Today I am thinking of miracles and wonder, of giants and sparrows, of heroes and builders and I am leading us toward the moment when we say goodbye to the Year 13s. When that moment comes we will rise together to applaud them as they process out of the Abbey into the spring sunshine of Thorney island. You’ll know when we get there – now you know what to do. Perhaps, though, you’ve never heard of Thorney island and had no idea you were on it, so let me update you on the local geography. The island was formed by a split in the river Tyburn before it ran into the Thames, one rivulet going upstream of here and one downstream.
Enough of rivers, though. I’m going to start with a slow day, when the sun was beating on the soldiers on the side of the road because I’m going to start with the opening lines of the opening track of Paul Simon’s album Graceland. Some of you will already know it, might have recognised the quote and may even have seen it coming ahead of time because the chorus tells us that these are the days of miracle and wonder. It’s a song that asks us to recognise the privilege and responsibility of living in a time of so much possibility, a song that talks about a baby with a transplanted baboon’s heart and also about lasers in the jungle, about long distance calls and a bomb in the baby carriage. Being by Paul Simon it also warns us about staccato signals of constant information and a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires and baby.
I could fill an entire assembly with my adoration for this album, a very small number of you may remember that I have, in fact, filled an entire assembly with my adoration for this album, but today I need it to take us onwards and the lines that do that come from the bridge: “It’s a turn-around jump shot, it’s everybody jump start, it’s every generation throws a hero up the pop charts.” A bold recognition of the transitory nature of fame from a man who was one of the heroes an earlier generation threw up the pop charts. Is that the purpose of today’s assembly? To throw our year thirteens like heroes up the pop charts to blossom briefly and incandescently? Well, no, not quite. We’re here to send them off with an upward push, to propel them confidently out into the world but we want them to fly not simply be catapulted and we want them to build something lasting, not simply burn brightly (not that I’m saying that you should turn your backs on careers in pop should those come knocking – I need to add to my list of favourite albums – but just that I hope your ambitions are longer term than the next number one). Be builders, not just heroes.
Builders need something to build on – the abbey rests on deep foundations in Thorney Island but this is the third abbey built on this site and so to some extent the abbey is built on the abbey that came before which is built on the abbey before that. In the same way, scholars build on the scholars that came before who learned their foundations from the scholars that came before them. They listen, learn and then turn round and ask “why” or “what else” and go out to add to the miracles and wonders of the age. I say they, but really it’s we, that’s us, and that’s what we hope you’ll go on to do when your time in Steel House comes to an end – fly out into the world and find more wonders. Isaac Newton put it rather wonderfully when he said “If I have seen further it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” Newton was not a modest man and I’m sure that he had no doubt but that he had seen further, but even he recognised that he was building on foundations others have laid just as others have built on his work. He’s buried here in the abbey – his grave is just behind me – and I’d like to pause for a moment for us all to recognise that all of our learning, all of our success, is not just our own work but is built on those giants who came before us. XXX, Naoroji’s victorious house captain, is going to lay flowers on his memorial on our behalf as a token of our gratitude to all of those scholars Newton represents.
I was thinking about these giants, how they clamber onto one another’s shoulders and together build a launching pad from which we can fly and I went looking for a story from which we could learn something about giants, what they are like. I found the answer among the tales of the Vikings and the story of the time Thor, god of Thunder, went to visit the giants of Jotunheimr together with Loki and his servant Þjálfi. They are invited into the feasting hall and told that guests are expected to demonstrate their skills for the entertainment of the party. Loki steps forward and says that he eats quickly and competes against a giant called Logi to consume a trencher full of meat. He doesn’t come close, the giant is too fast, so up steps Þjálfi who is a really quick runner but scarcely gets a third of the way round the course before his opponent finishes. Thor is challenged to lift the giant’s cat but can only get one foot off the ground; he is invited to drain the giant’s drinking horn but can’t do so and when he challenges the giants to a proper fight they laugh at him and say he’s too feeble to be worth their time but if he wants he can wrestle their old nurse. Facing the ancient figure in front of him, Thor feels humiliated but goes along with the contest, hoping for a proper fight when he wins. Unfortunately the nurse is stronger than she looks and Thor is thrown to the ground. The king of the giants claps his hands to signal the end of the contests and musicians file in to complete the entertainment whilst Thor, Loki and Þjálfi are treated as guests of honour for the rest of the meal and are given warm and comfortable beds for the night before they are sent out the next morning to go on their way.
