Head of School's 2021-22 Opening Chapel Talk

This week I am excited to welcome all 990 of our students to campus for the 2021-22 school year. We began Opening Day on Wednesday with our traditional Senior Sunrise, as the Class of 2022 gathered together to watch the sun as it crested and rose to shine its light across our beautiful campus. This group of 84 Cyclones joined as one class, one group, one community, to begin their final year with us.

 

This morning, I had the opportunity to speak to all of our students in our celebratory Opening Day Chapel. Although we weren't able to gather our divisions together in one location, I was able to speak to each division, as two grades were in Chapel and two grades watched the livestream in Fee Theater. I would like to share my Chapel talk with you now and invite you to watch the video on Casady's new Vimeo channel and listen to the podcast on the Casady Podcast Network:

I grew up hearing my parents say things like, “imagine how boring the world would be if we were all the same.” They're right. Our lives wouldn't just be bland without variety to spice them up; they'd also be impossible. Strong communities understand and value this line of thought and so do the scriptures:

 

 

My given name when I was growing up was Oiboibisicasi, which, directly translated, was also the name of a fish known as the peacock bass. You see, when I was a baby and up until about age eleven, I lived in Brazil and specifically in the Amazon in a region called Rondonia. We lived with and amongst the Mura Piraha, a small nomadic group that would travel up and down the Rio Maici depending on the cycle of the river and the hunting/fishing. As you can see from some of these pictures, I looked very different from the friends I grew up with. I spoke a foreign language to them, I sometimes ate food they had never seen before. However, there was a bond, we were one people on the river trying to take care of the basic human needs of food and shelter.  We loved playing together chasing porpoises up and down the river, fishing, hunting and just being kids.

 

However, there were some large differences; My family worshiped in the Judeo Christian faith, they worshiped in the spirits. I remember one time my mom and dad wanted to witness the calling of the spirits so they tried to go along for a seance but had to leave because the Indians could not call the spirits, and they believed it was my parents fault. Another example was in the way they took a spouse. A man would simply take a young teenage girl, who was of the age of puberty, up river for a couple of days. When they returned they were married. They knew that my sister would not be a part of this ritual. Yes, we were very different, and yet we lived in complete harmony because we focused on the things we shared in common - hunting, gathering, playing, singing, dancing. We learned to respect the many ways we were different, by sitting and listening and then agreeing that it was ok to be different. We didn’t try to change them nor did they try to change us in our differences. We just respected each other.

 

 

The Mura Piraha had a word, “hitiaitisoxigiokoi” which was the word that for them meant community. It literally meant, “he/she, I, we together - empathetically.” I ask that this year we find ways to “we together.” Let’s not focus on our differences, but the many ways we are one community, the Casady Community. Like the body, we are each unique, and together we combine to make this rich fabric we call Casady School.

 

 

Thank you and welcome back!