I.  Introduction

As it has been for several years running, my assignment here tonight is "to set them at ease, try not to be too serious, and tell them a bit about Sewanee."  Ok.  Right. Got that.  Now what do we do?

I have done several of these Wilkins talks over the years and a couple of years ago, the Vice-Chancellor said to me, "One year, why don't you talk to them about the Sewanee ceremonies."  So lately I have been musing  a bit about Sewanee ceremonies.  I took it that the Vice Chancellor meant I should talk about  the "high" ceremonies--things like Founders' Day and Commencement, and not "low down" ceremonies like funneling beer on the KA lawn or the ATO's mudslide.  So maybe I had better stop mentioning things like that.

Let me come at this a different way.  You all were raised on Winnie the Pooh and you know the books and movies well—I hope.  You recall that delightful assemblage of characters--the boy child Christopher Robin, Piglet, Kanga, Roo, Rabbit, Gopher, Owl, and of course Christopher Robin's honey loving teddy bear, Winne the Pooh.  And my favorite:  Eyore.  The most passive-aggressive, down in the mouth and nonetheless loveable co-dependent in all of childrens' literature.  "Thanks for noticing."

And then there is the place where all of the Pooh adventures get carried out, the "Hundred Acre Wood."  The Hundred Acre wood  is that wonderful kind of place, somewhere between Eden and Arcadia, where there is a forest and stream and hills and fields and no end of surprises as Pooh and Piglet and the others wander about.  And do you recall how filled with ceremony life in the Hundred Acre wood is?  How often the plot begins with or ends with or is punctuated with a ceremonial event--usually a party of some sort?  Pooh and the others live in a world of innocence and fun--and of carefree solemnity as they honor each other back and forth in a party or in the giving of presents or in helping each other in and out of trouble.

Do you remember The Blustery Day?  that turned into the blustery night?  [Remember the Hefalumps and Woozles?]  the kind of never-ending El Nino night where "the rain, rain, rain came down, down, down in rushing rising rivulets" and everything was flooded and Piglet and Pooh were washed away--but all ended happily when they washed up on the bank where Christopher Robin gave a hero party because Pooh rescued Piglet?  Parties, ceremonies in general, are the way we give a bit of formal order to our lives. Some ceremonies mark the high points of the things we do and help us to remember why we do them.  Other ceremonies are used to help us make a beginning or ending of moments in our lives. The world of Pooh is an instruction in the importance of ceremonial in making the world go 'round--encrypted in the innocent games of children.

II.
If I had to have a thesis for all of this, I would submit it to you in this fashion:  Sewanee is a kind of Hundred Acre Wood with a cast of (mostly) loveable characters who hang out under the trees and make sense of their world by means of ceremony. And while you won't find Pooh or Eyore running about, you will find a wooded place where children enter the marvelous world of fantasy and experience--and come out the other side carrying in their hearts dreams of a wooded place that will shadow all their lives.  Come with me to the Hundred Acre Wood.

III.
If you come to Sewanee, you will find that it is a place of many ceremonies.  Some are high and weighty and formal.   These are the ones I know well.  I am the University Marshal and that really means the master of ceremonies.  I do the big ones, the ones where I have to have the Latin right.  Other ceremonies are smaller or informal and owned by special groups and not the whole university.  While it is no longer the case that the Texas students gather, mount horses, and ride at a near gallop down University Avenue on Texas Independence Day--blowing bugles and careening in the jeeps that followed the horses, it is still the case that a lot of orderly and sometimes disorderly ceremony is conducted here.  But life is a bit tamer now:   the Chaplain who drove the bulldozer down the golf course is no longer with us.  And not all our fraternity parties end in police raids.

The "Red Suspenders" in the Fire Department are no longer awarded with the frequency they were in the past; and this year the "Tarnished Halo" award was not claimed by a single Sewanee Angel.  And while there is no end of young postulants for the priesthood practising baptism who have mistaken their beer for holy water and keep pouring it over their heads seeking some relief if not remission,  there are also the private ceremonials like giving rings and proposing marriage at the cross--one of which, probably never to be repeated or excelled, of the young couple last year who became engaged at the Cross in the eclipse of the full moon.

