Trinitas Blog

We Americans are pretty independent people. In fact, independence is often considered a hallmark of Americanness, a particular American virtue if you will. For the next few minutes, however, please allow me to celebrate the antithesis to personal independence, that is, the virtue of community. I have been inspired recently to extol the virtues of community by the many parents and students at Trinitas who work behind the scenes to support each other and the school.

A couple of weeks back I wrote about the need for parents to help their children mature spiritually so that their faith is not something they cast off as soon as they leave the home. Of course, there are lots of scriptural principles for our teaching our children to love God in word and deed. Two of my favorites are from Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 6. The first is a promise of generational blessing to those who love God and keep His commandments; the second is a command to parents to teach our children God’s words and ways every minute of every day. Perhaps the most often quoted of these kinds of passages is Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.” It is abundantly clear to me that even though we are supported in our work by the church and (if we are so blessed) the Christian school, the responsibility for training our children in the faith still rests with us as parents.

Our junior and senior classes have just returned from five days in New York City. Some schools would call it a junior-senior trip; we call it an aesthetics trip. On a Trinitas aesthetics trip the main mission is to discover beauty that we can’t discover at home. We go in search of music, dance, art, architecture, and food. It isn’t that we don’t have those things in Pensacola; it’s just that we can find more of them in places like New York City and Washington DC.

Recently I proposed that the classical school movement is seeking to preserve the heritage of western civilization, in part, by teaching and training good oratory skills. I also explained some of the ways Trinitas begins this teaching and training as early as kindergarten. If the beginning is, as I mentioned last week, as simple as teaching five-year-olds good eye contact and clear enunciation, then the end of that training is guiding eighteen-year-olds through the writing, presentation, and defense of a senior thesis. There are, of course, many, many varied components between those two stages but perhaps none as important and exciting as the John Chrysostom Oratory Competition.

From Ancient Greece to the founding of the United States, one mark of western civilization has been excellent oratory. From Pericles to Patrick Henry and John Chrysostom to Thomas Jefferson (with Demosthenes and Cicero thrown in for good measure), the roots of western civilization have been nourished for more than two-thousand years by those with the ability to articulate lofty ideals in a way that leads to both understanding and inspiration in the hearer. We could call them the Silver Tongues of the West. But the West isn’t what it used to be. Oratory now seems most often employed to convince us to spend money on some product or to vote for a particular candidate. Of course it has always been used in this way, but it seems that in times past, good oratory was more memorably used by men such as those mentioned above to convince others of good ideas, the kind of ideas that change the world for the better.

Re-enrollment season at Trinitas is in full swing and, in fact, the deadline to re-enroll current students for next year is just a few days away. With the thought in mind that parents re-evaluate their child(ren)’s education during this season, it might prove helpful to review some of those distinctions that make Trinitas a rather not-so-ordinary sort of school.

In Eph 4:3, Paul says the Ephesians ought to be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” While we know Paul wrote this letter specifically to the church at Ephesus, and with a specific context in mind, we also know that if Paul’s exhortation was true for Christians at Ephesus, it is true for us at Trinitas. Maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace is no easy task, though, no matter where it is being attempted because we’re all sinners, especially talented at offending each other, hurting each other’s feelings, and generally getting in each other’s way. But when the place you’re attempting to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace is a school where 200 people are living in community each day, it is a difficult task to say the least.

With drama underway, it seems like a fitting place to unpack the pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. On the stage students are called to imagine life from another perspective. Students wrestle with not only what someone says, but how they say it and then why. Actors humble themselves and explore a nature not their own. In this putting on of a character, students are able to actively pursue the true, the good, and the beautiful.