I love being a part of the NAES Chaplains Group. For a long time, I felt all alone in my role as a chaplain. Then I attended my first conference and discovered, much to my delight, that I was part of a network of people serving God through school chaplaincy.
One of the people I met was Tim Gavin. Tim is the Head Chaplain at Episcopal Academy in Pennsylvania. He is a great guy, and I have enjoyed our time together over the years. Fast forward to this year, when he graciously hosted me for a day in the life of an EA chaplain. I attended Lower School Chapel, observed an Upper School class, visited with fifth graders during Religion class, and had lunch with faculty in a beautiful cafeteria. I learned that the three chaplains at EA are a hard-working group.
Before that…
My grandchildren attend EA. Teddy is in second grade and invited me to be his Special Person for the first- and second-grade Special Person Day this year. I attended Lower School Chapel with him and then followed him to class. We had a literacy lesson that included interviewing each other, followed by snack time, where we ate the snack packs his nanny had made for each of us. Next up was PE, where the coaches created a circuit course for us to follow. Most of us just watched the kids, but I managed to cross the balance beam without falling. Then it was on to math class, where his teacher had us play a card game together. The final instruction for the day was to take each other out for lunch. It was a great morning.
But before that…
As I prepared to leave Phoenix, I reached out to my chaplain mentoring partner, Katherine Nott, the chaplain at St. Mark’s in Jacksonville, Florida. When I told her I was going to Pennsylvania and would be spending time at EA with Tim, she sent me his bio from their website and told me how much she loved reading about him.
And before that…
I was paired with Allison Seay last year in the chaplains’ mentoring program. At a recent NAES Biennial Conference, she and I met up to visit in the hotel bar. The head of a Florida school joined us and shared what was happening at his school. They were in the process of combining three schools across three campuses into one. As he described the religion teachers and chapel leaders at these new schools, we told him it sounded like they were doing the work of chaplains. As a result of this chance meeting in a bar in Florida, at least in a small way, St. Mark’s now calls their chaplain by that title. Chaplain Katherine Nott is now my NAES chaplain mentoring partner. Before I start singing “It’s a Small World”…
My story follows a path from Tim in Pennsylvania, to Katherine in Florida, through Allison in Virginia, all the way to Arizona. Along the way, I get to work with some amazing chaplains. Thank you all for being part of NAES, and for being friends, colleagues, and mentors.
The Rev. Erin Cox Oney is Chaplain at All Saints’ Episcopal Day School in Phoenix, AZ.