Chaplaincy Spring has come back again. The Earth is like a child that’s got poems by heart; so many poems, so many verses, patient toil winning her prizes at last. Strict, the old teacher. We loved the whiteness in the old gentleman’s beard, its bright snow. Now when we ask what the green, what the blue is, Earth knows the answer, has learned it. She knows. Earth, you’re on holiday, lucky one: play now! Play with us children! We’ll try to catch you. Glad, joyous Earth! The gladdest must win. Every lesson the old teacher taught her, all that is printed in roots and laborious stems: now she sings it! Listen, Earth sings! Rainer Maria Rilke; translated by Stephen Cohn As I sit writing these words in my study on what is a glorious
exciting thing to be able to experience. As Wordsworth said,
Indian summer morning, looking out over the Abbey Close and
“Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very
with the old bells ringing out over this venerable town, it does
heaven.” It is exciting, it is bliss, it is heavenly, because, for me at
indeed seem to me in the words of Maria Rilke, that a deeply
any rate, living in such a way and at such a time gives an
longed-for and hoped-for spring has come bursting back to this
opportunity to reflect on how things were before all of this and
part of Sherborne and in particular to the walls and environs of
to consider how they may be as we stretch ourselves forward
this ancient School founded so long ago and which has already
into the unknown future.
seen and felt so much. Of course, for a Christian, and for others too, there is something After these numerous and at times truly awful past months which
of Easter about all of this. The dying to the old and awaking to a
have, between lockdowns, been marked by such quietness,
new reality is indeed a most powerful image for these months of
indeed at times desertion and serenity, the springtime of the
COVID we have been experiencing both together and
School returning to its new normal can be easily seen and heard
separately. Hopefully most people who try to be Christian to
everywhere. Our classrooms are full again, there is lively chatter
whatever extent are people of hopefulness. I do think it is such
in the corridors and Houses, our services in Chapel and Abbey
hopefulness, that in the words of Captain Sir Tom, “Tomorrow
have resumed, our social and competitive sporting endeavours
will be a good day,” is what sustains and then ultimately enriches
are once more well under way. We find ourselves in good heart.
a community such as this one, whether here at School or after
And there is perhaps above all else a buzzing sense of
days away. Hopefulness and renewal, these two things are what
anticipation and of purposeful new life about the place – the like
can mark our lives when we have a sense of the opportunities
of which anyone re-visiting Sherborne after a long absence
and challenges which the offer of new life can bring. In this there
would recognise and be familiar with straight away. It’s probably
is resurrection, pure and simple, deep and enduring.
wrong to labour the point, but we are living through nothing less than the transformation of an old way of life into the emergence of a new. And to live in such a way and at such a time is surely an
ThE REV DR DAVID cAmPBELL chaplain
