Dallas Willard’s Divine Conspiracy starts with an illustration about a pilot practicing high-speed maneuvers in a jet yet not knowing she was flying upside down. How is it that a skilled fighter-jet pilot could possibly be unaware that she is flying a plane upside down? It seems incomprehensible, yet I wonder in 2020 if we as a society are flying upside down with very few aware of it. Rituals, practices, and other things that help fill our mind with goodness and mark a sense of time in our life certainly are best situated upon the true and the good. This begs the question: in what ways are we making space for the cultivation of goodness in our own lives?
Consider the ways in which we can make space by resisting idolatries and cultivating love for the goodness with which God has endowed our lives. Roger Scruton suggests that “Feast, festival, and faith lift us from idleness, and endow our lives with sense.” I realize that this Thanksgiving holiday will likely look different for us as we work to social distance in an effort to love and care for our neighbors, yet we all need a proper perspective in an upside down world and what better place to start, or shift our focus to, than feasts and festivals as a practice of gratitude.
I love a good holiday tradition and any kind of practice that will provide a memory to my children of who they are, where they come from, and whose they are. I look forward to the upcoming days off of school where we can have family discussions of the way God has provided for us – both for our most basic needs and also for the gifts out of His abundant love. Our family considers The Academy a true gift out of the abundance of God’s love – grace upon grace that our school is led by those sensitive to the Holy Spirit, discerning of Scripture and church tradition, and committed to neighbor love.
Please join me in the coming weeks in sharing kind, encouraging words with teachers, staff, and administrators and let them know that you are grateful for their role in forming your child and teaching them to love what is good, true, and beautiful.
Contributed by North Campus Parent, Ashli Arbo
