SPIRITUAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL FROM THE SCHOOL CHAPLAIN FATHER ANDREW ROBINSON

What are the pandemic years teaching us, and how are they changing us?

As 2022 draws to a close, these are the questions many of us are questioning in our minds. The year was a year of two distinct halves. The first six months were spent in the shadow of the disruption and unpredictability of the Omicron waves. Still, in the second, it started to feel like normality had returned: carnivals, in-person assemblies and chapels, and the smiles of staff and students once again lighting the corridors of the School.

Some things need rebuilding: we are learning to sing together again and rediscovering the joy and fullness of gathering together, particularly as entire sections of the School can now be together in one venue, the new Snow Concert Hall.

We spend much time at School discussing what life is all about. Whether in conversation with philosophers, theologians and poets in RaVE and Philosophy or in passing moments between classes, the question of what matters in life comes up in various ways.

I often find myself returning to the pithy words of the Hebrew prophet Micah’s account of ‘the good life’:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)

One striking thing about this is that practising justice and mercy – not to mention humbly walking with God – can only be done in community with others. The isolation so many have experienced during the pandemic has made many of us realise how deeply we need warm and deep connections with others and how hard it is to find meaningful community.

CGS has always been a School that is, first and foremost, a place that attends to the whole person –intellectual, social, physical, spiritual – and the Chaplaincy continues to seek to be at the heart of that commitment.

In Chapel, we continue to tell the story of God’s reconciling work in Christ and of God’s deep and abiding love for the world and every human being. This abiding conviction pushes us to be a community where students and staff of all faiths and none feel known and loved.

We were pleased to have the Rt Rev Grant Dibden, Anglican Bishop to the Australian Defence Force, confirm a group of students in the Chapel at the end of October, and we look forward to the return of Associate Chaplain Elizabeth Gale, as well as other new faces and voice in the Chaplaincy in 2023.

As this tumultuous decade continues to unfold, and as the School looks to its centenary in 2029, it will be