Trinitas Blog

Hospitality and Healing

Posted by James Cowart on Aug 21, 2024 1:00:00 PM
James Cowart

The following is adapted from an address delivered at Parent Orientation by Mr. Cowart on August 14, 2024, at Trinitas Christian School.

HospitalityWe gather together this evening for orientation. To be oriented. But what does that mean? Perhaps you came here this evening, expecting to hear from your child’s teachers about school supplies, textbooks, class schedules, homework procedures and the like. And, yes, we will get to all of that. But before we do, I want to take a few minutes to speak to you about a different sort of orientation. In the English language, the word “oriented” has four primary uses. It can connote interest in that someone is “oriented” toward a particular thing or activity. Or it can mean designed for, like, for instance, if an industry is “oriented” toward a particular market. Frequently “oriented” is used in terms of adjusting to one’s circumstances or surroundings as we do when we visit a foreign city or country. But tonight, I want to use “orient” in the sense of positioning oneself in relation to a fixed point. As a sailor of old would orient himself by the north star, I want to challenge all of us tonight to orient our school in the coming academic year by the fixed position of the Christian virtues of hospitality and healing.

I am going to borrow this evening from a talk that Dr. Christopher Perrin presented at a conference this summer wherein he proposed that education - particularly Christ-centered education - is to be oriented toward hospitality and healing which are at their root, forms of love. We cannot properly order our students’ affections without addressing their practice of hospitality and healing.

To fully consider how we practice hospitality at Trinitas would require more time than we have this evening, but I will note that training students to love their neighbors and respect authority creates a hospitable or welcoming environment. Even further, calling students to love what is Good, True, and Beautiful adorns a hospitable environment. Shaping students who appreciate the good gifts that they have received through no merit of their own creates adults who are not encumbered by entitlement but instead know that we cannot fully enjoy what we have been given until we give it away... and often to those whom we do not know or who cannot give to us in return.

Perrin reminds us that “for centuries, Christians have tried to love the strangers in their midst, offering them not just a meal but an education. We have not always done it well–and sometimes we have done it poorly–but Christians were the first people (and for a long while the only people) who sought to provide an education to everyone. You think hospitals have always existed? Christians invented that in the fourth century. You think orphanages have always been around? Christians invented them. You think education should be for every child? That is a Jewish and Christian idea."[i]

God has blessed Trinitas more than we can express and it is therefore incumbent upon us to be a school known for our hospitality. You can enter into this by actively seeking out those new to our community and drawing them in. Or by sharing Trinitas with your friends and acquaintances who could thrive here. There will be many opportunities this year for you to practice hospitality by inviting another Trinitas family into your home or on your spring vacation. Even your support for the Trinitas Academic and Religious Freedom Fund is an extension of hospitably by enabling us to receive SUFS scholarships - without endangering our mission - that can provide families who could not otherwise afford to do so, the opportunity to sit in classes with your students.

But what of healing? How can we orient our school in the coming academic year by the fixed position of the Christian virtue of healing? You do not need a medical degree to diagnose the brokenness of this sin-marred world and the sickness of our self-obsessed culture. The God-ordained institution of marriage has become taboo. Moms and dads are being told that they do not have the right to intervene - or in some states to even be informed - when their children are navigating the stages of adolescent development and asking questions about who they are and how they matter. Social media and technology dependence continue to isolate us and stunt normal social development in our children. The rising specter of artificial intelligence endangers our understanding of what it means to be human, not to mention what it means to bear the image of the Creator God. Rationale, civil discourse especially in the realm of politics appears to be more dead than the Latin language we teach at Trinitas. And I could go on...but more examples are not needed to bear forth the point that our homes, our churches, and yes, our school must be a place of healing.

Classical Christian education in schools like Trinitas hearkens back to a long tradition of healing. Again from Perrin,

“As we look back on what our brothers and sisters have done in the past, we will find [that] Christians were the first to challenge and then try to eradicate human trafficking and slavery; Christians were the first to offer education to everyone... A rich Christian culture partakes of the Church, and the Church is the body of Christ. Christian culture exudes the “fragrance of Christ” – it is an aroma, it is a new city, it is a banquet, it is a tree opening its branches for the birds of the air. It is the washing of feet and hands; it is the adoption of children, the building of hospitals, the creation of schools, the writing of poetry, painting frescoes, the composition of symphonies.”

As we recover Classical Christian Education, we are restoring hospitality and healing to their rightful place in education, and we are also rejuvenating a Christian culture.

Note the “re” words we use. We are doing a lot of things again–we are repeating what our predecessors have done, but with new twists and variations according to our circumstances in the 21st century. We use words like recover, renew, restore, rejuvenate, repair, revitalize, and recreate. But I want to suggest to you this evening, that what we are doing at Trinitas is re-orientation. As we practice hospitality and healing this year, we will become more aligned with how God intends for His children to educate their children, and though the course correction may not become abundantly clear in the next nine months, or even the next 10 years, future generations of God’s people will be better oriented in this world because of our faithful obedience and sacrifice.

We will end our time this evening with these words from Jeremiah 6:16. “Thus says the Lord: “Stand in the ways and see, And ask for the old paths, where the good way is, And walk in it; Then you will find rest for your souls.”

May God be pleased to make it so this year at Trinitas Christian School.

[i] Christopher Perrin. “Welcoming the Stranger: Education as Hospitality and Healing.” Renewing Classical Education, August 8, 2024.

 

Topics: Blog Posts, School Life, Christian Living, Virtue

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