At Campbell Hall, We Love It All! (CLIPS December 2007)

“At Campbell Hall, we love it all!!”

I led this cheer during spirit rallies prior to Homecoming last month, followed by cheers for not just every fall sport but every arts program as well. It was oddly liberating to watch and hear hundreds of teenagers cheering wildly for photographers and poets as well as football and tennis teams. School spirit, it turns out, is not a zero sum game, with less available for academics and the arts if students support athletics. As the lyrics of one of the songs we sing in elementary chapel put it:

Love is something if you give it away
You end up having more

It's just like a magic penny
Hold it tight & you won't have any
Lend it, spend it & you'll have so many
They'll roll all over the floor!

This is a truth I see every week as I am lucky to share so many aspects of school life. I teach a junior/senior philosophy elective, and the students positively buzz with curiosity and a genuine sense of respect as they discuss each text with their peers. I pass by a jazz/rock combo class where students jam delightedly with a parent who is a professional musician. At the National Letter of Intent Signing Ceremony, every one of our four Division I recruits was praised for being a supportive friend and team-mate as well as a great athlete. Students stop in the third floor hallway to look appreciatively and pensively at the photographs on display.

Our little community here is what Emerson called a State based on love rather than fear. In the fear-based community, if one student succeeds, another must fail. In the abundance of the community based on love, every success breeds another, and every failure is a time for compassion and learning.

We’re not perfect, of course, but this sure is a fun place to manage by walking around!

Ordination to the Priesthood (CLIPS November 2007)

It may have been the first time that student voices chanted the ancient hymn Veni Creator Spiritus in Garver Gym – surely, in any case, it was never sung so beautifully. It marked the first occasion since last year’s Homecoming Spirit Day, anyway, that the Headmaster prostrated himself on the gym floor. Let us hope it’s not the last time that the Bishop of Los Angeles, the irrepressible J. Jon Bruno, celebrated at the altar surrounded by Campbell Hall students, one of them, a kindergartener, making faces into the golden chalice before him on the table during the ceremony.

Many people have kindly congratulated me on “my” ordination at the end of September, in which the Bishop and about a dozen priests lay on hands in the ancient rite of consecration.. However, from the beginning of my discernment process eight years ago, my advisors and mentors described the priesthood in terms of its context within a community. Without the community, the priesthood has no meaning.

Campbell Hall requires its Head of School to be ordained in the Episcopal Church. This reflects, not a narrow denominational loyalty, but an understanding that the truth has its roots in an indefinable Mystery, known to us as the ground of our being and the object of all our ultimate longings. Without such an understanding, all philosophy is at fault, as Emerson once said. It is a great honor and pleasure to serve this community of lifelong learners.