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.

They Built A Road Down To This Place

I am not sure I had ever been to the Roman Road before. It is now called Elbow Lane. Strange to think that  Ermine Street has not changed in a couple of thousand years.

You Raise Me Up

At Speech Day yesterday Henry Olonga received a standing ovation for singing "You Raise Me Up" by Secret Garden.

Here it is:

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.

Diligentiae Praemium

It is Speech Day tomorrow. Let's hope it does not rain.

The Prizes are of course books. What would you choose? Something which reflects the interest of the moment and the subject for which the prize was awarded, but a volume that can be carried through life. A book to treasure, but one also to use and enjoy. It should be hard back so that it can be embossed.

Not an easy call. The most felicitous of my choices was the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations which I still use from time time, even in these days of Google.

We were given book tokens to take to the bookshop in Hertford. Today Hertford is out of bounds, another sign that with the increase of efficiency of transport the actual distances we are prepared to travel day to day and to allow our children to travel are shrinking. The system is that the value of the prize is docked from the school bill and the parent works with the child to buy the book.

Prizes from Amazon are the acme of individual choice. I have some evidence that once there was no choice. Some time ago in a second hand book shop I picked up a volume called 'Britain Long Ago,' a series of of Anglo Saxon and Norman legends, historical stories and poems edited by EM Wilmon-Buxton. It is stamped with the school crest, and has a label inside signed by Wynne Wilson; but there is no name of the prize winner and I can only surmise that it was never awarded.

The mystery deepens in that the label is dated 1900 (mdcccc), but the book was published in 1908.

Stained Glass

Part of my new work involves visits to churches. This morning I went to S James's church in Muswell Hill to look round and meet the vicar. I thought I had, on a visit  some years ago, seen the Haileybury Arms (before the amalgamation) in one of the windows, and there it was.

The window shows S James with his pilgrim's staff on the left and S John the Evangelist on the right with his attributes of the scripture and a chalice with a snake in it. The latter reflects the story in the Apocryphal Acts of John that John once drank poison to prove the power of God. S James has a pilgrim staff (and sometimes a cockleshell pilgrim badge) because the Medieval pilgrimage to his shrine at Compostella was so big that the saint who was at the focus of the pilgrimage became associated with pilgrims. 

The window is a memorial to Walter John Vezey. (B 1915)

The inscription reads:

To the Glory of God and in loving memory of Walter John Vezey, Lieutenant in the corps of Royal Engineers attached the Royal Bombay Sappers and Miners, who was killed while flying on duty at Arawali, North West Frontier Province, India on Easter Sunday 4 April 1926 ages 25 years

Qui procul hinc anti diem perui sed miles sed pro Patria

Apart from the list that he was in the XI, the XXX and the VIII in 1918 the Register has little more about him than the window. His cricket averages are to be found here.

The notice of his death in the Straits Times is on this page (free registration required). It reads:

Death of Lt V J Vezey
Information has been received in Bombay of the death of Lt V J Vezey Royal Engineers attached to the Bombay Sappers and Miners. It appears Lt Vezey was flying in an aeroplane belonging to the Royal Air Force at Kohat which crashed resulting in his death. Lt Vezey was a popular figure both at Poona and Bombay and was an all round sportsman. He scored a century in cricket on more than one occasion in the Poona Gymkhana, and took part in the last Quadrangular Cricket Tournament in Bombay. He also assisted the European side in quadrangular cricket in Lahore. He was an excellent Rugby player. His death occurred on Monday in the vicinity of Kohat.

Either the window dedication or the last line of the obituary must be an error as Easter always falls on a Sunday.

Horseshoe