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AN OUTSTANDING PLACE TO LEARN

The Very Revd June Osborne, Dean of Salisbury (Thursday 1st July 2010)

Education has always been one of the core purposes of this Cathedral and we are fortunate to share the Close with many places of learning from our own Cathedral School to Sarum College as well as other schools and museums. Our commitment to education isn’t only about courses and curriculums but about the impulse to learn, to seek wisdom as the daily delight which is being a Christian.

Bishop David, to whom we sadly say farewell this summer, is fond of saying that he wakes each morning wondering who is going to change his mind that day. We may not find the idea of having our mind changed with that much regularity very comfortable but it does remind us that being a Christian involves a willingness to learn things afresh, to see something that God is doing with new eyes and to be open to new insights or experiences. That skill doesn’t get easier as we get older but a willingness to learn is asked of all of us who serve on behalf of the Cathedral. As we offer our welcome to visitors or school groups or anyone who comes our way, we know that what they need and appreciate is more than merely new information. What is learnt whilst in the Cathedral has the power to transform lives because people see their circumstances, their faith, the character of God and the power of prayer differently.

One of the things which makes real impact on people who come to the Cathedral is our witness to joy, learning again in this place what ultimately matters and why it’s good to be alive. Learning to bless like that has a redemptive quality because it repeats to us the essential Christian truth that God is ever present and that love is stronger than death. The Victorian poet and Jesuit Priest Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote like this about our encounters with God, in the aftermath of a tragedy, in his poem ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’: “I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.”

How do we learn in this place? We meet and greet God and by that we understand more about our lives. We meet and greet one another and witness to our joy. Such encounters bring with them fresh understandings which enrich our lives and give us the capacity to go on trusting when we don’t understand. And so we practise the habits of blessing in this place. By meeting, greeting, understanding and blessing we become wise.

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