Leavers' Service: Smile. Read. Think. Sing.
Tuesday, 30th June 2026
The reading is taken from the Letter of Paul to the Colossians, Chapter 3, verses 12–17
“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
Thank you, Bea. Bea’s reading is taken from the Bible that I was given by my Headmaster when I left my prep school, Pinewood, in 1994. Inside the front cover, it says the following:
‘Be strong and of a good courage;
Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed,
The Lord thy God is with thee,
Whithersoever thou goest.’
Last year I stood here and gave the Leavers a single piece of advice, built around a simple phrase: be humble, hungry humans. Amanda Swanson, our Chair of Governors, here this evening, mentioned that this had come back to her from some of the senior schools when they were asked what Belhaven produced. Some of you in Form 1 will have remembered it – and probably rolled your eyes when hearing it again, but I hope that you have grappled with it and understood it. It is the idea that you should know your own strengths without needing to broadcast them, and that you should want to try, to say yes, even when it’s hard. That, above all, we have the capacity to learn from our mistakes.
But this year I wanted to add four more words — a single idea, repeated for long enough, stops being advice and starts being wallpaper. As you sit here, waiting to sing your Leavers’ song and wondering how you are going to feel – it feels almost as if we are paused, extending the reality of a Prep school life that will never end. I am sure that is how you have felt, at those many challenging moments this term.
But a new challenge is just around the corner and, tomorrow, it will be the case that the next time you go to school, it will be to somewhere unfamiliar, somewhere new. Somewhere brilliant and exciting – but everything will be a struggle, just for a short time. So here are four small, practical things you can actually do, starting in your first week at your new school, to help you reduce the noise, to stay calm and to make the most of it all.
Smile. Read. Think. Sing.
This story tells you why.
In 1915, a ship called ‘Endurance’ set sail for Antarctica under a man named Ernest Shackleton. It never got there. It became trapped in pack ice, was slowly crushed, and sank in the Weddell Sea — leaving twenty-eight men stranded on the ice, thousands of miles from anyone who could help them, with no idea if they would ever get home.
When the order came to abandon ship, Shackleton told every man he could keep no more than two pounds of personal possessions. Two pounds. Think about that — everything you own, reduced to less than the weight of this Bible. But there was one exception. The expedition’s meteorologist, a young man called Leonard Hussey, was allowed to keep his banjo by his captain. Shackleton knew exactly what he was doing. Through the months that followed — through the cold, the dark, the fear — Hussey played, and the men sang. It wasn’t decoration. It was survival equipment.
Singing is good for the soul. When you find yourself in Chapel at your senior school – sing out. You will be amazed at the depth and volume of the sound of several hundred teenagers singing together – more importantly, you will be comforted by it, swept along and away from any worries. Go with it and join in.
As they became used to their camp on the ice, it became clear that another of the crew was calling on what he knew best. He made a habit, every single mealtime, of reading from the few novels that he had brought with him. He said that on the days he didn’t read, he felt like a barbarian gnawing on a piece of meat. Reading wasn’t an escape from the expedition: it was what kept him a civilised human being.
Reading gives us all a glimpse of the future and a connection with the past. You can read to improve yourself, but also to find comfort and familiarity in a new place. My advice would be to take a book that you have read before and that you know you love. Revel in its familiarity and your ability to lose yourself within it, just for a short time, whenever you are able to do so. It will give you a connection that you will value and also prevent you from becoming a barbarian, which would be appreciated by your houseparents and parents.
Back to ‘Endurance’ and its crew and the man at the centre of it all, Shackleton himself. He was watched closely by his men for any sign of doubt. When the ship finally went under — the entire point of the expedition, gone, crushed in front of them — he turned to his crew, smiled, and said, “Well, the ship’s gone, the stores are gone, so I suppose we’ll go home.” Historians who have studied this expedition closely say that the real secret of their survival wasn’t the routines themselves — it was that their leader kept looking ahead, kept believing there was a way through, and made his men believe it too.
Every single man on that expedition came home alive. Every one. In the most hostile, most unfamiliar environment imaginable, they survived not through some superhuman feat, but through small, deliberate, daily habits: someone kept singing. Someone kept reading. Someone kept thinking ahead instead of despairing about the present. And their leader kept something that looked remarkably like a smile on his face, even when the news was as bad as it could possibly be.
You are not heading to Antarctica. It might even be warmer than here, where you end up. But for some of you, next term will feel almost as unfamiliar. New buildings, new faces, new rules, no one who’s known you since you were seven. It is, in its own small way, your pack ice.
So: smile first, before anyone smiles at you — it is your most powerful weapon, and it costs you nothing. Read — not because you’ll be tested on it, but because, like that man in his tent on the ice, it will keep you fully yourself when everything around you is unfamiliar. Think — look ahead a little, the way Shackleton did, rather than only looking at how hard today feels. And sing — in chapel, in the corridor, in the car on the way there if you have to — because the people who keep a tune going, even badly, are very often the people who keep a community going. And that is what Belhavians do.
Being a humble, hungry human will ensure that you are forever part of Belhaven, and it will be here for you, doors open wide, should you need it. ‘Smile, read, think, and sing’ will get you through what comes next.
I finish with a blessing:
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
The rains fall soft upon your fields
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.
Amen.
