Archbishop visits Abbey Court School

At Abbey Court School. Photo: Louise Whiffin

Wednesday 11th July 2012

The Archbishop addressed the assembled children, parents, teachers and friends of Abbey Court, a special school for pupils aged 3-19 with severe and profound learning difficulties.

On this rainy evening, the Archbishop reflected that:

'Water finds a way through - it's persistent.  It looks for all the unexpected ways in which you can get where you don’t necessarily want it to get, and it gets there.  The effort that we’re celebrating tonight is a little bit like that.  It’s the spirit in children getting where it needs to get, finding ways through, finding ways of arriving where it needs to be.  And I do say the spirit that’s in children – the courage, the persistence, the vision...  Like water, it finds its way through all the blockages, all the difficulties, and settles where it needs to go.' 

The Archbishop also compared the way water makes plants grow, to the way care and love make people grow:

'For me as a Christian, that’s all about how the love of God gets everywhere, like the rain that falls everywhere on earth and makes everything grow – a love that makes every person grow. What’s done here, what’s achieved here, is about the kind of care that allows growth to happen.'

Following the prize-giving ceremony, a video was shown which gave a taste of the wonderful work done every day by pupils, teachers, teaching assistants and staff at Abbey Court School. 

Read a transcript of the Archbishop's address below.

Let me begin simply by saying thank you for the invitation. Thank you for the chance of being with you on this very wet evening. I’ve been looking at your newsletter and discovering that you’ve been doing quite a bit that involves water. I noticed that there were walks in the rain; I noticed that some of the children have been fishing; I noticed you’ve got a whirlpool installation as well. So it seems there is a theme emerging, and a very suitable theme for the kind of weather we’re having just at the moment.

It made me think of two things about water, which are perhaps relevant to the extraordinary work that’s done here at Abbey Court. The first thing is that water finds its way everywhere that you let it. Water finds a way through - it's persistent. It looks for all the unexpected ways in which it can get where you don’t necessarily want it to get, and it gets there. The effort that we’re celebrating tonight is a little bit like that. It’s the spirit in children getting where it needs to get, finding ways through, finding ways of arriving where it needs to be. And I do say the spirit that’s in children – the courage, the persistence, the vision – even where there aren’t necessarily words to express it. Like water, it finds its way through all the blockages, all the difficulties, and settles where it needs to go. So I like to think, as we look around at all the rain and the floods and everything, that we can at least make something of this and say: well, it’s a message, it’s a sign of what the spirit can do even more than water: getting where it needs to get.

And the second very obvious thing, which I know fits into what you say about Abbey Court: water makes stuff grow. And when there’s a lot of it around a lot of things grow. What’s the equivalent in a community like this to the rain that makes things grow? Well, the plain answer is care. It’s care, attention, generosity and love coming down all around, soaking the soil, soaking through, making things grow. For me as a Christian, that’s all about how the love of God gets everywhere, like the rain that falls everywhere on earth and makes everything grow – a love that makes every person grow. What’s done here, what’s achieved here, is about the kind of care that allows growth to happen.

So two things: the persistence, the strength and the sprit in every single child and young adult with whom you work. And second: the care, the attention and the generosity that’s given to helping growth happen. So, looking around and looking up at the sky (and I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the rain for this evening) that’s something to think about, that’s something to be grateful for. This is what’s possible - and tonight we’re celebrating not just what’s possible but what’s been made real because of the strength of that spirit and the depth of that care.

I’m delighted to be with you, and very honoured to have been invited to be a tiny part this evening of that celebration.

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