Notes from the Pulpit

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion...

How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?

(Psalm 137:1-3)

While some of us found it incredibly difficult, our tenacity and creativity as a community meant that we found new ways to sing our song whilst in exile.

More recently, the war in Ukraine has disrupted our sense of order and justice, combined with political unrest at home. As once again the waters feel choppy, the 23rd Psalm, ‘The Lord is my shepherd...’, offers a vision of green pasture and still waters:

He guides me by still waters...

(Psalm 23:2)

As I write, many in the school are periodically checking live-stream footage of the Chapel gable windows. This is no craze for church architecture; rather, the focus is on a family of kestrels nesting there. Kestrel-cam watchers can see mother and father sharing the incubation of their eggs and eagerly awaiting the hatching and fledging of the chicks!

It should come as no surprise to those familiar with the powerful Jewish poems called the Psalms, used in both Jewish and Christian worship, that this is the spot the kestrels have chosen. As Psalm 84 declares:

Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.

Happy are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise.

Like the kestrels, generations of students and staff have valued the Chapel as a place of peace and sanctuary in the centre of a bustling complex of buildings. The physical and emotional presence of a beautiful space at the heart of the school, reserved for stillness, prayer, and reflection, is an important symbol of the inner stability that we hope will grow within our students. Developing inner stability has been increasingly important since the last edition of The Portcullis, as we have found ourselves in unwelcome and troublesome waters. As the pandemic uncontrollably disrupted our lives, exiling us from each other, we may have been tempted to give in to hopelessness and pessimism, as in another famous psalm:

The Emanuel School Chapel continues to provide opportunity for students and staff to find still waters in the midst of the tumult. They will not be found because the world becomes still, but only by taking time to be still ourselves and to take stock, reflect, meditate, and — dare I say it — pray.

At Emanuel, we do this in the inclusive atmosphere of Chapel, where students and staff can engage on whichever level resonates with their own sense of spirituality. Gathering in a beautiful space like the Chapel to reflect, sing and pray not only grounds us in our school’s rich history and tradition but it is one of the many ways we guide students to discover still waters and an inner stability. This will equip them to face the often tempestuous and noisy seas of our modern world, with the vision, courage and optimism which will help them reclaim its wonder and find meaning in it.

Revd S Labran (School Chaplain)