Seer Green: Global story, Local school

Back to Seer Green Church of England Combined School where I had great fun with music a couple of years ago, for their 150th Anniversary celebration. Singing was great, and Olwyn Oakley, children, staff and friends seem to be enjoying life. Good to share the assembly with Gaenor Hockey, the local Vicar, who is well known and loved in school.

150 is a great age to be, along with Big Ben, the Red Cross, the Suez Canal, the Liberal Party, and the Royal Albert Bridge of the Great Western Railway. It was also the year John Brown was hanged at Harper’s Ferry, and the year of the Pennsylvania Oil Rush, when people began seriously to use oil from the ground rather than whale oil for their domestic lighting.

Well that’s enough history — how was school?
My eye was taken by some colourful Story Bags. These contain stories and all the gear you need to bring them to life with very young children. There was an interesting display of photos and records from the school, which has a very full set of logbooks, admissions registers and inspection reports. I loved a 1905 exercise book by a girl called Maude, describing the British Empire, the reign of King Josiah, and Queen Alexandra.

Attendance in those days was much worse than today, as children were often required to help their parents at work, specially at harvest. Reading through the records shows how innocent in some ways children were, but also how young they sometimes were when they first encountered death, poverty and disease. The logbooks lovingly record the joys and sorrows of school life, and circumstances of thier lives.

I was thrilled to see how this school and its Church are building links between Seer Green and Kisiizi in Western Uganda. Staff and friends, including a local doctor, have been out to Uganda to help in the hospital and school. The display of children's profiles and materials from Kisiizi was very moving, including some home made footballs and skipping ropes.

In an increasingly globalised world, the Christian Church is the greatest network on earth, and building relationships across it is something Church schools are wonderfully well placed to do. There’s an immediacy and closeness across cultures we feel in belonging together in one world, whether giving or receiving hospitality. It takes a whole world to know Christ. There is no down side, and I hope all our 281 schools will work in increasingly focussed ways to create and sustain these kinds of link, as they are doing at Seer Green.

Building Jerusalem in Seer Green

Back to Seer Green on Sunday, where I had such fun in the school, to confirm 12 people from there and Slough. One reading was slightly unusual — the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem in Nehemiah 16. This story shows that Christianity is an inherently corporate enterprise. People who stay together accomplish the impossible in spite of the politics of the proud. Chapters full of names make the point that everybody is somebody; a good note on which to be confirmed in the Christian faith. The other reading was from John 15. Jesus never wrote a book or founded a corporation, but he made friends, and calls us his friends, not servants. Abraham, from whose faith, and with whose faith, we find blessing, was called God’s friend.

• Real friends respect the other person as they really are, not just for what they can get out of them. So goodbye to the idea that Jesus is somehow after our money, or out to clone us all or homogenise us into something we’re not.
• Real friends desire and work for the real good of the other person, whatever the cost. Goodbye, then to the idea that Jesus is trying to recruit us all to some kind of cult that’s out to get us.
• Real friends love with open eyes and understand. They are always there for the other person. So goodbye to the plaster saint view of Jesus.
• Real friends show genuine empathy and sympathy. Jesus is not some great copper in the sky. True friendship also means having a vision for your friends. It’s accepting the way they are, but being open to what they could be.

True friendship with God and each other, is transformational, and a far more accurate model for discipleship than institutional religion. It was an honour to be among friends on Sunday. Thanks to Sarah Allen for a picture of seven of the eight confirmees from Holy Trinity — Gaenor the Vicar, Amelia, Tom, Conor, Sarah, Me, Matthew, Katharine, Roger. Sarah also brought an obscenely yummy fruitcake (from a mystery source I shall certainly use in future) which contained all kinds of strong liquor, and should be banned. Except at confirmations, where it should be compulsory.

Soul Music at Seer Green

I was delighted recently to visit Seer Green Church of England Combined School, to rededicate the former schoolmaster's house. This has been turned into a superbly equipped learning support area for groups and individuals, with enhanced facilities for music. There's a huge school choir, where people actually listen to each other and sing (rather than just belting it out until they start coughing up blood — the standard primary school sound). Parents sing together too (is this a first?). Some of them were just back from the Albert Hall. It's not just about singing, though. A large number of children learn individual instruments, and make excellent, joyful use of Djembes — I got a brief lesson. It's really therapeutic exercise for busy bishops!

There's also an excellent praying group of parents and friends supporting the school, with a Pray Station for children to share their thoughts, feelings and prayers around the network. Gaenor Hockey, the local Vicar, is well in around the school.

This is a school where everyone really matters as the person they are. There's careful and focussed Special Needs work, but also a bubbly engaged quality about the whole place, bringing out the best in everyone. Schools in posh areas can easily reflect pushy, selfish, elitist attitudes from their context. Olwyn Oakley and colleagues skilfully hold any such forces of darkness well at bay, keeping things real and making a good school great, in people terms as well as academically.