Michaelmas

It's Michaelmas everyone!  School is settling down, and Tessa is getting into a more even keeled routine. She has even defined a personal style.

 

I don't know what's up with the popped collar, but several k-2 graders are doing it. I tried unpopping a few the other day and got consternated looks, so I am leaving that to the teachers! 

Today we celebrated Michaelmas at school with the annual Michaelmas pageant. For those who haven't witnessed it, it is a mixture between a church festival with mystery plays and a school barbeque. The entire student body puts on plays that tell the history of Christian devotion to St. Michael, starting with a selection from Milton about Satan's fall from heaven and touching on the Norman invasion, Barbarian on Roman violence, and the founding of the church at Mont St. Michel. It ends with the senior class being presented with a live goose (look it up!) which gets to sit in the audience until its starring moment. 

This is understandably exciting. 

Every grade has a prescribed play, and the plays and songs are repeated every year.  It sounds like that might be boring, but having either performed in or overseen six pageants so far, I find that it is a marvelous way for children to understand their place in history and feel connected with the past. I can say with complete assurance that no student in this school feels that the Norman invasion was too long ago to really feel relevant, because EVERYONE gets a chance to be slain by William the Conqueror (or have him throw chess pieces at you, if you are on the other side).  The opening lines of the pageant "Who is Saint Michael? He who is like God, says the ancient Jew" has the comforting rhythm of an old hymn or catechism--and helps children answer the questions that arise occasionally about the patron saint of their school.

It is also interesting to see the plays repeated year after year with the exact same props, costumes, lines, and songs, but different children. The teachers resist any changes to pacing and prop placement with a religious zeal that hides behind it a sort of wisdom--we are all marching in the shoes of those who came before us. I was once in these plays, slain by William, received a goose. Now other kids, kids who think I am 45 and couldn't care less if I sprang from the moon, are going through those same steps with a dogged determination, learning deep beautiful truths about history and faith despite themselves. We are all one in Christ!

This doesn't obscure the fact that each child is unique, but the sameness of the play each year, like the sameness of our uniforms, highlights rather than obscures our true unique and precious qualities.
I am glad that Tessa is in a school where her own quirkiness can softly shine.

(Look! There is a viking ship in the background!)