29 May 2008
End of the Boarding Era at St. Catherine's, "it was always buzzing"
In 1966, St. Catherine's School had 161 boarders. This year, it had four, and they will graduate on Sunday. But as the boarding era ends, it offers opportunities for the school to expand.
For decades, girls shimmied down magnolia trees to escape the dorms, sneaked pizzas into their rooms, sunbathed on the roof of the arcade and studied diligently from 7 to 9 nightly.
But after 86 years, an era ends Sunday, when the final four boarders at St. Catherine's School in Richmond's West End graduate. The number of boarding students had declined since the 1980s.
The remaining dorm space will be transformed into modern classrooms. But the boarders' memories and the lessons realized will linger.
"You learned to be independent at an early age," said 1975 graduate Charlotte Fox, who lives in Colorado. "I made friendships that have endured my whole life."
Meeting fellow students from around the globe -- even as far away as Japan and Korea -- was an attraction for some students. But they also got to know themselves better.
"The other person....becomes an occasion of joy"
It must be a decisive rule of every Christian fellowship that each individual is prohibited from saying much that occurs to him….
Where this discipline of the tongue is practiced right from the beginning, each individual will make a matchless discovery. He will be able to cease from constantly scrutinizing the other person, judging him, condemning him…. Now he can allow the brother to exist as a completely free person, as God made him to be.
Now the other person, in the freedom with which he was created, becomes the occasion of joy, whereas before he was only a nuisance and an affliction. God does not will that I should fashion the other person according to the image that seems good to me, that is, in my own image; rather in his very freedom from me, God made this person in His image. I can never know beforehand how God’s image should appear in others.
~~Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together
hat tip to Inward Outward blog
"war should only be waged when necessary"
What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary.
- Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, in his new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, in which he describes the administration as "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war." (Source: The Washington Post)
"What is a Priest" - by Scott Gunn at Seven Whole Days...
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In terrific memoir Open Secrets, Richard Lischer describes the modern minister. He says, rightly so, that we too often become nothing more than a “quivering mass of availability.” That seems about right. We like to do the easy bits, but we priests don’t always want to do the hard things, and we sometimes don’t want to challenge people. As I’ve said before, we need to do this work. The church is about salvation, not just self-improvement.
The Anglican Centrist ties all this together nicely, in a posting on priestly vocation and leadership.
we who believe we are living inside a reality shaped not by ourselves but by Jesus Christ, believe that we have been given a form that itself is shaped like the One who formed it.
Read all of his good post HERE....
VTS Praying for victims of 911
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