This week—which began Sunday evening in Chapel with a beautiful student-led celebration of the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., progressed through a review day, the King Day holiday, and the presidential inauguration, continued with exams, and is now culminating in the winter long weekend—has seemed even more full of togetherness than usual. Family meals have seemed more animated, practices and contests more energetic, and dorm evenings more connected, even by St. Andrew’s standards. It has been incredibly cold outdoors as the light of human friendship has shone throughout our buildings.

Perhaps many of you have read Derek Thompson’s “The Anti-Social Century” in The Atlantic. It certainly has captured our attention here. So many people have sent it to me to say that St. Andrew’s is an antidote to the phenomena documented in the essay: the dramatic and recent rise of self-enforced isolation and disconnection. For me, it served as a reminder of how courageous our students are to choose to live emphatically, authentically, and joyously with others, when society increasingly views that choice as bewildering and exhausting. Still, the kids do all they can to exert centripetal forces as the world embraces the centrifuge.

It’s particularly encouraging to see them do this during exam week, a time that naturally inclines us to cocoon and atomize, to retreat to our study carrels and our desks. Much as I love exams, they are challenging. Perhaps this is another valence of our Episcopal values; when we face the possibility of retreat, we always choose to engage. Even as we pursue our work as scholars—as we question and inquire and debate—we will always be a place of coming together rather than splitting apart, a school where each child is embraced, known, and seen, a place where love is the primary and animating force. That combination of faith with learning is powerful and propels us from this place, which is set apart, to do our work in the world, and to bring people together. As Stacey Duprey reminded me this morning, Galatians reads, “let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” That is the work!

As the kids head back to you, in some cases, or join up with friends in others [for the long weekend], I feel privileged to be part of their journey of faith and learning, one that will lead them in paths of connection, citizenship, and joy.