Virginia is the nucleus of the American spirit. Anytime I visit I am enthralled by a new page of history to discover, a new mountain to climb, a new beautiful thing to discover on this sacred American soil. My grandmother lives in Roanoke and I take frequent opportunities to visit her and to explore the surrounding area. My last visit to the state brought with it an unexpected joy as I stumbled across a group of men who you should know more about.
It started back in Story, Wyoming when I was attending the Wagon Box conference. I sat down with a man named Nick Ellis, a fine gentleman of great skill and taste, who is the founder and CEO of Christian Halls. We were discussing the state of education, modern schooling, and my plan for Meriwether to build a boys’ boarding school. He told me there was a group of guys he wanted me to meet, a group of Anglicans in Virginia building something extraordinary.
Nick put me in touch with Father Mark Perkins, who is the chaplain and assistant headmaster of St. Dunstan’s Academy, an Anglican boys boarding school being built in Roseland, VA. After some correspondence with Fr. Mark and reading up on the school, I made a plan to go visit them.
On a Wednesday afternoon I hit the road to make the seven-hour drive from Nashville to Roanoke where my grandmother lives and crashed for the night. The next morning I got up and hit the road again, cruising up highway 81 and through George Washington National Forest, making the two-hour drive northeast to Roseland. As I pulled up to the address Fr. Mark gave me I found a group of men hard at work; two on a roof, one carrying lumber, and another greeting me from the doorway of a picturesque white cabin. The rolling hills ornamented the scene and I felt immediately that I had found something special.
Waving at me was Fr. Mark, a towering man of at least six foot five, possessing a gentleness of spirit that leaves no doubt in one’s mind that this is a man of God. He came over to greet me and show me around. From the roof of the cabin under construction came a cheerful voice that welcomed me to the campus. It was Thomas Fickley, the founder and headmaster of the Academy.
There is a great joy that comes when we are building something meaningful. I hope that you have had the chance to experience this joy, or that God soon brings you an opportunity in the future to experience this joy. It is something so different from laboring for money and survival, so different from the drag of daily tasks. It is the type of joy that nearly makes sleep irrelevant as God seems to fill one with an endless spring of creative and productive energy. This very specific type of joy was palpable at St. Dunstan’s. These were serious men working on a project with serious love, pouring their hearts into a mission that was bigger than them, a project worthy of the blessing of our creator.
Fr. Mark and I hopped in his pickup truck and he drove me around the campus, which was nearly 200 acres of property. He showed me the hilltops and the fields, pointed out where future buildings were going to be, and shared some of the history of the land. It is a beautiful campus surrounded on all sides by gorgeous mountains. The highest point in Nelson County is Priest Mountain, a fitting name for the mountain overlooking St. Dunstan’s campus. This school is in the beginning stages of development with one building completed and a second, the first dormitory, soon to be finished. I spent the rest of the day working on that dormitory with the crew, cutting and nailing wood, carrying lumber, helping out wherever I could be of assistance.
That evening Thomas invited me for dinner with his wife Natalie and their eight children (seven boys and one girl). They live in a farmhouse located on the property, in what one could only describe as a rich and beautiful human existence. No wifi, no television; only a cheerful energetic family surrounded by beautiful literature and sublime religion. We cooked hamburgers and talked about his vision for the Academy, spent time having fun with the kids, and sat down at the long dining room table for a lovely meal. We discussed literature, science, and history. Thomas’ eldest son, aged eleven, had no problem sharing in our revel of Hannibal crossing the alps or the speculative nature of the ancient Athenians. This family is full of beautiful minds and warm Christian souls. Thomas is raising his family right and sharing a meal with them is an honor and experience I will always treasure.
It brings me to one of my favorite parts of the St. Dunstan’s curriculum, their digital poverty pledge. Their website reads, “In order to enable boys to flourish and grow in strength during these formative years, St. Dunstan’s students will live under a rule of digital poverty. Just as the Benedictines saw material poverty as a way to focus their attention on prayer and work, at St. Dunstan’s, an intentional step away from the computerized world will provide the boys with more free time, require them to grow in patience, and help them learn how to create things for themselves they otherwise wouldn’t have.”
I have long been suspicious of screens. It has been ten years since I’ve owned a television, yet I still carry one around in my pocket all day. When I take time to venture out into the forest and remove myself from the internet, I am very soon filled with a feeling of primal joy and fulfillment, a certain realness that is hard to describe. When I return to my library after taking this time away from technology I always read faster, study harder, and write more lucidly. I believe it is impossible to predict accurately the devastating effect our relationship with technology has had on the human mind, and more crucially on the minds of our children. I love that St. Dunstan’s has incorporated this concept into their campus culture.
St. Dunstan’s is a Hillsdale College curriculum school. This means that students will receive a traditional classical education, hearing the real stories of American history untainted by political biases, and will be raised up in the classical model which served so many American children for over two centuries. They also place an emphasis on the trades, an agrarian lifestyle, and a deep connection to nature. Fr. Mark’s focus on male rites of passage for students is a breath of fresh air in a time that tells our boys it is bad to be manly. Hear more from Fr. Mark about this in this podcast interview he did with Deacon Jonah.
I spent the following day on campus with them again and enjoyed meeting Morgan and Ross, two full time members of the St. Dunstan’s staff. There are so many wonderful things I can say about these people and this project, but I’d like you to take the time to visit St. Dunstan’s website yourself. Read as much of it as you can, it is very exciting and informative. Think about why they chose to do things the way they did, and ultimately consider what type of effect this lifestyle would have on a high school boy going through this program.
Wise parents are fed up with the cultural conditions they are forced to raise their kids in. The prospects of public school are zero. Those of private school are diminishing and our nation is in need of radically new options. Institutions like St. Dunstan’s and Meriwether Academy have been created to provide hope to these parents, to their families, and ultimately hope to our country. There is hope, our culture is not lost, it can be preserved and flourish once again.
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” – Proverbs 22:6
Respectfully,
P.S. Here are some more photos I took of St. Dunstan’s during my visit.
