I want you to do something for me – everyone: students and adults. I want you to close your eyes and try to remember a time when you were angry. Can you remember what it was which made you feel angry? Can you recall how you felt? Did the experience maybe have a physical as well as an emotional effect on you: did you feel your pulse getting quicker? Did the blood rush to your face?
They say that great minds think alike, and while I’d be the last person to claim to have a great mind, I was fascinated by the words of Fr Alexander – who definitely does have a great mind - in our beginning of term Mass on Monday. If you remember, he spoke about the incredible Shroud of Turin and how it represents physical evidence of the Resurrection of Jesus as a historical event. I didn’t know what Fr Alexander was going to say on Monday, but when I heard his homily I realised that I had been thinking along similar lines to him in terms of what to say to you at the start of this term.
Do you take any notice of nature? On your way here to the Abbey church what trees did you pass? Did you see any birds? Were there any plants?
A few things in the past few weeks have come together in my mind to form a very strong impression of what I can only call excellence at St Benedict’s.
As well as many other aspects of the school which we are proud of, the racial and cultural diversity of St Benedict’s stands out very powerfully for me. It adds hugely to the richness of our community, as does our spirit of inclusion. So, when we see things happen in the world which attack this, we are all affected by this.
Have you noticed that Christmas is coming? Of course you have.
I bet that any of you could recite pretty accurately the Christmas story: Mary visited by an angel; a census and a journey to Bethlehem; no room at the inn; a baby born in a stable and placed in a trough that animals eat from; shepherds visited by an angel and making their way to Bethlehem to pay homage to the baby; wise men following a star to the stable and giving the baby strange gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Some of you may have heard the recent news about the debate over the Elgin Marbles - a set of ancient Greek marble sculptures that currently reside in the British Museum in London. These sculptures were originally part of the Parthenon temple in Athens, and were removed over 200 years ago in the early 1800s by a British nobleman named Lord Elgin.
How many bricks make a wall? One hundred? One thousand? Ten? Could one brick ever constitute a wall?
If I mention the name Bennu, do you have any idea what I’m talking about? A clue: Bennu is 4.5 billion years old and parts of it, contained in a capsule, streaked through the atmosphere in a fireball and landed on target in Utah’s western desert last Sunday, after a 1.2 billion mile journey to Earth.