Good morning.

It is my pleasure to welcome you all back to campus and to the beginning of the 2026-2027 school year at St. Christopher’s. Welcome, truly, to each and every one of you.

Whether you have been counting down the days to this moment with eager anticipation or sullen remorse [and I have a note in my script to avoid making eye contact with any particular faculty member when offering that comparison], whatever camp you are in, I am genuinely glad that you are here. As I said in this very space at a prayer service just a few days ago, together is better than alone, so thank you for being here.

I want to offer a special welcome to our 20+ new colleagues–faculty and staff who bring new gifts, talents, and perspectives and who will surely make us even stronger than we already are. For those new folks, it is a general custom here not to offer applause during a worship service when candles are lit, as they are now.

However, I am going to make a head’s judgment call that Radical Hospitality trumps STC worship custom, so could our new folks please briefly stand so that we may offer you a warm welcome?

As our returning colleagues surely recall, Lucinda Whitehurst delivered an A+ Chapel talk at this very service one year ago. Truly, a 10/10. After her talk I resolved to myself that we need to have faculty and staff deliver the homily at every Opening Chapel.

However, a major part of my job as headmaster is to lift up and shine a bright light on our faculty and staff superstars. So, Lucinda, I am going to make you look really good today. 

On a serious note, given all that this remarkable community has been through since May, including the news just last week of our 10th grader who was in a very serious car accident and who remains in critical condition at VCU, we thought it best if I were tasked with offering some context and perspective this morning. So, bear with me as I do my non-Lucinda best.

In my spring leadership class with seniors, I share with them F. Scott Fitzgerald’s definition of intelligence, which he wrote in 1936. Fitzgerald said,  “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

I share this definition with my students to impart upon them the importance of nuanced and complex thinking–thinking that is often paradoxical or contradictory, often without easy, quick, or simple answers. Life and leadership are rarely binary, more often lived in the messy gray. 

I have been thinking about Fitzgerald’s quote quite a bit this summer–the notion of reconciling competing ideas while maintaining the ability to forge ahead and to function effectively. 

In his definition, Fitzgerald was referring to classic intellectual intelligence–what we might consider someone’s IQ or intelligence quotient.

My thinking around the quote, however, has centered around a different kind of intelligence, one that likely did not have a name when Fitzgerald offered his definition 90 years ago.

I am talking about EQ, emotional quotient or emotional intelligence, a term made famous by psychologist Daniel Goleman in the mid 1990s. And I think Fitzgerald’s definition is just as effective, maybe even moreso, if we take the liberty of inserting the modifier “emotional” just before “intelligence,” like this, “The test of a first-rate emotional intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

Having worked with many of you now for a decade, I know that there is significant intellectual firepower among this faculty and staff. We have some real intellectual high fliers, folks for whom traditional school likely came easy and who have demonstrated classical IQ intelligence throughout their life. We and our boys are lucky to have you among us.

But, what I know even more fervently, and what is particularly relevant for us as we embark on this new school year together, is that we are currently surrounded by individuals with elite emotional intelligence, I’m talking 10/10, ultra-high EQ.

Emotional intelligence, or what I’ll call EQ for short, is a required aptitude for teaching. Think about it.

We spend our days in unscripted, unpredictable, highly varied, and emotionally loaded environments, and our chosen work space, where most of us spend more time than anywhere else on earth, is an open 44-acre campus populated by 1,054 boys ages 4-18. And nearly half of those boys are teenagers!

School heads will often joke with each other that we have landed in a profession that combines the two things that can make even the most measured people temporarily insane–in independent schools, we are in charge of people’s children and their money. 

It’s really a wild proposition and a work environment only entered into by choice by those who possess a great sense of humor, who thrive in unpredictable and spontaneous environments, and who, above all else, have very high emotional intelligence, or better yet, emotional agility. 

And by that I mean you can read and discern people, situations, rooms, and environments and practice synthesis and judgment the way that someone with an extremely high IQ can do the same for Excel spreadsheets, complex reading passages, multivariable math equations, or chemical formulas. And you can do so deftly and dynamically, shifting between countless moods and moments each day, within each hour, really. 

And by the way, with the advent of AI and its ability to replicate and outthink basic human cognition, elite-level EQ is only going to become more important, more valuable.

Taking us back to Fitzgerald’s definition of holding competing concepts or feelings and maintaining the ability to function–we all do that and also what I’ll call a bit of theater every day. It’s one of the reasons we are all so tired at night–theater, practicing emotional agility and constantly shifting, is exhausting.

Take this very moment for instance–here are a few thoughts and emotions I am holding:

As you can see, there is a lot to be excited about and about which to feel positive.

So, like you, I have quite a bit that I am holding and feeling, competing thoughts and emotions. I don’t know where I fall on Fitzgerald’s test of intelligence, but I know I will be leaning on all of you for support and wisdom to navigate this delicate balance throughout the school year. 

In times of challenge, we cling to truths. And here’s one I can offer this morning. If anyone can pull this off–reconciling competing feelings of joy, sadness, hope, loss, and anticipation–it’s educators, specifically St. Christopher’s educators, women and men who are called to express God’s love for each of us by devoting a life to lifting others and showing them what’s possible, beautiful, and worthwhile in this world. It’s educators, it’s every one of you–faculty and staff. We do this work, year after year, ever hopeful, even when, especially when, it’s hard.

I will close with the words of our founder, Dr. Chamberlayne, who penned our familiar opening prayers based on the Psalms, this one Psalm 90,  “So teach us to number our days, that we might apply our hearts unto wisdom.” 

We number our days, indeed, days of joy, days of sadness, and most days with both and with more.

And hear the words of poet-philosopher Frederic Amiel who said, “Life is short,

And we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who make the journey with us. So… be swift to love, and make haste to be kind.”

This year, perhaps more than any other, we are called to walk together, in love and in communion, for the good of our boys and for the greater St. Christopher’s community. It is a tall order and will require all of our emotional intelligence and navigation, but it is a noble one and a calling you are uniquely equipped to accept, with God’s love, grace, and forgiveness.

Thank you for being here today, for answering the call to teach, both when it is joyful and a delight, and also when it is hard and uncertain. The world needs more women and men just like you. May God bless you and the St. Christopher’s community. Amen.