Trinitas Blog

How often do we see someone driving erratically only to learn a moment later that he or she is texting or checking Instagram or performing a similar task on a smartphone? Most of us see this on the road every day…if we look up from our phones long enough to notice.

With increasing frequency technology makes such forward leaps that it can no longer be ignored. When was the last time you saw a horse drawn carriage plodding into town for the weekly shopping trip, for example? Automobiles are all the rage now! That example will be too dated for most readers, so how about this one: did you know that rural families in certain areas are now considered oppressed because of the lack of internet availability in their area? Before dismissing that as silly, consider all the services you access through the internet. Imagine a life without internet access in today’s wired (or is it wireless?) world. Most of us could hardly function if we were permanently offline because so much business is conducted online, not just generally through the internet, but more specifically on smartphones through the internet.

On July 4, 1776, representatives to the Second Continental Congress signed their names to a little document Thomas Jefferson and a few of his esteemed colleagues penned, and the world hasn’t been the same since. The Declaration of Independence gave continuity and near unanimity to the thoughts that were already swirling in the heads of a couple million colonists chafing under British rule in the thirteen colonies along the eastern seaboard of what is today the United States of America. The Declaration served to organize the rebels in an official sort of way and make clear their intentions to the mother country that the colonists meant to be independent if King George intended to maintain the status quo they found so oppressive. He did.

To the graduates in the Trinitas class of 2019, congratulations. To all the faculty at Trinitas Christian School, to all the parents of the graduates, and to the Trinitas Board— among whom I count many dear friends— well done.

I cannot tell you how pleased I am to be back in Pensacola again, where I and my family spent many happy years with the Trinitas community.

Have you ever noticed how a song can get stuck in your head? Sometimes I wake up in the morning with a song in my head that I haven’t heard or thought about for years. That seems strange to me, but memory works in some unexpected ways, I guess. A more expected way memory works with something like a song is in reminding us of a specific event—and sometimes even bringing back an emotion attached to the event.

Many people can remember the song that was playing when they first danced with their spouse or a song from their first date. “Amazing Grace” often evokes feelings of sadness because so many of us have sung it at funerals. Our national anthem brings a tear of pride and joy to many an eye when played before a ballgame. “Taps” is another funeral song that can evoke complicated emotions of sadness yet pride at the same time.

Like many in the Trinitas community, lately, I have been reading Joshua Gibbs’s first book How to be Unlucky: Reflections on the Pursuit of Virtue. (Actually, I have been listening to it, which isn’t quite the same thing as reading it, but that is a discussion for another day.) Gibbs uses The Consolation of Philosophy and his years in the classroom (several of them at Trinitas) to approach the subject of pursuing virtue through classical education. Pursuing virtue is an educational activity we allude to from time to time, a catchphrase we hold up as an important goal of classical education, even a claim with which we sprinkle our marketing brochures, but really, what does it mean to pursue virtue? And why only pursue it? Do any of our students ever actually catch up with it?

As the school year winds down, we enter the season for reflection. For students, now is time for final performances, academic awards, and the accumulation of all kinds of accolades for the year. I am always a little in awe of Trinitas students as I look back over their accomplishments and realize all they have done, and done well, in a single year. Surely this euphoria upon reflection holds true for any hardworking student in any school—it is not reserved for Trinitas students. I am, however, always amazed at the number of Trinitas students who do so very well over the year in such a wide variety of activities. What I have found is that classical education exposes students to a broad range of experiences and then provides opportunities for students to learn, perform and compete in activities as different as baseball and drama. By encouraging students to drink deeply from many fountains of knowledge rather than specializing in one, classical education creates Renaissance men and women. 

An early look in Newsweek at a report that is to be published in full this June shows that Christians are the most persecuted group of people in all the world. The report, compiled by the Bishop of Truro, claims that the persecution of Christians in many areas is very close to meeting the United Nations’ definition for genocide. Why do we hear so little about this persecution in US media outlets? One reason may be that Christians in the US have largely escaped the kind of violent persecution upon which the report focused. In this country Christians have worshiped in relative comfort—even luxury at times—for more than two centuries. Make no mistake, though, Christianity is under attack here too.