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Volume 21- 21 July, 2015 Dear Parents & Students
Welcome back to Term 3! I hope the holidays have been a relaxing and refreshing time for both students and families. I am sure the girls were particularly glad to be able to sleep in on those chilly mornings last week. I hope also there was opportunity for reflection on the achievements and disappointments of Semester 1 and that the girls begin Term 3 with focus and determination. The planets have been prominent in both our skies and the news in recent weeks. The recent views of Pluto sent by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft have captured the imagination of the world. The delight and amazement of the scientists who have been working on this project for many years has revealed their passion for uncovering knowledge as well as their experience of joy and reward when hard, ambitious, long-term work finally came to fruition. They are inspiring. I have also been entranced, like many others, at the brilliance and interplay of Venus and Jupiter in the western sky each evening. This has somehow provided a fitting backdrop to the debate which followed the recent release by Pope Francis of his Encyclical, “Laudato Si, on the care of our common home”, which addresses the relationship between humankind and creation and our response to the many complex environmental issues we face today. Translated in English as "Praised Be," the title of the Encyclical is a quotation from a popular prayer of St Francis of Assisi praising God for the creation of the different creatures and aspects of the Earth. I offer the following two passages for your reflection.
Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.
Grant Schwartzkopff in Australia captured this photo on June 22, 2015 http://earthsky.org/todays-image/venus-and-jupiter-west-after-sunset-june-2015
The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, His boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God. Pope Francis (from the recent Papal Encyclical Laudato Si)
Justice
Freedom
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8)
VERITY
Sincerity
Felicity