From the Desk of the Reverend Beth Holden
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I hope your summer weeks are providing you and your families with opportunities for abundant rest, joyful connection with family, and manifold encounters with the astonishing love of God!
We are hopeful that beginning with Opening Day Chapel on August 18, our whole student body, faculty, and staff will be able to gather together for daily Chapel. We are getting the chairs out of storage, brushing them off, and lining them up in the Benitez Chapel, eager to be together again, gathered in God's name in that sacred space. We plan to relaunch and reinvigorate all the Chapel ministries, from acolytes to lectors to ushers. Students who missed the sign-ups in the spring will have another opportunity to join those ministries in August. As our juniors and seniors will know, when we gather daily for Chapel, we sit by advisory groups in the Benitez Chapel, and as we continue this year with the once-weekly small-group experience of Family Chapel, that, too, is an advisory group experience but held in the individual advisory classrooms. Either way, the advisory groups form the "families" for daily Chapel.
New things are happening in the Students of Service (SOS) program. We are initiating a Service Achievement Program, offering recognition to students who complete it. The program includes elements of learning, leading, teaching, reflecting, and serving, and it will culminate at the end of the year in bronze, silver, and gold Knights in Service awards. Interested students in all grade levels are invited to attend an information session in August to receive an application and are urged to keep records of service completed over the summer months. Also, new to SOS this year will be a service tracking app, which will communicate information about upcoming service projects and help students keep records of service completed. As our service partnership and affiliate organizations are opening up again to volunteers, we want to encourage all our students to heighten their commitment to serving their neighbors.
For parents next year, in addition to our monthly Parent Forum lunchtime presentations by speakers from around Houston, we will begin a new program called "Parenting in Faith." On the first Wednesday of every month, parents are invited to join us in the chapel for a short 7:30 a.m. service of Holy Eucharist (also open to students, faculty, and staff), followed by coffee, donuts, and a presentation with discussion. Led by School Chaplain Art Callaham and me, the purpose of "Parenting in Faith" is to offer parents an opportunity to gather in God's name to learn and share their parenting journeys together.
In all the places you go and the things you do this summer, may God's presence give you rest. We look forward to sharing a new school year with you, beginning in August!
God's Peace and Blessings,
Beth Holden+ Dean of Spiritual Life |