place. I recognized it at once as I once had one to be able to get in and out of Lock Up as a Prefect on duty.

Pass Key

When I was a curate I moaned once to the Vicar about the number of keys we had to cope with. He remarked that there are no keys in heaven; I always thought that S Peter had the keys, but I see what he meant. Once in, there is no stealing or need to lock up for all is shared and there is in John Donne's beautiful phrase, one equal possession. 

Depending on which calendar you use, tomorrow or last Thursday is the celebration of Ascension Day. An excuse then to re read John Donne's poem from Sermon XX on Heaven.

Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening
into the house and gate of heaven
to enter into that gate and dwell in that house,
where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light;
no noise nor silence, but one equal music;
no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession;
no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity;
in the habitations of thy glory and dominion,
world without end.

Lift Up Your Hearts

Are you a past person or a future person? John Irvine, (E 62) Dean of Coventry, suggested that there are those with regrets, guilt, a sense of missed opportunity, for whom life is dominated by the past and its sorrows. Most of those in the Chapel for the Commemoration, he went on to surmise, are future people, looking forward to something that is to come, hopeful for the future, though possibly also a bit fearful of what it might bring. Christ calls us to live for today. Do not put off the moment of responding to the call which the Lord has for us all. Do not say that there are exams at the moment or the pressures of work or a young family or tasks. Nor, if you are a past person say that the opportunity is passed. The Good Shepherd offers us  his help and support now.

Henry Olonga, who said at speech day: It does not matter how smooth the road,
if your car has square wheels you will have a bumpy ride

Going on from Chapel to the Sports Hall for the speeches we settled down to listen to Henry Olonga. Henry was a Zimbabwean international cricketer who protested against Robert Mugabe's regime by wearing a black armband in a test against England. That gesture cost him everything. Henry now lives in exile in London. He inspired the hall with his wit and wisdom, encouraging the young to respect their teachers, to work hard, to keep uo their sport and present themselves well, and to make the Choice. Having said a lot about what makes a person successful he then put it all in perspective. There is no point in being successful unless you have chosen to live not for yourself but for others, not for selfish aims but for what is right, in the end not for the world, but for God.

The Master had earlier said that education is a never ending process which is reminiscent of a man who runs always to reach the horizon; nobility lies not in reaching the end but in the journey and in the way we travel. When a man like Henry Olonga tells you to be strong to stand up for what is right, without directly referring to his own stand, his moral courage gives huge weight to his words. he speaks not simply from theory but from the cost of his own sacrifice. When he points to the source of strength which enabled that sacrifice, the one sufficient sacrifice oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world which Christ made on the cross and to which the Dean had pointed us, we sit up and listen.

The Heads of School, Rebecca Simmons and Harry Hughes-D'Aeth rounded things off. Harry reminded us of the Hearts on the coat of arms. Haileyburians should have open hearts for others; expansive hearts open to new things; hearts full of love. Rebecca spoke of the wings, the support of those around us; the lifting up which we all need.

Lift up your hearts; we lift them to the Lord; for He stoops down and raises us up to glory.

Lift Up Your Hearts

I am drafting this waiting on the Heath outside highfield for the Lower School team coach to get back from Kimbolton. No 1 son wants to know 'how long does it take for a Lower School match?' 

Waiting

None of us like to wait. Maybe thats why so many people want to claim that the waiting for the second coming is nearly over. Today someone was expecting the rapture. It has now turned 6pm and I can report Haileybury is still here. I seem to remember that when I was a boy someone predicted the end of the world in the middle of what was for me a French lesson. French lessons sometimes felt like the end of the world, but we went on to maths or whatever it was next.

Jesus said that no one knows the day or the hour. Only the Father knows. This does not mean that we should not care about the end of the world, but that on the contrary we should be ready at any moment. 

That is really what makes setting a date so dangerous. It is not so much that people are led astray to think it may be soon. It is rather that looking to some man made date in the near future they may miss being ready for the advent when it comes. You do not know the day nor the hour.

Here is the coach! 

The coach arrives at last - just gone 7pm

Lift Up Your Hearts

Thge iconography of the stained glass in the apse of Chapel was lost on me until recently. The subjects of the windows by Herbert Hendrie are clear enough: Noah holds his ark, Moses strikes the rock at Meribah with his staff, S John holds the text of his Gospel and S Christopher wades across the stream. I had never worked out what links them. The clue is the text round the apse: Esto fidelis usque ad mortuam et dabo tibi coronam vitae, Apocalypse (Revelation) 2:10, Be faithful unto death and I will give a crown of life.

In the central light Christ holds the crown of life which He offers to the faithful. The figures in the other lights represent Faith (Noah), Hope (Moses), Love (S. John) and Service (S Christopher).

Fath, hope, love and service. A programme of virtues to cultivate through life.

Lift up Your Hearts

Just back from the Easter Vigil. Happy Easter to you all.

Christ is Risen, He is Risen Indeed Alleluia!

Sursum Corda!

Lift High The Cross

On Good Friday - Haileybury Crosses 

This photograph was given to me by Rev PH Rogers (staff 36 -50),
and was taken shortly after the rededication in 1936

RL Ashcroft wrote: Sir Herbert Baker designed the Cross at the same time as he designed the altar. I was myself present in his office in London when he took out a box of crayons and quickly sketched in colours the effect he wished to produce. 

The Cross of Sacrifice

The Cross of Glory

Lift Up Your Hearts

I was unaware until Humphrey Nye gave me a copy this week that RL Ashcroft wrote, in addition to Random Recollections of Haileybury, a book for those who had been confirmed. It is not a confirmation course, but a call to a deeper religion for those who have grown up in other ways but not found any deeper religious instruction. The following paragraphs are from the foreword.

