Principal's Welcome Message
"We received this world as an inheritance from past generations, but also as a loan from future generations, to whom we will have to return it!”
Remarks, meeting with political, business and community leaders, Quito, Ecuador, July 7, 2015
“Dear young people, you are not the future but the now of God and he invites you and calls you in your communities and cities to go out and find your grandparents and elders; to stand up and with them to speak out and realize the dream that the Lord has dreamed for you.”
Homily at the closing mass of World Youth Day in Panama, Jan 27, 2019
Today I reflect on two quotes from Pope Francis that provide insight and guidance on what he sees as vital, and immediate, directives as we look towards the future. In 2015, Pope Francis issued the first-ever papal encyclical on the environment, articulating a call for all Christians to actively involve themselves in addressing the environmental challenges we currently face, as an act of faithful stewardship. At the 2019 World Youth Day earlier this year, Pope Francis brought this call into sharper focus, stating that our children are not the future but the now.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to sit with the now when I watched the docufilm '2040' with the St Joseph’s Sustainability Team. It is interesting how through necessity (we needed another teacher to accompany the excursion), I had the chance to spend time listening closely to the ideas that were presented in the film, but also to consider what is our role in making change within the school, and even personally at home, that can contribute to a different year 2040. The premise behind the film is that we have current practices that, should they be taken on more broadly, can potentially make a significant difference to what is commonly projected to be a somewhat bleak environmental future for our children. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-rTQ443akE
What I particularly took from watching the film, and reflecting on how Pope Francis calls upon us, is that the now have the answers for what they see as the challenges we currently face. The innocent hopes for the future shared in the film, to ‘have everyone take care of the world’, ‘stop cutting down all the trees’, ‘have enough food and energy for everyone’, or to ‘have clouds that rain chocolate’ (this one may be a little hard to action) are not able to be argued against as being reasonable hopes for the future..
As we left the movie, listening to the excited comments from the Sustainability Team, I was reminded of something I took from a keynote speech by Alfie Kohn, an educational theorist, some years ago; Why is it that in schools, we make our students wait until they are 15 or 18 to get on and start doing what they know they want to do. We make students sit through school, often asking them what they want to be / do when they grow up. Why don’t we let them start now. As a parent, as a teacher, and as a principal, there are times when ‘no’ is the right answer to a lot of questions or requests. However, I know that as we listen to the now, we also need to hear the opportunities to say ‘yes’ so that we can truly see what remarkable things are possible. Our students have remarkable ideas and are only limited by the obstacles that are either put in their way, or experienced along the journey. It is exciting to listen to the now, with an insight into the future as they navigate these obstacles.
Yours in Christ,
Cameron Tarrant
Principal