NMH Magazine : Fall 2004

Leading Lines

Come into This Place 

by Thomas K. Stuartevant 

At Opening Convocation on September 5, Tom Sturtevant was officially installed as head of Northfield Mount Hermon School. Below is an excerpt from his convocation address.

To read the entire speech, go to www.nmhschool.org/news/

I am honored beyond words to be standing here before you. To become a part of this school, to have the opportunity to contribute to its future, and to participate, with my family, in the richness of NMH’s cultural, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions is the greatest privilege of my working life.

Dick Unsworth, former president and headmaster of this school, wrote me a letter to mark this occasion. In it he reflected on NMH’s prominence among independent schools. He wrote:

NMH is important for its unique blend of sacred and secular traditions, for its habit of nursing its roots in the unfolding future…and for its ability to bring its founder’s vision into play continuously as a practical measure of its programs and as a visionary reminder of what [our] goals must be.

Our importance, as Dick expresses it, is rooted in a process of renewal. In this way, our school continually asks its students, faculty, staff, and graduates to look to the future with imagination and optimism. All the while, we draw from Moody’s practical wisdom to educate the head, heart, and hand.

What I most like about Dick Unsworth’s insights is his suggestion that the school’s importance rises and falls according to our individual investments in our collective future. We stand on a 125-year tradition of building strong moral and intellectual foundations while continually teaching students to make a difference in the future. This is why NMH changes lives: we simultaneously draw from the wisdom of our traditions and from the leadings of our foresight and imagination.

We begin NMH’s 126th year knowing that one year from now we will be a single-campus community. It’s exciting to imagine being closer, more intimate, and better able to experience all that bands our diversity as well as our wholeness. Not so fast. I know. We are 12 months away from knowing what it feels like to be all together on one campus. And we still have the time and the desire to celebrate the school that we are now and have been for just over 30 years.

The music of our program leads us so well into our year that I can’t resist wrapping my address around its themes. The song we just sang, “Come into This Place,” beckons each of us toward the expectation that this place—our school—will change our hearts, heal our spirits, and warm our souls. So the question is, how does such a profound experience happen?

What does it take to come into this place? Well, we all walked in, and we’re here. But how will each of us bring our minds and hearts to this place? The answer comes from the expectations that you have when you arrive. So I’ll put it to you directly: have you come into this place, really? Are your heart, mind, and imagination open to “the prophecy and power” and “vision” of this place? I can’t answer that question for anyone but me—and the answer for me is a wholehearted “yes.” I am expecting to be changed by all of you and by our shared and collective endeavor to seek deeper truths, to find more just and peaceful ways, and to discover the light of the divine that shines in every heart in our community.