I am sure that our chief need today is to get back to the vitality of the first Christian message - to a vivid belief that God is Love; that Christ, by virtue of His Cross and Resurrection, can save us from our lovelessness; that the Holy Spirit can thrill us and warm the dying embers of our love - we want to get hold of a message which will give us confidence and strength and enthusiasm, which will create in us a sense of fellowship one with another, which will make our personal lives sweet and holy and inspiring, and will finally send us out into the workaday world with a compelling song in our hearts so that others shall take notice of us that we have been with Jesus.

...

With Christ it is all or nothing. There is no such man as a nominal Christian. "The Christian life is the life of the First Christian, Jesus Christ, continued in the members of His mystical Body, the Catholic Church." [Bede Frost, The Art of Mental Prayer.]  And the basis of such a life is the conviction that there lived on this earth One who was divine as well as human, that some day, some how, we shall meet Him, and meanwhile we shall adore Him, and pray to Him, and allow His Spirit to move in us, and try to live like Him.

Lift Up Your Hearts

At the Albans Trev and Lawrence dinner last Saturday I was asked to say grace. In these days of self service (which have made the food so much better) formal grace in Hall is a rarity. We were sitting down to a meal served to the tables so grace was said. 

As a CP I remember trying on the first occasion I said grace to inject meaning into the prayer with disastrous results. The duty Master - who was one if the chaplains - told me in future just to get it over with, which I duly did. "All on one breath!" was the rule. 

So last Saturday night I duly said grace all in one breath as of old. Someone asked me if I shouldn't gave given it more meaning...

There is a view in church circles that one should try and reduce ones own influence on a text by striving to remove too much meaning from the reading of a text. But even in a sung liturgy some of the inflexion of the celebrant will come through. While a reading should not be a performance, I don't think reading in a monotone helps understanding. Most churches have a better acoustic and a more forgiving audience than Hall at lunchtime, and since the Holy Spirit allows our voices to carry the Word of the Lord, He also gives grace that it may be heard. Despite our voices - or because of them. 

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. 

Lift Up Your Hearts

When I was at S Stephen's House, the seminary in Oxford, at the end of the '80s Val and Mary Rogers were members of the congregation. I knew Val through university friends who had been at Potora where he was headmaster, but he and I had Haileybury in common, he having been on the staff from the end of the war until 1954. He had been told by Canon Bonhote to offer for Holy Orders. I took Val back to Haileybury for what I guess must have been the last time. He was convinced he knew the route from Oxford, but all the roads had changed and we got very lost. Val was a great fan of C S Lewis, whom he had known, and it was he who was driving us one afternoon up to visit Lewis's house just outside Oxford when he misjudged the speed of an approaching van as we were crossing the dual carriageway Oxford Ring Road and we were struck on the side of the car and thrown to the side of the road. Amazingly neither of us was hurt badly, though Val was badly bruised, and gave up driving after that.

Mary was delightful, a gentle scholarly woman, who was a great expert on her native Eniskillen.

As old age came upon them Val sought to prune his library, and one afternoon I went round to choose what I would like. Having spent some hours this week trying to get the quart of books I have into the pint pot of my new study and facing the reality that I shall have to let some go, I admire his courage. Of course the books I have shed are those which I hardly ever (or never in some cases) have down from the shelf, but it is still hard. I remember the old man's genuine delight that he well loved (and often annotated) volumes were going to what he thought of as a good home. He was very eclectic in his interests and there were some ideas which I did not think proper - he was more deeply read in Swedenborg than I thought safe for a Priest.

I have on my desk as a type a little book on the General Confession inscribed 'To Mary with "Many Happy Returns" from Val 12 Oct 46' which would have been when they were at Haileybury. I hope that the memory of the generous and open handed way in which it was given away - both times - will help me to let go a bit more of the things I cling on to. For we brought nothing into the world and we take nothing out. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Lift Up Your Hearts

Apta Camenis means "Fit for the Muses." At least, that is what I was taught.

The Muses are personifications of inspiration for aspects of poetry and the arts. For the Christian, to be Inspired is to have been touched by the Holy Spirit, to have been given a charism, a gift of God which enables some action or work.

Part of the work of a school is to enable children to come to recognize their gifts and to make best use of them. A Christian school will teach that the best use we can make is that to which God calls us. In a recent list Haileybury came out being among the best independent schools at bringing 'value added.' Value added is a horrid phrase, but it refers to the extra that the school brings to the child beyond what he or she would have achieved anyway, so that selective schools are put on more even terms with non-selective schools in assessing performance.

Value Added is what Grace is about. God gives us what we need to do His will, but calls us to co-operate with Him, to work with Him and to be obedient to His call, in short, to bring Value Added. Christians assert that to act in this way makes a person happy and fulfilled, even if it may seem that he or she has chosen a path the world would not recommend. A Christian education seeks to help souls be open to this.

If the ancient Greeks personified artistic inspiration they were beginning to apprehend the truth that the gifts we have come from beyond ourselves. The concomitant is that we should use them well. Are we fit for the muses?

Lift Up Your Hearts

The Dean of Coventry Cathedral is John Irvine (E 1962). The Cathedral is famous for its work if reconciliation. Just as Haileybury will celebrate 150 years in 2012, so in the same year the new Coventry Cathedral will celebrate its Golden Jubilee.

The Dean writes on the cathedral website:

To walk from the ruins of the old Cathedral into the splendour of the new is to walk from Good Friday to Easter, from the ravages of human self-destruction to the glorious hope of resurrection. Your heart is lifted, your spirit is renewed and you feel that there is hope for the world. Thanks to God's mercy, reconciliation is possible.


There is a virtual tour of the Cathedral here.