I've always loved the utterance, "But for the grace of God, there go I." I don't mean this in any religious sense; I just think it's a wonderful sentiment. This apocryphal quote is attributed to 16th century English reformer and martyr John Bradford, who got on the wrong side of Mary Tudor and was fired (in the original and far more horrific sense of the term). Many of our most cherished quotes have dubious origins, and are often the fictions of literary types affiliating their words with easily recognizable and credible sources. These inventions serve an important purpose nonetheless.
"But for the grace of God,..." fundamentally communicates a number of universal truths. Our lives are rather precarious, subject to forces and human behaviors well beyond our figurative and literal control. Chance and dumb luck have as much to do with our fortunes, good and bad, as all our best laid plans and hard work. We know this, even if we struggle to admit the same. It's why we have words like accident, deriving through French from the original Latin "ad cadere", meaning "to fall". It so happens that "cadentia", the Vulgar Latin origin of "chance", meaning "that which falls out", originates from the very same source as accident. Even a more favorable word like "luck" can still be, in turn, good or bad.
"But for the grace of God,...", regardless one's philosophical predilections or faith, communicates our diminutive scale in a vast universe. We're not that big, any of us, in the grand scheme. We may impact a place and an era, if our influence and market share is truly great, but even this type of influence pales when compared to cosmic forces and infinite time.
Most importantly, "But for the grace of God,..." is an expression of humility. It's the public acknowledgement that no one of us is better than any other. Oh, we can point fingers, cast aspersions, make accusations and assumptions about others, usually with the precise purpose of elevating ourselves, but this is little more than an overactive ego and an underdeveloped sense of perspective. We suffer with these thoughts a profound loss of opportunity, that those whom we judge at a distance may be exactly whom we need in our lives--to improve our lot, lift our spirits and buttress our souls.
My grandfather Smith was an ordinary man. He had little formal education. He grew up in a family that knew too well the cruel hand of poverty. He was earnest and hardworking, and dearly loved his wife, as I do mine, the whole of his life. He made his living as a butcher. He attended to his faith. He belonged to numerous charitable foundations and organizations. His quiet way tempered my fiery grandmother. He raised a family of four and loved his grandchildren with all his heart until his dying day.
He had plenty of dark times. The loss of a sibling to terrible circumstances. A Great Depression that stripped his young family clean. Physical ailments that left him in intense and near permanent pain, and that numbed and nullified his considerable intellect. He was a good man who lived a hard life that perhaps he didn't deserve, but never regretted. "But for the grace of God, there go I."
Our IB Learner profile is a statement of intention, that our children should be, among other things, principled, caring, and reflective; that our school should work in earnest to support the very same in each of our students, and in ourselves. "But for the grace of God, there go I" is the ultimate reflection that we are part of a grand narrative bigger than us all, and that the determining factors in the quality of our lives are our sense of perspective, our commitment to our values, our principled actions, and our selfless acts for the benefit of others.
See you around campus.