It is a place of much social ceremonial.  It is the only place to teach where I can imagine actually having worn out a tuxeudo attending black-tie parties.  These are parties that almost always culminate in that high form of ceremonial greeting called the "toast" where the deeds and good health of a guest is touted.  High social ceremony has even embraced fire calls:  on one occasion it was New Year's Eve and the call came in just before midnight.  Many of the on-call firemen were at the same party and responded from there [with a designated driver!].  There was a small fire at a nice house far out in the country.  We did our work and as we were leaving, the host came out with a tray of champagne to toast for coming to his fire.  On another occasion, we responded to a fire at the house of a grand lady of Sewanee.  Part of the front of her house was on fire.  While we fought the fire, she went to the back of the house to the kitchen.  As we were packing up our gear, she appeared 'round the side of the house carrying a large silver tray with coffee pot, cups, and finger sandwiches.  Ever the perfect hostess even when her house was on fire.  Just a little ceremony of civility to round out the event.

But it is not all a world of parties and diners.  Ceremony embraces a number of ritual forms:  the investiture of theology students with their distinctive crosses; the induction into honor societies such as ODK, AED, and PBK; the giving of medals, plaques and trophies for achievement; the awarding of cap and jacket and badge to student firemen and EMTs who serve this community.

And there is another kind of ceremonial practised here that I think is unmatched at any other school:  each year at our Board of Trustees meeting there is a moment at the end of the meeting where I, as Secretary of the Board, read the names of those who have died during the previous year.  Not just the names of Trustees and donors to the university, but faculty--and on occasion students--and staff members and retired employees (the janitors, carpenters, cooks, and plumbers) and townspeople.  Our custom is to bear forward the memory of our community by calling the roll of the dead.

There are other ceremonies, not so somber, but important if you are to know Sewanee. Let me review a few of these ceremonies with a mind to telling you about a year or so in the life of the place. For your life here will be measured in ceremony, from beginning to end.

In your first few days on the Mountain you will sign the Honor Code.  The simplicity of this ceremony may make it the most serious of all those you will participate in here.  As freshmen you will gather in the Chapel.   There are no processions, no hymns.  The Dean of Students and the Vice Chancellor speak for a few minutes and the Chair of the Honor Council reads the Honor Code.  Then you are invited to come forward row by row and sign in a sacred oath that while you are here you will not lie, cheat, or steal.  It is this code and the long fidelity to it that perhaps sets Sewanee apart as much as the Gown or the Coat and Tie.  And it is at this point when you sign your name to the Honor Code that you really become a Sewanee student.

About a week later in the semester there occurs Opening Convocation--a ceremony highlighted by a speech from the Vice-Chancellor and then the Induction of new members of the Order of Gownsmen:  as the names of the new student members are called, they stand.  Their gown sponsor is nearby holding a gown often embroidered with a column of initials of all those who have worn that gown before.  A few of these gowns have been held for as long as fifty years until another child in that family came to Sewanee.  As the Vice Chancellor reads the ritual of induction, the sponsors--a friend, a grandfather, a faculty member, a priest from home--places the gown on the new Gownsman and the assembled students and guests sing the Alma Mater.

Founders' Day in October is a high academic convocation for honoring the Founders, awarding university honors, and conferring honorary degrees.  As in all our convocations, the Faculties process in full academic regalia and sit in ancient fashion in the chancel stalls at the front of the Chapel.  Here another aspect of Sewanee ceremonial emerges:  in the Chapel the faculty sit in exact order of seniority, the most senior faculty highest up and closest to the altar, and then in descending order junior faculty sit upon lower and lower seats and further from the altar, with the newest instructor sitting diagonally opposite and below the most senior faculty member.  No one ever talks about this:  it is just known and I have to arrange it.  But woe to me if I make a mistake in order.  In this hierarchial order ancient custom prevails and is made visible in the array of faculty in their seats.

The first week of December brings the Festival of Lessons and Carols--perhaps the most widely popular Christmas service in the southeast.  In three services  we seat about 4500 people--more than are present for any other event in Sewanee.  The service itself is a simple narrative of the Christmas story from the Bible punctuated by carols sung by choir and congregation.  It is stately, impressive; I have worked in the service for more than 20 years.  But the most impressive part of it for me is not the actual service on Saturday or Sunday--but the decorating of the Chapel on Friday.  All in all about a hundred volunteers--chapel staff, faculty, students, matrons, workmen, community people--make the wreaths and garlands and set the candles to transform the bare stone of the Chapel into a fragrant nest of greens and points of light.  About 3:00 that afternoon, after much work, and with the assistance of workmen in the attic, the great Advent wreath is raised to hang above the crossing during the Advent and Christmas season.  We stand quiet as it is raised.  And then it is in place, and the season of Advent begins.

