Give us open doors, open minds, and open hearts…
(From the prayer for Episcopal Schools Celebration)
This past July, I arrived in Austin TX for the 79th General Convention of the Episcopal Church. Checking into the hotel, the agent at the front desk asked me if I was with this big convention in town. I replied yes. He then told me how impressed he was with the people he had encountered or observed who were attending General Convention. “People are very kind to each other in this group, and they are nice to us (the hotel staff),” he observed. “They ask each other how they are each doing, and they embrace old friends.”
Clearly, the agent did not view that behavior as normal among the many convention groups he sees. At the same time, he was clearly moved, perhaps even shaped, by what he had observed.
We often take for granted how small acts of kindness, respect, and warmth towards other human beings—be they longtime acquaintances or those we encounter for the first time—can have a profound impact on people. They not only can “make one’s day,” they can become infectious, even formative, in the lives of both the giver and receiver. In other words, they open so many doors. In my travels visiting Episcopal schools throughout the country, I have often heard people at those schools remark on how pleased they were to hear from hotel staff or tour operators, who had worked with their students on school trips, about how mature, well-behaved, and genuinely kind these students turned out to be. Again, this was not something that these people had encountered on a regular basis. Kindness, respect, and consideration for others have a genuine impact, particularly in a world where human dignity is so often slighted. People not only notice these virtuous acts, but experience how they can enhance the quality of their own lives.
There is no better “marketing experience” for a school than to generate such regard from those who have had the opportunity to work with its students and see them, from the outside looking in, as a group; there is no more important door we can be opening for the common good than in committing ourselves to the shaping of our students into being people of kindness and respect.
Sadly, the perceived need for such kindness and respect sometimes surfaces when we encounter a lack of it in the life of a school—when it seems in short supply, frustrating teachers, staff, and students alike with its absence and resulting impact on the community culture and ethos. The philosopher Eugene Thacker speaks of how all philosophy “begins with disappointment,” the feeling that something is lacking or the experiencing of a scarcity of hope or understanding. Such is the case, so often, with our emphasis upon kindness and respect—the need for it can germinate from the disappointment we feel from its gradual or sudden disappearance.
Last November, Will Moseley, Head of School at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, challenged the members of his school community to use the time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s to share their kindness with those around them. As he remarked in a school chapel, “I would like to challenge the entire St. Margaret’s community to be thoughtful about our impact on each other and the world around us, and use these 40 days [between Thanksgiving and New Year’s] to share one act of kindness each day. My guess,” he told the school community, “is that this practice will become part of your daily routine.” Clearly, Mr. Moseley felt that each member of the community was capable of meeting this challenge, and that the practice of it would become a welcome and appealing reality in everyday life.
As we get ready to begin the new school year, I would like to echo Mr. Moseley’s challenge to all of our schools—in particular, highlighting this challenge prior to experiencing any of the disappointments that can emerge in a school and lead to concerns about kindness and respect. Indeed, there is no time of the year better suited to draw upon the innate enthusiasm, good will, and idealism of a school community than in the weeks ahead, as we set our sights on what we seek to accomplish and promote in upcoming months.
To some, exhortations to kindness and respect may sound hollow, void of any sense of addressing the widespread injustices and inequities that plague our culture today. They may have the ring of sounding more like “being nice,” than having a genuine impact in those areas of our common life so in need of repair.
In response, I would simply reiterate what Mr. Moseley told his school community, “My guess is that this practice will become part of your daily routine.” When that happens, an equally important virtue, empathy, is within reach. It is much easier to empathize with others—something sorely needed in our world today—once we have given others the basic recognitions of human dignity that kindness and respect contain. These seemingly small acts or attitudes, practiced over and over, can lead to a deeper understanding of the needs of others, an affinity at the very core of empathy. Opening the doors through kindness and respect can lead to the open minds and open hearts we so long to generate in our world.
In a recent review in the Wall Street Journal of Anne Tyler’s latest novel, Clock Dance, Brad Leithauser speaks of one of Tyler’s most appealing talents—what he refers to as a “gift for evoking the moment when the heart goes out, when a mute call for sympathy sparks a responsive note in another’s breast.” That is the gift of empathy, in part made possible so often by the introduction of acts of kindness and respect into everyday life.
These are things that we can surely do ourselves as adults and thereby instill in our students. There is no better time of the year to set this as a principal goal for our school community than now, as we open the doors to our students, and there is no better context for the flourishing of these virtues than Episcopal schools.
About the Author
The Rev. Daniel R. Heischman, D.D.
NAES Executive Director
Click here for author biography.