My first reflection is that wow, competing with giants is hard. I don’t know if any of you ever get to the end of the day and feel as though you lost the eating contest lesson 1, the running race period 2 then failed the cat-lifting and drinking challenges before being thrown to the ground at the end of the day. A Harris Westminster education is hard too. Whether or not that’s your experience at school it’s bound to come up at some point unless you live a life so free of ambition as to never try something that you might fail at – and I hope none of you do that. When it happens you can reassure yourself that even Thunder gods have days like that.
Back to the giants, though, because there’s a twist. Next morning the King of the Giants shows Thor on his way and, seeing Thor looks a bit dejected explains that he played a trick the night before. Loki was in an eating contest with wildfire, Þjálfi in a running race against thought and none of Thor’s challenges were what they seemed either. The cat he tried to lift up was the world serpent and the one foot he managed to pick up lifted the serpent to the skies; the drinking horn he tried to drain had one end in the ocean and his efforts were never going to empty that, although they did make enough of a dint to cause the tides, and the old nurse he tried to wrestle was old age, which nobody can beat. Giants are clever and imaginative and giants collaborate with others, they’re not afraid to team up.
That story comes from the Prose Edda, a textbook from the thirteenth century, that represents the most complete collection of Norse myths that we have. It was written shortly before this version of the abbey was built but now I’m going to take you back to an earlier piece of writing, from the eighth century, before even the first abbey was raised on our little island at the edge of the Thames. This story also tells of a great feasting hall, you can imagine the same drinking contests, songs and laughter but instead of being the castle of the giants, this is the hall of a great king who has asked a wise man, the Venerable Bede, the meaning of life. Some of you have asked me the same thing – perhaps you’ll be more satisfied with Bede’s answer. Lord King, he says – and I’m paraphrasing Bede just as much as I did the Edda earlier – Lord King, life is like your feasting hall into which a sparrow flies and for a short time is part of our celebrations: it feels warmth of the fire, hears the music and laughter and shares in our food and drink before, too soon, it flies out of a door at the far end into whatever lies beyond.
In our version of that story we are the sparrows, joining the school at one end of our time here, playing our part in the revelry of scholarship, and then, whether too soon or not, flying out into the world beyond. Today is the time for us to send off a great flock of sparrows, Year 13s who have contributed gloriously to our revels. Their time is, today, ceremonially at an end, even though in reality they will return for revision (and I cannot emphasise enough, Year 13s, that you should take full advantage of this provision), they’ll return for exams, and hopefully they’ll return thereafter as alumni to visit, to revel further, to stay part of our community, to tell us stories of miracle and wonder. They will still be around for a little while, but it’s good for us to say goodbye properly, good for us to think about the giants with whom they have wrestled and over whose backs they clamber as they make their way skyward. There is still a little time for us to see them individually and in clusters but this is the last time we will all be together and now is the moment for us to celebrate them, the amazing things they’ve done here and the amazing people they’ll go on to be.
Footnotes
1. This is, naturally, the most recent in a series of farewell assemblies starring Newton and the sparrow. Last year's was The Great Wide Open
2. The assembly dedicated to the brilliance of Paul Simon's Graceland is entitled Art and Artifice.
3. The collection contains a more positive take on Heroes
4. A previous diversion into the nordic Middle Ages came in The Good and The Merry