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NMH Magazine : Winter 2005

Matters of Spirit

What is the state of spiritual life at NMH today? 

by Mary Seymour 

 

What is the state of spiritual life at NMH today? It’s a frequent question from alumni, so we asked Chaplain Betty Stookey to talk about how the school nurtures the spirit in the 21st century.

 

How would you describe spiritual life at NMH? There are so many ways to be spiritual here. To me, the students who do outreach and community service are expressing themselves spiritually. Certainly the people who worship, who take time out of their day to practice their belief—that’s religious, but it’s also spiritual. The work job can be spiritual, if you approach it correctly: there’s an element of working for the good of others.

When did you come here? Eight years ago, in 1997. I’d just graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was working for [former NMH headmaster] Dick Unsworth; he was dean of the chapel at Smith College and I was the chapel intern. He suggested I apply here. All I knew at that point was I liked adolescents and I loved God, but I didn’t know how to put them together. I drove on this campus and that was it. I said, “This is where I’m supposed to be—this is where God wants me to be.”

What does your role as chaplain involve? The biggest pieces are overseeing the various religious groups, officiating at weekly Sunday chapel service, working with the deacons, and counseling both faculty and students. My office is also responsible for Founder’s Day, Baccalaureate, and part of Vespers. I open my house to alumni and family during major campus events, and students can stay here anytime when they’ve had enough of dorm life.

You and your husband, Noel, are very much a team. How has he taken part in the spiritual life of the school? He often takes pictures of chaplaincy-related events and posts them in the Spiritual Life folder on the intranet, and he sings in chapel services whenever he’s here. This year he’s co-teaching a singing group, made up of students who get together and sing just for the fun of it. Noel also records Christmas Vespers every year.

Do students respect each others’ religious beliefs? Much more than they used to. When I came here eight years ago, the word God could hardly be said without somebody leaping on you. In my first year, I wrote in the Founder’s Day program, “We are all children of God.” I got so many hits on my e-mail: “How dare you call me a child of God? I am an atheist.”

We’ve done a lot of work exposing students to the fact that we have people from other cultures and religions here, and that their faiths are valid and to be respected. At campus meetings for the past several years, we’ve been presenting different faith groups so people will know what’s available at NMH and have a broader understanding of the intricacies of each religion.

How else does NMH support a multifaith environment? At the beginning of the school year, we give students a spiritual life questionnaire. They list any religious interest and affiliations, and they can check off whether they want to take part in spiritual life groups or activities like chapel choir and community service.

When we first started doing the questionnaires eight years ago, I got in touch with students of different faiths and invited them to form groups. Now we have groups ranging from Chinese Bible Study to Unitarian Universalists.

Our faculty are terrific in supporting the students’ faiths. For example, David Dowdy offers confirmation classes; Bob Cooley takes Muslim students to the mosque, which is especially important during Ramadan. Don Stevens takes the Jewish students to a temple on High Holy Days and offers Shabbat services every Friday in his home, Ted DesMaisons and Ari Betof hold a weekly Quaker meeting, and Annette Mackin-Wadleigh brings the Unitarians to a different church every week.

Have you seen spiritual life evolve since you came here? Absolutely. We created a spiritual life folder on NMH’s intranet—it includes sections for student groups, dialogue, prayer, chapel sermons, and photos related to chapel services and events. There have been some incredible dialogues among kids on topics ranging from C. S. Lewis to gay marriage to whether or not God exists.

Is it a contradiction that the school has a multifaith perspective but holds Christian service in the chapel? No, because Christian services are not required. And that’s what the chapel is for—where else would we hold them? Other faiths could use the chapel; it’s just that they don’t want to.

Christianity is the original religion of the school in that it was founded by Dwight L. Moody, but if you asked me today, “Is NMH a Christian school?” I think I’d have to say no. Because of the diversity of our population, we are a multiethnic, multireligious, pluralistic community. Christianity is not the religion, it’s one of them.

Should chapel be required? I don’t think it would hurt anyone—but it’s not going to happen. Low chapel attendance is the rule at every prep school in the nation, except those that have a specifically religious background. Next year the plan is to have two all-school meetings a week that will bring kids together in the chapel, and each gathering will offer a meaningful reading or music or prayer.

Do you think students were more religious when chapel was required? It was really a different time. Back when it was required, students were perhaps less apt to question what they were told to do. I know my generation accepted anything that was handed down to us. Students now aren’t like that. It amazes me how smart and independent they are—and through the media they’ve got the world at their fingertips. They question and they seek. I like that, but I feel they’re missing out on an important piece of life without a solid faith tradition.

Why is spiritual life important for adolescents? Being an adolescent is so hard because it’s a time of finding out who you are and assessing yourself against your peers: Am I as thin as? As cute as? As strong as? A spiritual or reli gious belief system gives you a chance to step away and go to a realm where that competition doesn’t exist, where you’re accepted exactly as you are, and there’s no question that you are good and worthy and loved.

Developmentally, are teens capable of deep spiritual awareness? Aren’t they all about themselves? I think that’s true—they are all about themselves. But there’s also a yearning for something else, something more that’s outside them. A higher power provides real stability; a holy book offers rules on how to live.

If adolescents can understand that the emptiness they feel can be filled by helping others, it’s huge. I believe kids have to be taught that it’s important to help others—that it benefits society as a whole. The chaplain’s office has a community meals program in which the NMH community makes meals, and we bring them to a homeless shelter in Greenfield. The NMH students who serve the meals come back to do it again and again because they like the feeling of doing something good for someone else.

 

Any favorite stories about stu dents? Jude Harmon, who graduated in 1999, always carried his Bible with him when he first came to NMH. We’d get together and argue about God, the meaning of the Bible, Jesus, everything—but it was good arguing, and we enjoyed it. That first year, he came to a couple of chapel services and said, “I have to go to the Baptist church in town.” I was very disappointed because I really liked him. About six months later he came back, saying, “I didn’t like it at the Baptist church. They don’t have any fun there.” He became one of our best deacons; he’s now at Harvard Divinity School and intends to become a minister. He has a much broader view of God’s love these days, and we now see eye to eye.

 

How has being chaplain affected your own spiritual growth? Working on a chapel service every week makes me take a deeper look at the b iblical texts and their wisdom, which strengthens my own faith. The students absolutely put me in a place of wonder and awe. Their faith—the deacons’ in particular—renews me. It runs deep and they live it, and that’s an inspiration.