Spring brings Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Holy Week, the Bearing of the Cross on Good Friday, the Great Vigil, and Easter Morning.  You must not miss these great rituals of the Church:  in them you will understand what liturgy--the work of the people--is in the best sense of deep faith and solemn rite.  People have said to us time and again, no place does ritual better than Sewanee.  But our craft in ritual arises from devotion, not from show.  Here every procession is a kind of pilgrimage of the heart.

At the end of the school year there is Baccalaureate and Commencement.  This is the high occasion in the academic life of the university.  On this occasion, degrees are conferred, and the assembled company is greeted in Latin by the salutatorian.  Some people tell us we are the only place left still doing things in Latin; and we may be the only place left for some time to come.  That is the way we do our high ceremonies here.

 In some years, we hold commissioning ceremonies for our Marines on the Quad just before the procession begins.  [And when our Army and Marine reserve students came back from the Gulf War, we put them in uniform at the head of their class and they led the graduates into the Chapel.]  And at the end of the Commencement service, faculty lead the students in procession out of the Chapel, and then the faculty line splits to form a double line along the sidewalk and the graduates walk between their professors who now cheer for them.

IV.
What does all of this mean?  If I suggested to you that Sewanee is a place marked only by ceremony, you would know little of what we are or are about.  For there is more to Sewanee than ceremony, important as that is.  What is much more important is the context of ceremony here--the customs and traditions that are the ground of all that we do.  Customs such as speaking to those you pass on the campus, wearing the gown to class, observing a sense of decorum in dress, of learning to disagree in civility...Custom is the familiar form of the covenanted community:  the accepted but not stated understanding of who we are and how we go about our living together.  For Sewanee is this much more than a place of ceremonies:  it is a community of covenants.  Covenants of honor given in you word not to cheat, covenants of responsibility reflected in your care for the place even if that is not your job, covenants of affection that create bonds of friendship that live here for you even when you leave, covenants of faith by which you carry forward the vision of this place.  Covenant is the ground of all our customs and ceremonies--a faithful and commited life that is the basis of all our public acts.

I think this is the kind of thing Yeats was talking about in his poem, "A prayer for my daughter."  If you know that poem, recall that the controlling image of the poem is a great storm sweeping in off the Atlantic blowing across Ireland--blowing over his farm and house.

 "Once more the storm is howling...
    ...There is no obstacle
 But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
 Whereby the haystack- and roof-leveling wind,
 Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed..."

And as he hears the great shear of the wind over the land, the poet's imagination sees in that storm the future that is about to break upon Ireland, upon the world--upon his infant daughter asleep in the cradle.

 "I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
 And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
 And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
 In the elms above the flooded stream;
 Imagining in excited reverie
 That the future years had come,
 Dancing to a frenzied drum,
 Out of the murderous innocence of the sea."

And he tries to imagine what will protect her in the world that she is about to grow into, a world in which the familiar will be lost in the winds of change.  Yeats certainly knew that he could not protect his daughter from all change, knew only that he could prepare her for it.

He prayed:
 "May she be granted beauty and yet not
 Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught...

 In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;
 Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned...

 May she become a flourishing hidden tree
 That all thoughts may like the linnet be,
 And have no business but dispensing round
 Their manganimities of sound,
 Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
 Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
 O may she live like some green laurel
 Rooted in one dear perpetual place."

He would spare her certain passions of the mind, saying,

 "My mind...has dried up of late,
 Yet knows that to be choked with hate
 May well be of all evil chances chief.
 If there's no hatred in a mind
 Assault and battery of the wind
 Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

 An intellecutal hatred is the worst,
 So let her think all opinions are accursed."

And finally he wrote:

 "And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
 Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
 For arrogance and hatred are the wares
 Peddled in thoroughfares.
 How but in custom and in ceremony
 Are innocence and beauty born?"

