Lift up Your Hearts

Haileybury's memorial to the fallen of the First World War was the Hall. The inscription reads:

To the Glory of God and in proud remembrance of 577 Haileyburians who served in the Great War and were faithful unto death this hall was built by their comrades in arms and others who loved the school.
Ye who come after them forget not their sacrifice. Claim as your heritage a portion of their spirit and in peace or in war take up their sword of service. So shall the living and the dead be for all time bound in one fellowship. 


The Greek inscription translates as "We lift up our hearts on our hands to the Lord."

A long time ago I heard a sermon in which the preacher enjoined us to understand that Christianity challenges a world which exalts the the survival of the fittest with the example of the sacrifice of the Best. It is all too easy to romanticize the suffering of war, which is so often in general and in particular an exercise of the survival of the fittest. Yet for all that, the example of self sacrifice so often shines out of it, cauterizing the wounds of conflict with the fire of love.

Steaming Ahead

Hornby have produced a model of the Haileybury Locomotive. I have blogged about that before, but it s featured heavily in this month's Collectors' Club newsletter.

We will Remember Them

In 1979 ITV televised Remembrance Sunday from the chapel, live. I was in my first term and was asked to read the Lesson. I remember it was the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). I was placed at the end of the row, but had told no one in House about it as I was afraid no one would believe me and that I would get it for showing off. The result was that as I stood up to go to the lectern there was consternation and one of the DPs tried to pull me back into my seat.

The whole experience made me think deeply about the young men who had gone to war. At that time the photos of the House teams from the early 1900s were up on the walls of the DC. One could see chaps in cricket whites and rugger caps and then read the same names on the memorial board on the end wall of the room. My family, luckily has no one who has been killed in war; not so for my wife's, whose grandmother lost a brother in the Great War and a son in the Second World War. The sense of immediacy which comes from that is one that I only have at second hand through the community of the school - and specifically of Hailey. For my sons it is actual relatives. For us all remembering helps us to live and work for peace today.

At Al Hadra Cemetery, Alexandria, at the grave of his Great  Uncle

Autumn Colour

The woods were looking lovely the other day. Maybe this will inspire you to come up on Saturday for the AGM. Please excuse a picture post. The last few days have been busy.

All Gas and Gaiters

There have been some comings and goings in the Church of England today. Among it all the Bishop of London has appointed me Archdeacon of Hampstead. This is all linked to what you may have seen in the news. Here in London the Bishop of Fulham (who is one of those going) has care of a number of parishes, and I am to be the Archdeacon who works with the Bishop of Edmonton who is to provide care for those parishes until a new appointment is made.

The Bishop of London's statement is here. I shall start early in the new year.

Sorry about a rather self-centred post.

Ali -gaiters...

Streets called Haileybury 4

Haileybury Gardens in Southampton SO3

Haileybury Gardens is off Charterhouse Way and Radley Close is nearby. 

It is just off the motorway and near the sea.

Lift Up Your Hearts

Playing Rugby on Saturday afternoons and public school sport generally is an assertion of a theological principle. For the Greeks - especially after Plato - the body is merely the prison of the soul. Jews and Christians understand body and soul to be united in forming the whole person. The doctrine of the Incarnation, that God became Man, that the Word became Flesh, is the most audacious assertion of this. Resurrection therefore involves the body. Not in a resuscitation such as the ancient Egyptians hoped for by preserving the remains, but a glorification, in which the vigour of youth, the wisdom of age, the innocence of childhood, the strength of adulthood, the power of health and the vulnerability of the infant and the infirm are all brought together at last so that, no longer spread out in time, I can be whole and complete.

Thomas Arnold, the great reforming Headmaster of Rugby, understood this and set out to educate and train not merely the minds, but also the bodies of the children in his care. So organized school sport was born. Haileybury's first Master, AG Butler, had worked with Arnold and was a friend of his, and Haileybury always asserted this outworking of the doctrine of the Incarnation - that schools should play sport.

In a paper read to the Anglo - Catholic Congress of 1927, Neville Coghill (Tr 1913), later to put Chaucer into fine modern English, quoted William Blake in an arresting line:

"The Body is that part of the soul which is perceived through the five senses."