The Right Use of School Studies
My experience as a student of the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College and of becoming an Orthodox Christian culminated at approximately the same time. In retrospect, I believe I was, in both ventures, looking for “sources,” the source of the intellectual world in which I lived and the source of my being and salvation. I had been raised in a protestant Christian (Methodist) family and had Ph.D. in physics and a job as a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. I valued this inheritance and this position. But they seemed not a sufficient grounding as my wife (also a Johnny) and I started a family and I embarked on a new career as a professor.
During the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church there is a time when the priest intones, “Attend,” in order to draw one’s attention to the solemn movement of the Liturgy (literally, “the work of the people”). The Liturgy is not education and not entertainment, as valuable as these, at times, may be. It is, unmistakably, prayer directed to God, sung by the priest and the choir leading the people.
The essayist Simone Weil once wrote that “The Right Use of School Studies” is to prepare one for prayer. At best I think studies at St. John’s do this. The seminar teaches one to listen to the author one is studying and to the discussion of fellow students, to be aware of each other’s difficulties in formulating and critiquing ideas, and to become a helper in the joint enterprise of discovery and understanding. The Liturgy, of course, is not a seminar. But, in its beauty, in its deep sources, and in its authenticity, it seems, to me, as it was for Simone Weil, to be the goal of “school studies.”
It is commonplace to say that one is never done with study. I have felt this! Indeed, as a resident of Santa Fe and as a St. John’s alum, I have participated in preceptorials almost every year for 30 years! It is even more true that one never arrives at the final state of being a good Orthodox Christian. There is, instead, a life-long practice of prayer, of humble service, and of intentional community that prepares one for that final communion of life eternal.
Over the decades Holy Trinity Orthodox Church of Santa Fe has been and continues to be a place of worship, growth, and fellowship for St. John’s students, alums, and tutors. Many of us, including many of us oldsters, are still taking baby steps, even tentative steps, toward communion with God. We invite you to come along with us and be our companions!
Don Stephen Lemons, GI class of ’91.