FROM THE RECTOR

Resilience and a Sense of Purpose

As I write this welcome letter, morning sunshine streams across the southeast façade of the Chapel. At -2 degrees outside, the ponds have that crisp crust that reflects dazzling daylight against a bright blue sky. The effect is a clear, bright light that I’m sure many remember from frosty winter days here on the grounds. It is fiercely, bitingly, eye-wateringly beautiful. As many know, as the new year began, we lost a wonderful young member of our faculty to a sudden illness. The next day, a beloved colleague tragically lost his young adult son. Soon after, another colleague lost a parent — a grief many employees here have sustained during the past 20 months. Against the larger backdrop of human tragedy from this controversial and deadly pandemic, these losses and others tear at the fabric of our community — a community of faith, hope, and love. A community of individuals who seek to live the values of our School Prayer, to be “thoughtful of those less happy than ourselves, and eager to bear the burdens of others.” So we hold onto these recent losses, and other inevitable ones, with care, with patience, with empathy and sympathy, and with resilience.

I think often of the generations of students and faculty who have walked the paths here since 1856, and of the losses this community has sustained in so many wars over the span of those years. What must it have been like to inscribe those young, beloved names onto monuments and memorials here? On any given morning on my way to Chapel, I remind myself of our relative good fortune. I will not be standing at the Rector’s podium announcing the names of those killed far away, members of our com-

Amunity who so very recently in the life of the School had sat in the pews and seats around me. While the pandemic has challenged us all, and will continue to do so, it has not challenged us in the totality that previous generations have faced. There is comfort and motivation in that realization — comfort that this pandemic and these difficult losses will be integrated into our human experience and motivation to make sure we are not the generation or the School that fails in its response to such challenges. In several recent webinars and Zoom meetings, I have been struck over and over again by what it means to our alumni to belong to the SPS community, the ways in which their time spent as students here can imbue a confidence and camaraderie that extend throughout one’s life and, indeed, motivate one to serve the greater good, as well as build a good life for one’s self. At the beginning of this new year and at a time of considerable social turmoil, now might be an important time to renew those connections and that sense of purpose. As one alum put it, the SPS community is a group of people who share the same training, both intellectual and moral, and build upon that training to serve the greater good. Even in my short time at St. Paul’s School, I have come to know so many graduates who heed that call to service — on the world stage, in state and local capacities, and in their own neighborhoods. As we grapple with the profound in so many ways, now is the time for our confidence, connection, and sense of purpose to show their collective strength. I hope, however, and with whatever means you can muster, you will exercise your strength to push the good around you and to bring your light — perhaps remembering the clear, bright light of a winter morning at the School — to the people and purposes in your life today. Warmly,