Mark Elliott
St Mary’s College Staff Residential
January 2007
Session B
We light a candle.
We say a prayer.
We light a candle in your
name.
2007 Workshop
Series
Mark Elliott
Brisbane Catholic Education
Clairvaux Catholic School
7 Characteristics of a
Catholic School
Sacred
Stories
Traditions and
Teachings
Sacramentality
Justice
Seven Core
Characteristi
cs
Spirituality
Ritualising
Experience
Community
and
Hospitality
Where everyone counts
and where each person is
seen as made in the image
and likeness of God
Community
and Hospitality
Ajar is
vulnerable
to the
incoming
of an other
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 a
Paradigm of reciprocity
The test of authenticity for
any Catholic School is its
capacity to show
hospitality to the indiscreet
other.
To be a person
is to have a
story to tell.
Sacred Stories
The
My
Our
Story
Story
Story
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
A total picture of
reality.
Gives system and
power to the symbolic
language.
Tradition
An outer behaviour (Ritual)
with inner intention (faith)
to participate in ‘the other’ (God)
through the world (life)
Ritualising Life
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
Commutative Justice
Distributive Justice
Social Justice
Restorative Justice
Justice
Breath of life
Human creativity
inspired by God
Spirituality