The following is adapted from the talk that Tom Gibian gave during the SSFS all-school holiday assembly on December 13.

There is an expression that I like. Many of us know it from Martin Luther King.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Well, how long is the arc? How long is history? How important is history?

To me, the moral arc represents generations of people, some of whom we know. Our parents and our grandparents. Your Mom, your grandma. Her mom and her grandma.

My daughter was born in 1990. I was born in 1953. My mom was born in 1917. Women didn’t vote, and the President rode a horse for inauguration. Her father was born in 1882, and her grandfather was born in the 1840s - before the Civil War. My great-grandfather, unsmiling and sitting with his 12 children in front of an unpainted house without electricity or a bathroom is captured in time by a photograph. That’s five generations ago, taking you back to President Polk. Five more generations takes you back to people who might have known George Fox. The first Quakers who were challenging convention, wearing shaggy, shaggy locks, and off on journeys to seek the Light were maybe 10 generations ago. The moral arc of the universe proceeds. The way opens.

Let’s look a little further. Many of us are celebrating Christmas. From my daughter to the first Christmas was over 2000 years ago - about 100 generations.

The number of generations from my daughter to the original folks, Adam and Eve, who came out of Africa - probably the Rift Valley - say, 100,000 years ago: That’s 5000 generations. It is interesting to think that 98% of human life on the earth occurred before Christianity.

So the moral arc is long; we’ve been trying to figure things out for 5000 sets of parents. But the arc bends toward justice because some people put themselves on the tip of the arc. They shape the trajectory for the world, often by introducing simple, radical ideas: Love thy neighbor; walk cheerfully over the world answering that of God in everyone.

So everyone, all Springers: find the sharp edge of the moral arc. Be leaders, be true yourselves, Let your Lives Speak.

Merry Christmas.

The following is adapted from Tom Gibian's words to the community during the re-dedication of Scott House on Nov. 15, 2011.

“I think SSFS can become a North Star for the educational system in the DC metropolitan area, and for America at large.”

Recently I attended a meeting with a group of Sandy Spring Friends School parents where one mom told me that she and her husband, on several occasions, have found themselves weeping from the joy they experience as a result of their daughter’s happiness at being a student at Sandy Spring. I knew exactly what they meant, and it’s a beautiful feeling. Having worked on Wall Street, I know people care deeply about their money. As Head of School here at SSFS, I know people care far more deeply about their children.

At Friends Day this year, our Parents Association hosted families, friends and members of the community for a day of fun, music and games. The weather cooperated and our beautiful campus has never looked better. Ken Smith, our former Head of School, was there; we were able to show off our new climbing wall; the pond sparkled, and the Upper School band rocked. There was lots to grin about.

Today [September 21] is International Peace Day. It is a day of celebration among Friends. But you don’t make peace with friends; you make peace with difficult people, with strange people, with people who you often don’t find yourself agreeing with. You make peace with your enemies.

The admission folks are working on a new brochure for Sandy Spring Friends School, and I was asked to come up with a couple of sentences that would serve as a kind of “elevator pitch.” The concept comes from Silicon Valley and is based on the notion that you finally get a meeting with a potential supporter, but it is in the elevator. You both get on in the lobby, and you have the person’s undivided attention, but only until she gets off on, say, the 12^th floor. So you have that amount of time to explain your idea at least so you can go on to the next step. So here goes.

The other day, during the time period usually reserved for Meeting for Worship, the Upper School decided who their officers and representatives would be. They didn’t vote as other schools would do; rather, they used Quaker process. They reached consensus by listening to each other and through discernment characterized by silence.

Infinity is a tough concept and is one of those words that is used by different people for different reasons. Mathematicians, scientists, philosophers and, actually, all of the rest of us have used the notion of infinity at one time or another. For most of us, infinity is short-hand for a really large number. The Romans used the symbol for infinity to represent 1000, a BIG number to them. Today, for instance, we might say that there is an infinite number of mosquitoes out tonight or even that there are an infinite number grains of sand on the beach. And while these may be very big numbers, what if we add one more to the total? If we can add one more, then, by definition, the first amount is not infinite nor will the second amount be. So what is infinite? We might at one time have thought that the number of fish in the oceans was infinite. Later we learned that the capacity of the environment to absorb CO2 was also inconveniently not infinite.

In my last blog, I wrote about What Better Looks Like. This was not what I started out writing about. What I thought I was going to write about was how independent schools are managed and how innovation happens. But before I could do that, I wanted to say a few basic things about our goal to keep tuition at or near its current level (adjusted for inflation), and why I think this is doable.