Chapel Update

It is a privilege to be part of a School where we fulfill our mission to enliven the soul in daily Chapel. Our school year is off to a wonderful start in Upper School Chapel. We began celebrating the Eucharist together on Wednesdays right after the Labor Day Holiday, and we are looking forward to hearing our first Senior Chapel Talk on Tuesday. We’ve had a visit from Councilwoman Robin Poole and Troy Gray of the Bush Childhood Home to share about the Midland Youth Advisory Council as a leadership and service opportunity for our students. Mrs. Patterson shared a beautiful message as an example to our Seniors who are preparing for their own talks, and we welcomed Trace Reeves of Young Life who taught on the woman at the well. Upper School students are great participants.  They sing well, and offer insightful responses to open ended questions. Chapel is a meaningful place to worship and come together as a division. 

This trimester, to go along with our school-wide theme Spark Your Curiosity: Discovery, we are discussing a “question of the week”. We’re taking those questions from selections of Gregory Boyle’s book Tattoos on the Heart.  So far we’ve wrestled with four questions. “Can you bear the beams of love?” from the William Blake line “And we are put on earth a little space that we might learn to bear the beams of love.”  Love can be hard to accept. It seems to be human nature that it is easier to take to heart bad news than good. “Is your God too small?” The vastness of God and God’s love for us are too big to understand and the images of God we conjure up are sometimes too small and too limited. How do we expand our vision? Our next question was “What clouds your view?” We discussed the woman at the well as an example of how shame can get in the way of receiving love. And this week we’re wrestling with how to choose compassion over judgment for ourselves and for others. We’re not getting to the bottom of any of these big questions, of course, but hopefully our wheels are turning and these kinds of questions will stay with us as we go about our daily lives. It is my hope and prayer that each of us will learn to love our neighbor in concrete and practical ways more and more each day. We can only love well when we know how well loved we are. 

I look forward this year to learning about other faith traditions in our community, to hearing the wisdom of the Class of ‘26, to watching our students lay hands of blessing on each other every Friday as we celebrate birthdays, and to all the special Trinity traditions like Lessons and Carols and Blessing of the Pets. I hope each student leaves chapel each day filled with peace, confident in love, and empowered to spread joy to our school community and beyond. 

I know teenagers usually prefer to keep their distance from their parents, but parents are always welcome to visit and worship with us in Chapel. We meet this year from 10:30-11:00am. If you’d like to come, please sign in at the front office and come on down!