Senior Vespers
"It’s tradition," Joy Sawyer-Mulligan writes in a news update for Thacher's website, "the all-School walk from Formal Dinner up to the Outdoor Chapel for the Memorial Day reading of the names of Thacher graduates and faculty lost to wars, the lists on plaques attached to the stacked stone-and-beams Memorial Pergola around and under which the community gathers."
As she describes in a different year, Senior Vespers is the ceremony that takes place after Formal Dinner: "One final formal dinner of the year where the community gathers to share a family-style meal, then the peaceful walk up the beautiful wooded path to the Outdoor Memorial Chapel and the reading of the names—a time-honored tradition on the eve of Memorial Day in which Thacher remembers those who sacrificed their lives for our country."
Near the end of the school year, the ceremony starts with the ritual reading of the names on the plaques that commemorate Thacher alumni who have died in war. After that, students and faculty move to the amphitheater portion of the space to listen to a few remarks from students as a longer talk. A faculty member chosen by that year's senior class will give a speech that usually contains themes of memory and reflection while looking forward to the future--especially considering that Senior Vespers usually falls in the week before graduation.
Although "Vespers" usually refers to a Christian evening sermon, the ritual no longer has explicit religous connections at the school. Instead, Senior Vespers is a ceremony of reflection for the community before ending the school year. If anything, the culture of the school is the religion being celebrated in this event.
Senior Vespers, like many events at the school, is accompanied by a small paper program outlining the readings and music during the event. One classic feature of Senior Vespers is the Banquet Song, which is often sung at other ritual occasions throughout the year, usually banquets.
As an alumna of The Thacher School, Senior Vespers was a ritual that helped mark the end of high school. Although I attended Senior Vespers each year, it held special importance in my senior year. As Mr. Manson, the speaker chosen that year, said in his talk:
For our graduates, this transformation from present to past is most poignant. But I remind you that, for each of us, the present is a transitory commodity, something to recognize, appreciate, and cherish, even as we anticipate our disparate paths forward and pause to remember our communal past here at our Thacher School.
The heart of Senior Vespers is a pause to reflect on the year and your time at Thacher overall before moving on to the next challenge--whether that is the next school year or graduation.
Selected pictures taken during Senior Vespers 2012 and 2014. Some pictures show faculty members speaking at the podium; other pictures are of students. Many students are wearing sunglasses since the audience for the event faces west into the summer sunset. In a way, the reminders of upperclassmen to underclassmen to bring sunglasses to dinner (Senior Vespers proceeds directly from Formal Dinner) is part of the yearly ritual.
Although there are some aspects of this ceremony that seem very religious, such as the name "Vespers" and the ceremonial reading of the memorial plaques, the content of the event has more to do with reflection and literature than prayer or gospel. Some selected talks are able to support this trend. For example, in his 2012 talk, Mr. Manson used "To the Lighthouse" as a source of inspiration while admitting his own uneasiness with "formal group gatherings designed to inspire unity and instill community values."
Likewise, Mrs. Halsey's 2016 talk draws on several poets and authors instead of biblical sources.
The poet Mary Oliver offers this observation: "This is the first, the wildest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness."
Senior Vespers is, at this point, a Thacher tradition instead of a religious one. It is the community that is celebrated and the end of the year that is mourned. The ceremony itself has quirks, like making sure to bring sunglasses, or hearing horses in the background from the adjacent barns, that mark it as a Thacher event. Senior Vespers is a time for the community to ritually come together, but not via a religious tradition.