Working on my comments for our opening chapel of the year at St. George’s Independent School tomorrow, this blog entry from a couple of years ago came back to mind…
Lives Worthy of the Sacrifice: A Cum Laude and National Honor Society Speech
This post came back to mind for me today as we enjoy the Memorial Day Weekend. In particular I remembered this paragraph: “Throughout history and literature is the demand that we remember those who have sacrificed everything for others. Quite right—remembrance is an appropriate demand, but it is really only the least that we can […]
What To Pack For Your Next Story: A Commencement Address
[The Class of 2016 graduated on Sunday, May 22nd from St. George’s Independent School. It was a lovely graduation. The Valedictorian and Saludatorian speeches were particularly well done. I gave the address below right after the opening hymn, “Be Thou My Vision.”] Good afternoon—what a beautiful day for this gathering!It has always really been about stories. […]
Ecce Homo: Caravaggio Reveals Jesus’s Humanness
[I delivered the following chapel talk as part of an Easter chapel. I projected the images on a screen behind me. The gospel was from Mark, Chapter 10: 13-16: People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14 But when Jesus saw this, he was […]
Martin Luther King Service 2016–The Present and Future are Ours to Make
[ I gave this reflection as part of a Martin Luther King service.] Good Morning! A photograph, a certain kind of very rare photograph, can come to stand for a period of history. It can somehow capture a moment larger than the scene depicted in the frame itself, and most relevant to my comments this […]
Try to be a Little Kinder: A Cum Laude and National Honor Society Induction Speech
Huxley implored, “Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very beginning that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and in the country around it.