Mark Elliott St Mary’s College Staff Residential January 2007 Session B
Dec 17, 2015
2007 Workshop Series
Mark ElliottBrisbane Catholic Education
Clairvaux Catholic School
7 Characteristics of 7 Characteristics of a Catholic Schoola Catholic School
Sacred
Stories
Traditions and Teachings
Ritualising Experience
Community and Hospitality
Sacramentality
Spirituality
Seven Core Characteri
stics
Justice
Community and
Hospitality
Where everyone counts and where each
person is seen as made in the
image and likeness of God
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.
Knowing a guest one cannot ask to know
Protecting the home one must surrender to the guest
Reciprocating outside aParadigm of reciprocity
The test of authenticity for any Catholic School is its capacity to show hospitality to the indiscreet other.
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
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
Ritualising Life
An outer behaviour (Ritual)
with inner intention (faith)
to participate in ‘the other’ (God)
through the world (life)
Sacramentality
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