And then in the last couplet, the poem turns back to the great tree in the forest anchored in the soil, bending in the wind:

 "Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
 And custom for the spreading laurel tree."

V.
This is a good poem for or about Sewanee.  Many here stand on the bluff of our future as the storm winds of change blow over us.  And we seek shelter from that storm.  Some in the wonderfully innocent words of the student in my class fed up with weeks and weeks of clouds and rain who asked, "Isn't it time to turn El Nino off?"  And the others who ask, not now about the weather, isn't it time for Sewanee to stop changing?  Some of them came here seeking shelter from the storms.  If you come here I cannot promise you that the winds will not blow across this mountain--nor that it will never change.

Remember Pooh?  Who lived in the forest under a great tree?  Even on the blustery day when Owl's tree topples and they have to find a new home for Owl, custom and ceremony carry them on.  Here in Sewanee's Hundred Acre Wood a lot of trees have toppled lately.  A great Fourth Of July storm blew down trees all across Sewanee and the downdraft was so severe it bulged out and exploded some of the windows in the Chapel tower.  Then on All Saints Day, another storm struck and carried off the great oak and tulip poplar in the quad and a dozen others nearby--including a two hundred year old oak on the lawn of Fulford where the Admission Office is.

This Mountain has seen many storms, perhaps none worse than the ice storm of '85 that laid down hundreds of trees and closed us for a time.  But even in that severe time, custom and ceremony carried the day as we lined up to cheer for the Army Reservists who had helped us [and who were just a bit more than surprised when they found out that we called the White House and Vice-President Bush put them on active duty for the duration!]  And even in the icy dark, the candles were lit and the toasts raised and civil conversation continued.

Other winds less violent, more figurative blow here, and some would see in those winds a storm of change.  I cannot pretend to you that those winds will not blow here.  While you are a student and then as alums you will see changes, sometimes in very familiar things. No place is out of reach of those long winter winds rolling off the ocean of our national discontent and calling all our ideological structures into question.  Yet not all our trees are toppled. We carry on and, if you will, have a party:  we not only mend our lives but move toward our future by coming together, celebrating in ceremony our accomplishments--like the successful completion of our capital campaign--or mourning our loss as we tote a classmate or a bishop of the church on our shoulders down the street to the cemetery.

And ultimately we set aside intellectual hatred and small opinions.  For liberal arts education here is not a curriculum of conceit or of correctness but a learned meditation growing out of long custom in books and ideas and civil discussion.  I will never forget one night on this campus when some School of Theology students and I had organized a colloquy between some members of the Klu Klux Klan and a newpaper reporter for the Nashville Tennessean.  It was a difficult time.  Threats had been made, threats of death and bombings.  Our guest on both sides were shunted up and down back roads in unmarked cars by the highway patrol.  Eventually, we got the Klansmen to Sewanee.  And for an hour and a half under armed guard, they spoke and debated and stated their ideas and participated in an academic give and take  with several dozen Sewanee students.  At the end, one of them came to me with tearful eyes, thanking Sewanee for having them to speak.  He said that that had been the first time he had spoken where he had been treated with respect.  We did not agree with them.  The questions students asked were with out mercy or quarter--but they were civil.

This is the same Sewanee where we brought Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa--to receive, in our highest ceremonial, an honorary degree.  His visit too was surrounded with threat and danger, but we honored him for his great work of witness against apartheit in his land.  We created a scholarship in his name . He spoke to several Sewanee audiences, and he greeted everyone from our bishops to the janitors and cooks in the kitchens.  Some people here disagreed strongly about giving him an honorary degree--as others had disagreed strongly with our having Klansmen to speak.  But our custom and ceremony could span both--not in ideological convergence but in the civility of the long pursuit of truth.  For that is our custom, bounded by ceremony.

This is Sewanee.  A place of old covenants, and familiar customs, and high ceremonies, and lots of little rituals like taking down your Angel when you leave the Domain and putting it back up when you return here.  [You only need them when you are away.]  And a place of the simple civility of speaking to those you pass on the street.  It is a place where the rich horn of learning still pours forth its wealth and where the Laurel Tree spreads its shade over all our doings.

So come to the Hundred Acre Wood.  Put aside intellectual hatreds and let opinions be accursed.  Come sit with me under the Laurel Tree of custom and ceremony and learn beauty and innocence.