A Message from the Past

The other day, I was working in an old file and ran across the most amazing letter written to the graduating class of 1995. It was sent to Bishop Willis Henton, the first bishop of the Diocese of Western Louisiana, and it came from Archbishop Desmond Tutu of Cape Town, South Africa. They met somewhere along their career paths and corresponded over the years, but this letter was written to the ESA senior class as they headed off to college. It is especially meaningful to me because it sums up in just a few words the very core of what we’ve been talking about with regard to our Episcopal Identity at ESA. What does that mean and how do we live into that as an Episcopal school? If that’s something that’s important to you, I hope you’ve had a chance to watch the round table presentation from last month (you can find it here).

 

The letter consists of two simple ideas that Archbishop Tutu unpacks for us.

 

“What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.”

 

Simple, perhaps even a little cliché, but if we look just a little deeper, this is another way of expressing that simple truth on which hangs all the law and the prophets: Love God, for God is love, and love your neighbor. This is the essence of our Episcopal Identity at ESA. I hope you’ll take the time to read this short letter from Archbishop Tutu. It is probably more on point today even than it was almost 28 years ago. Areté!