FIFTY YEARS OF BEGINNINGS

 It's time to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the "re-founding" of our school, St. Benedict's Prep in 1972, after it had bee closed for one school year. As one of the central figures in  the re-opening, I'm being called on to retell the stories of those first days fifty years ago.. 

Each year our Prep Division presents and interdisciplinary project on some particular topic, involving presentations by the Departments of Art, Music, Theater, English, Science, History, and so on, culminating in a single evening of presentations for parents, friends and students. 

The topic chosen for this year is "Fifty Years of New Beginnings," the story of the resurrection of St. Benedict's Prep in 1972 and the ongoing story of what has been happening here in the fifty years since then. That's the background for this blog post.

Yesterday I visited two art classes in which the kids are beginning to look for ideas about "Fifty Years of New Beginnings" to represent in various forms of graphic arts.

I sat on a high stool in front of a room full of young men and retold briefly from my perspective the story of how our school, which had been closed for a year, suddenly stirred back to life. Retelling the story was, of course a moving experience for me in lots of ways. But a thought that kept coming up was this: God kept on supporting us, guiding us and shaping us through suffering into a community of monks that the Lord could use to bring about a miracle.

It was a humbling experience to sit there and rattle off the long series of decisions we had made, many of them leaps of faith into the unknown future, relying on one another and of course on the Lord. Looking back on the experience, I found that the emotions of worry and fear had faded away, leaving only an inspiring feel-good story about death and ongoing restriction. 

Our memory often does us the favor of slowly erasing the really unpleasant and fearful emotions  that accompanied past events. In the case of the closing and re-opening of St. Benedict's Prep, I'm particularly thankful that I can't conjure up the feelings of fear and sometimes even panic that were for me a very real part of the process of reopening our school.

So, here are three lessons I took away from my guest lectures to the students yesterday.

First, without the emotional side, the story is very flat and two-dimensional, so I have to be willing to provide some of that third dimension that brings the stories to life, even if this is at times unpleasant or painful.

Second, I was reminded once again that the Lord has been present to our little community at every step and every crossroads, and continues guiding us along the path we're supposed to take.

Third, I was reminded again how incredibly kind the Lord has been to us monks in letting us be his instruments over these fifty years of building a community of almost 1,000 students, of alumni, parents and generous benefactors. I'm always amused when someone says "You guys have done such a great job with this school, bringing it back from nothing and making it what it is today." I always say to that person, "Look around you at all these buildings, and this community of hundreds of students and this marvelous faculty. Do you really thank that a couple of guys in 1972 could be responsible for accomplishing all this? Clearly not.  This is all God's work; we just had to try to keep out of his way!"

Fifty years with my brothers, trying to keep out of the Lord's way -- Not a bad way to spend my life I suppose.