Coming to the end of term + taking stock

-
Well, today is the last day of my first term back teaching at my old school and living back in the town where I grew up (that I left 22 years ago). It's been a strange but very fulfilling experience, at times quite surreal. A lovely side benefit has been making contact with old family friends, people who knew my parents or my brothers and sisters and even old friends from my primary school (the latter via a reunion we had 10 days ago).




St. Mary's College with our community house (known as the White House) at the far end.



Of particular delight has been meeting up with a couple that were very good friends of my sister Mona (their daughters went to school with Mona and my other sister Helen): Frances + Bernard Weaver. They have been involved in charismatic prayer groups for many, many years and Mona used to play guitar in one with Bernard back in the '70s. They also played guitar together at my brother Shaun's wedding in N. Wales. Through them I have got involved with a local charismatic group, which is something I was hoping to do after my wonderful experiences with the Prince of Peace community prayer group in Liverpool these past few years.



Bernard + Frances Weaver

The last few weeks have been filled with marking end of term exams, writing pupil reports, preparing + leading one day retreats for each of our 2 Yr. 9 classes (13-14 year-olds) at Park Place Diocesan Centre in Wickham (each time the nuns forgot to turn the heating on until we got there so the building was pretty freezing), the traditional Advent Festival concert and full school evening Carol Service, Christmas meals (Catenians' "Clergy" Night, prayer group meal, staff meal, etc...). With the exam marking + reports now all done, it just remains to finish writing my Christmas cards :-)





The College chapel


We're off to our Liverpool brethren for Christmas this year, then I'll be going to our Mother House in Brittany, France for our annual Study Session (with about 50 other Brothers from the Province), followed by a few days break in one of our French communities.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

God You don't need me, but somehow You want me - Tenth Avenue North, “Control”

-
Image
I sent the below message to my teaching colleagues in school this evening, braced as we are for the arrival of “those-who-shall-not-be-named” (i.e. OFSTED, national school inspectors) sometime between now and Easter. For those of you who live outside of Britain their job is to monitor and ensure high standards in all schools… the problem is that they keep moving the goalposts. Anyway, enough of that. Here’s what I said: I think that the attached video teaching is for us right now, to help us not lose sight of who we are and why we are here in a Catholic school. It's too late for the weekend just gone, but try to take on board its message of "wasting time for God" over the coming weeks, despite the pressures that we are all under. Even if you are not a believer yourself, give yourself some time alone with your thoughts, if you can… even just a few minutes.  The video teaching is by one of my favourite bands, Tenth Avenue North, and it accompanies a song of ...
Read more

District 9 - a sci-fi anti-apartheid allegory and the first handheld camera masterpiece?

-
Image
Following on from yesterday's post, here's an interesting article from The Guardian film blog . District 9: Where aliens come to Earth and handheld comes of age District 9, the shock blockbuster produced by Peter Jackson, isn't just notable for its box office dominance and viral marketing campaign. It's also the closest thing to a handheld masterpiece that's yet been made Handheld on handholding … A still from District 9 Lars, time to break out that cigar. When Dogme 95 was brewing, I wonder if von Trier seriously thought his cin-emetic had any chance of influencing pop culture. With the release of sci-fi blockbuster District 9 , we have the answer: the handheld style has finally come of age. The setup - filmed in to-camera interviews with its pencil-neck protagonist, Wikus Van de Merwe, and intrepid Unsteadicam as he enters the extra-terrestrial township - is jarring in the very best way. And traditional complaints of motion sickness, migraine and general inner-ea...
Read more

Transcendent God

-
Over the past few months I have become much more aware of the beauty of the Grail translation of the Psalms that we use in Morning and Evening Prayer (Divine Office) - I will write more about this in the near future - and I am also finding that this has rubbed off on my attitude to the other prayers in the Office. For example, the following hymn that we prayed just over a week ago. The words struck me as if I was discovering them anew, and this after having prayed (or simply recited?) them at least once a month for about 25 years.  The optimism of the imagery struck me most forcefully and I love the idea of God hearing our prayer "before we call", i.e. as the paslmist says elsewhere "before ever a word was on my lips... you knew me through and through" (I paraphrase). See what you think yourselves... Morning Prayer of Sunday, week 3 Transcendent God in whom we live, The Resurrection and the Light, We sing for you a morning hymn To end the si...
Read more