Why Does BT Have Chapel?

Last week, BT's Chaplain, Father Keith Winton, addressed this question during the first Chapel sessions of the school year. Here is his homily:

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the first chapel of a new school year.

For those of you who have been at Brownell Talbot for a while, you know the routine. You know where your grade sits. You know there will be some music, a reading, a few minutes of talk from me, and some time when we intentionally slow things down and give thanks.

For those of you who are new, welcome. This is chapel.

And at the first chapel of the year, I always ask the obvious question in your minds:

Why do we do this?

Why, in the middle of a school week already packed with classes, practices, rehearsals, homework, activities, meetings, games, deadlines, and everything else, do we stop and bring the whole school together for chapel?

Some of you enjoy chapel...Some of you probably tolerate it…Many of you are sitting here thinking, “I am not religious, I’m just not sure why I’m here”…That’s a fair question.

This school was created in 1863 by my church, which has a lot of connections with Omaha history besides Brownell, including places and institutions, and even street names you know like Kountze, Bemis, Cumming, Woolworth…Clarkson hospital was founded by Bishop Clarkson and his wife Meloria. When BT was made completely independent in 1967, part of that agreement was that there would always be a chapel service with an Episcopal priest. So that’s why I’m standing here today.

We are not here because we expect everyone in this room to believe the same things.

We don't. This school includes Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, people from other traditions, people who aren't sure what they believe, and people who don't consider themselves religious at all.

The readings I choose for chapel and my homilies reflected that. Last year, 13 came from Christian or Jewish sources. Sixteen came from historical speeches, writers, philosophers, and poets. And 17 came from Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and other religious traditions. I’m very intentional about that, because while religions disagree about plenty of things, and human beings have been thinking about ultimate questions for our entire existence on the planet, there is also an extraordinary amount of wisdom that’s the same across all traditions about how human beings ought to live.

How do we treat people? What do we owe one another? What do we do with suffering? What does courage look like? What makes life meaningful? How do we handle power? What does it mean to be honest when dishonesty would be easier? How do we live with people who think differently from us?

Those are not religious questions…They are human questions.

That brings us to today's reading: “We become what we practice.” We all tend to imagine that someday, somehow, we simply become adults with certain qualities. Someday I’ll be confident. Someday I’ll be courageous. Someday I’ll be compassionate and a person of integrity. But character doesn't suddenly arrive when you turn 18, or graduate from college, or get your first job. You are building it now…Actually, you are practicing it now. And whatever you practice, you get better at.

Practice paying attention and being mindful, and you become more attentive and mindful.

Practice compassion, and compassion becomes more natural. Practice telling the truth when lying would be easier, and you become more honest. Practice taking responsibility for mistakes, and you become someone who can be trusted.

But it works the other way too. Practice sarcasm, and you get really good at sarcasm. Practice dismissing or ridiculing people you disagree with, and eventually contempt becomes a habit. Practice blaming everyone else whenever something goes wrong, and avoiding responsibility gets easier. Practice looking at your phone every moment you're bored, uncomfortable, lonely, or uncertain, and eventually it becomes difficult simply to sit quietly with your own thoughts…we become what we practice.

All of us are being shaped by the things we repeatedly give our attention to.

So one purpose of chapel is that we stop. There’s no quiz at the end, no grade. We listen. We sing. We sit quietly. We hear voices from people who lived centuries ago and voices from people living today. And, for a few minutes, we pay attention to something that otherwise gets crowded out.

In our reading I said, “We need to ask ourselves not only, ‘What do I want to accomplish?’ but also, ‘What kind of person do I want to become?’” Schools are naturally very good at asking the first question. What do you want to accomplish? What grade do you want? What award do you want to win? What career do you want? What are your goals? Those are good questions, but they aren't enough.

They aren’t enough because you can accomplish an enormous amount and still become someone you don't particularly want to be. You can be intelligent without being wise. You can be successful without being compassionate. You can be impressive without being kind. You can win and still have no integrity. You can know an astonishing amount about chemistry or history or mathematics and know very little about yourself.

Education has to be about more than what you know. It has to include the question of who you are becoming. That's why Brownell Talbot focuses on its four core values: Compassion, Respect, Responsibility, and Integrity. Those words take on their true meaning when they become habits, and those habits are not automatic. They take practice. They take practice, and you need opportunities to think about them.

Our world doesn’t have a shortage of information. We all have more information available in the devices we carry than most human beings in history could have accessed in a lifetime. What’s harder to find is wisdom…knowing what deserves attention, what is true.

Those are the things we’ll think about together in chapel this year. I don't expect all of you to agree with every reading. I don't expect you to agree with everything I say. In fact, if something you hear here makes you think seriously enough to disagree thoughtfully, that’s also a goal of chapel, because the goal isn't to stop thinking, it’s to think more deeply.

For a little while each week, we come here to remember that becoming a well-educated person and becoming a good human being should have something to do with each other.

For a little while each week, we come here to practice asking a question that will never appear on a transcript: What kind of person am I becoming? We become what we practice. So let's practice well.