This summer is shaping up to be busy already. We are only a month into our break, and already so much has changed at the Academy. We have successfully installed the shelves and books in the Upper School Library. The Music Room is moving from the Upper Campus to the Grammar School, and I am once more being displaced from my office to make way for another classroom. This year, I will be permanently installed in the Upper School building. While these physical changes have happened around campus, other changes are happening as well. We have had to say goodbye to some beloved faculty and students at the end of this school year, while making room for new incoming students and teachers. Not only are the physical aspects of campus being shifted around, but the underpinning procedures and rules are being amended as well. I have been in many meetings these last several weeks to more formally create and cement the policies and procedures that, God willing, will outlast my tenure as Headmaster, and set the Academy on the pathway to success. While tedious, these changes are necessary as the Academy grows to accommodate more families and students. We are graduating from a small “country” Academy into a stable and growing institution which is building our own culture and community.
All of these changes present themselves as a double-edged sword however. On the one hand, formalizing what we are doing is a good thing because it means the Academy is growing and evolving as an institution. On the other hand, growth is hard and often tints our view of where we came from. While we are only entering our fourth year of operation, I often look back fondly on our first year when we were a tight knit community with few formalities and a flexibility which today would only lead to chaos. We found this out firsthand on a couple of occasions this past year, prompting this evaluation of the way we were doing things. Growth and change are hard work, just ask the many parent and student volunteers who continue to help transform the Academy’s campus for the coming semester, or my wonderful administrative team who are combing line by line through our policies and procedures with a fine-toothed comb.
As a lover of history, I can look back upon the rise of our modern age and see that while it was a period of great growth and opportunity, that growth and opportunity came with a cost: the old ways of doing things were pushed aside. How ironic for a Classical Academy that even we are not the same institution we were just four short years ago. Without the proper perspective, this presents itself for a growth or dynamism that ignores not only the change but the telos of this change. To those of us on the inside, with the proper mindset, this growth and change is not only something fully human, but also, Christian.
Anyone who works with students of any age know that they too are going through a period of growth and change. Those who work with teenagers especially know how challenging this phase can be, as they figure out who they are in relation to their parents but also who they are becoming as young adults. As parents and teachers, our job is to help them navigate this period of growth and change. When done correctly, they grow into healthy and happy young adults ready to conquer the world. Their telos is successfully navigating adolescence and growing into young adults. The same thing happens to us adults, it just looks a little different. We get married, start families, buy houses, borrow money, care for our elders, and grow in our careers. Life is never static, and you are always growing. I often look back upon my younger self and laugh at how ignorant or unaware I really was. This is because I have embraced my role of growth and change as a husband, father, Headmaster, and ultimately, Christian. Each of these roles has as its end point a positive telos. However, we all know some who have given up this life of growth for stagnation or improper growth. This totally changes a person, leading them down a path of unhappiness and bitterness. Their telos does not lead them towards the good, the true, and the beautiful.
This same principle applies to our life in faith. While it is true that Jesus will accompany us away from Jerusalem and even go further than we had planned, we must eventually recognize Him for who He is, and hasten back to Him (Jn 24.13–35). In choosing a life of faith, we are choosing a life where we are called up away from our former selves and towards a better way of living. This life is best described by the simple question posited to everyone in the Psalms, “Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord? (Ps. 23.3 LXX). Yet, as anyone who has attempted to climb a mountain knows, this is hard work. We are told through the prayers and services of the Church that this life in Christ is one of growth and struggle, consuming not only this life, but also the next, as we grow ever closer to and like God. In the Christian life, it is easy to get stuck in Emmaus, or stuck partway up the hill. Jesus will be with us true, but we would be much happier and healthier as people made in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1.26–27) if we hasten up the mountain of the Lord to Jerusalem. Spiritually, we get stuck in nostalgia. If we yearn to be the person we were years ago, we ignore the reality that as we age, we grow in wisdom and understanding. Getting stuck in this nostalgia means everything we have done to build ourselves up gets lost. And so, we must continue our ascent, in both our spiritual and physical lives.
Chrysostom Academy is growing and changing in a healthy and diligent manner. Our students are growing up, and becoming the whole persons God intended them to be. And, God willing, all of our faculty, staff, family members, and community of supporters and benefactors are also growing and changing, casting off our old selves, and ascending the Mountain of the Lord towards the life changing mercy and love of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. As always, in the final words of St. John Chrysostom, Glory to God for All Things!