Page 9 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 94, No. 2 Winter 2014

9
A Happy Inspiration
I always open the newly arrived Horae
with anticipation mixed with apprehen-
sion. As I grow older, the obituaries seem
to include more names of people I knew
as masters, boys in forms ahead of me,
and, occasionally, boys whom I remember
as lower-schoolers or new Third Formers.
In the latest issue, I read with great pleas-
ure the epic of Taylor Schreiber ’98’s
brush with cancer and the overwhelm-
ingly positive outcome of both the cancer
and his life in general – not to mention
the way he and his wife confronted the
affliction. It was the kind of happy, inspi-
rational ending one relishes – and needs
– at this time of year (or at any time, for
that matter). I did not know Taylor, as I
left the School before he was born, but
his experience touched me. Many thanks
for a great article.
Peter Seymour ’71
Pleasantville, N.Y.
December 18, 2013
Please keep writing to: The Editor, Alumni Horae, 325 Pleasant St., Concord, NH 03301 or
alumni@sps.edu.
A Banner Issue
I just finished Andrew Gustin ’98’s superb
article on Taylor Schreiber ’98: bravo! It is
quite simply the most moving piece I have
ever read in these alumni pages. And,
thanks to that article, I then discovered,
to my delight, Jana Brown’s wonderful
interview with Alexis Denisof ’83, who
starred in the only film I went to see four
times within four days – Much Ado About
Nothing. It’s now on DVD, the best film of
a Shakespeare comedy ever made. What a
banner issue of the Horae!
Charles Scribner III ’69
New York, N.Y.
January 7, 2014
LETTERS
reciting the familiar ones. I sympathize
entirely with his complaint. Lewis’s view,
and mine, is that the familiar service sets
the stage for one’s own contemplation and
prayer. Each of us has our own particular
way to pray. Lewis felt that it was distract-
ing to be presented with unfamiliar liturgy
and that it was moving the center of at-
tention from communicating with God to
trying to figure out what the priest was
trying to say.
George Shattuck must have had a similar
view. Douglas Marshall, in the same issue
of Alumni Horae , describes Dr. Shattuck’s
life journey from being a Unitarian to em-
bracing the Anglo-Catholic Movement
within the Anglican Church. One aim of
the Anglo-Catholic movement was to move
the focus back from the preacher to the
structured ritual that Lewis valued so much.
The “rich Episcopal heritage” of St. Paul’s
School is the vanguard of the Anglo-
Catholic Movement in the United States.
St. Paul’s School today, in my view, in its
pursuit of “diversity” has lost that identity
while still trying to bask in that legacy. I
do not believe that a welcoming and di-
verse school needs to deny its roots and
turn the Chapel into a non-denomina-
tional meetinghouse. That would move
SPS from being an exceptional school to
an ordinary one.
The world will respect and accept a
St. Paul’s School that is honest about its
roots and returns to its core beliefs. Not
all will want to attend a more religiously
defined school. But, others will find that
of great value, a value even greater than
simply getting a son or daughter into a
good college.
The Chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul
was meticulously designed to define the
School, not the other way around. SPS
will lose a lot of what made it great if it
continues to deny the substance of that
heritage by embracing only the superfi-
cial veneer of a pretty building.
Alexis Denisof ’83 in Much Ado About Nothing.