Embracing Catholic Education - Workshop Series 2007

1. Mark Elliott St Mary’s College Staff Residential January 2007 Session B

2. We light a candle. We say a prayer. We light a candle in your name.

3. 2007 Workshop Series Mark Elliott Brisbane Catholic Education Clairvaux Catholic School 7 Characteristics of a Catholic School

4. 1. What’s got you into education ? 2. Why Catholic Education? 3. What keeps you in it?

5. Sacred Stories Traditions and Teachings Justice Seven Core Characteristics Sacramentality Spirituality Community and Hospitality Ritualising Experience

6. Where everyone counts and where each person is seen as made in the image and likeness of God Community and Hospitality

7. Ajar is vulnerable to the incoming of an other

9. But what of the stranger, one who comes to me without the bonds established in my chains of caring? Is there any sense in which I can be prepared the care for him? In an important sense the stranger has an enormous claim on me, because I do not know where he fits, what requests he has a formal right to make, or what personal needs he will pass on to me. I can meet him only in a state of wary anticipation and rusty grace, for my original innocent grace is gone and, aware of finiteness, I fear a request I cannot meet without hardship. Indeed, the caring person, one who in this way is prepared to care, dreads the proximate stranger, for she cannot easily reject the claim he has on her.

10. Knowing a guest one cannot ask to know Protecting the home one must surrender to the guest Reciprocating outside a Paradigm of reciprocity

11. The test of authenticity for any Catholic School is its capacity to show hospitality to the indiscreet other.

12. To be a person is to have a story to tell. Sacred Stories

13. The Story Our Story My Story

14. We are the first generation bombarded with so many stories from so many authorities, none of which are our own. The parable of the post-modern mind is the person surrounded by a media centre: three television screens in front of them giving three sets of stories; the internet bringing in other stories; newspapers providing still more stories. In a sense, we are saturated with stories; we're saturated with points of view. But the effect of being bombarded with all of these points of view is that we don't have a point of view and we don't have a story. We lose the continuity of our experiences; we become people who are written on from the outside.   Sam Keen

15. Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.   Salman Rushdie

16. A total picture of reality. Gives system and power to the symbolic language. Tradition

18. An outer behaviour (Ritual) with inner intention (faith) to participate in ‘the other’ (God) through the world (life) Ritualising Life

19. God in the everyday Because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you St Augustine Sacramentality

20. Commutative Justice Distributive Justice Social Justice Restorative Justice Justice

21. Breath of life Human creativity inspired by God Spirituality