What's Happening In RE

G’day. Happy New Year.  A very special welcome to staff and families who are new to our community at Kildare. 

Religious Education is a formation of the whole person. It opens the way for each of us to become more receptive to the whole of reality. In RE we investigate the visible and the invisible, the quantifiable and the unquantifiable, the material and the immaterial in order to arrive at a more complete sense of the purpose and meaning of our lives. 

Religious Education can be more than just the study of human behaviours, beliefs and practices. In a Catholic school, you have many opportunities not just to learn about Jesus, but hopefully encounter Him and form a lifelong…or better…enter into eternal communion with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

To get the most out of your time in the RE classroom and the community life of the College, make a little time as often as you can to be still and quiet. The following is a meditation that RE staff were invited to participate in at the start of the year. It takes just ten minutes. To guide your medication read each of the ten brief instructions, one at a time, with a minute's silence in between. 

In the next issue I will provide an outline of the great work that has been going on in our RE classrooms. 

Method for Meditation

1. Breathing: Make yourself comfortable and while closing your eyes, focus on your breathing. There are a variety of techniques to help you breath effectively for meditation.
   1. 4:6 Breathing: Inhale for a count of four and then exhale over a count of six. 
   2. Box breathing: Inhale for a count of 4, hold for 4, breathe out for 4 and hold for 4, repeat
   3. Just breathe and try not to fall asleep
2. The Present: Become increasingly aware of the present moment. Let go of the past and the future and open yourself to the Now by listening to your breathing. Your consciousness will interject with memory of the past day and imaginings of the future. For now, simply acknowledge these and gently return to your breathing in the present moment. 
3. True You: In the Now, you are you. Not the person you want to be or the person of the past, but the true you. As your self awareness grows remember to treat yourself with patience, acceptance and humility.  
4. You are forever. Consider what it is that makes you essentially you; is it not the same as who you will be forever?
5. God’s Presence. There is no past and no future for God, only the present moment.  The present is the point at which time touches eternity. In the present,  we have an experience of our likeness to God; Invite God to be present with you in this moment. 
6. It is not for nothing that you are you! You exist because This Divine Guest you have invited to be with you, knew you before lovingly knitting you together in your mother’s womb. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are a prophet, a light and salt for the earth. You are chosen and you are loved. 
7. Fear Not: With the Everliving, Uncreated Creator, what is there to fear? Even if the whole world would fall away annihilated, you are you forever, simultaneously held in existence, in communion for which you are made, with the Source of all that is, in the little heaven of your soul. 
8. You are Loved: Acknowledge in your heart and in your own way that God, whom you invited into the little heaven of your soul, is love. You are made by Him to experience for eternity His love. His love is the sole reason for your being made. 
9. Love: If you are ready, even if it feels insufficient and limited, imperfect, impure or even insincere - say in the little heaven of your soul to This Divine Guest - “I love You”.

Intimacy: Simply be in intimacy with God. Mother Teresa’s contemplative prayer was as simple as this; “I look at Him, He looks at me…we smile”. 

God Bless

David Chaston | Religious Education Coordinator