Director of Identity 

While we gather as a College community to give thanks for the end of another school year, we are also entering the time of the new Church year and the season of Advent, a four-week period of Hope, Preparation, Love and Joy in anticipation of the nativity of Jesus at Christmas.   

Throughout the Advent Season we are often reminded of this kind of duality of experience, where we seem to be in two different worlds at the same time. Even though we are proud and happy of all that we have achieved together we remember that many in our community continue to suffer from profound loss and ongoing grief. Even while we embrace exciting futures and new opportunities, we recognise that it is ok to also feel a sense of nostalgia for things that are no longer the same and regret the things that we didn’t manage to do. Even as the pace of change seems rapid and unrelenting, we know how important it is to make ourselves stop, look around us, listen to others and take the time to quietly rest and heal. Even as we enter a mad time of food shopping and gift wrapping, we know that we will also find our most precious Christmas moments in being there for others and in making the time to pray, to give thanks and to be quietly silent with ourselves and our God. 

Ecclesiastes 3:1-5,7 

There is a time for everything,   

and a season for everything under the heavens: 

a time to be born and a time to die…, 

… a time to tear down and a time to build, 

a time to weep and a time to laugh, 

a time to mourn and a time to dance, 

… a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, 

a time to search and a time to give up, 

a time to keep and a time to throw away, 

… a time to be silent and a time to speak