It was fantastic to be able to meet with representatives of our Year 12 cohort yesterday afternoon as we worked through the planning for the end of their year. Planning is such a challenging concept in the current environment. We wrestle with the tension of being optimally organised against the unsurety of the social circumstances in which events may unfold. There are many events within our calendar that we are revisiting whether they are achievable while we are isolating and whether they need to be cancelled, moved online or deferred. I admire our Year 12 students who are emerging as the future leaders of our society with this new competence of dealing with and responding to regular and unplanned change. These are valuable skills that they are drawing upon as we progress through our planning of how they approach their final weeks and days at Damascus College.

One of the planned activities within our calendar that we will proceed with is the staff Faith and Catholic Identity Development Day planned for this Friday, the 27th of August. This Friday, there will be no remote classes or onsite supervision as staff work remotely with theologians; Sr Elizabeth Dowling RSM, Br David Hall, and Fr Rob Galea. The Damascus staff will be the remote learners on Friday, and we are looking forward to a challenging and rewarding day unpacking our Catholic identity and personal faith stance with these key contributors.

This week is also Book Week, and while most of the activities have been deferred until we return onsite, there has been a raft of different opportunities for students and staff made available by the St Martin’s Resource Centre staff team and the English staff team. I thank those staff for their work in preparing for Book Week and look forward to some of the onsite activities when we return.

Please be advised that the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) has notified schools of the intention to reschedule the General Achievement Test (GAT) to Thursday, 9^th of September 2021. The GAT will run from 10:00am – 1:15pm and applies to any senior student who undertakes a Unit 3/4 VCE study.

Further information about the administration of the GAT will be provided to families as the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority makes the details available.

We are currently reviewing the last week of term and the implications of the current and future restrictions for Damascus Day. We will advise the school community of our planned approach to Damascus Day as it gets nearer. The last day of Term 3 for students will be Thursday, 16th of September.

We congratulate and send our blessings to staff member Isabelle Miller and her husband Tim on the safe arrival of baby Arthur Yorke Miller on the 19th of August 2021.

In our prayers this week, we remember the family of former staff member Bill O’Loughlin who’s father Gerard died last week aged 102. Bill died while he was a member of the Damascus community, and his father Gerard and Bill’s siblings have continued to support Damascus College through a scholarship in Bill’s name. We pray that our loving God welcomes Gerard and brings comfort to his family at this time.

As part of our staff day on Friday, Sister Elizabeth Dowling will be unpacking our theme in the context of Mercy. Mercy is not a trademarked entity of the Sisters who founded our community, but they have a beautiful perspective on how Mercy brings Jesus into our daily presence, and I found this poem by Sr Mary Wickham that I leave with you this week.

Mercy Days

If we utter aloud the word mercy, standing, each of us, by an open window anywhere we are in the world, then the word mercy will carry on the soundwaves onwards and unceasing, through the air of the wounded world. And maybe, when it takes flight into deed and kindness, justice and effort, it will effect a healing, a hope and a blessing.

It may call the homeless home, it may coax to hope the betrayed and broken, it may ease the burdened earth.

Listen for it, the repeated word mercy, on this Mercy day, listen for its neighbourly dialects and global idiom. Imagine those who, like you, are saying it aloud, and those who need to hear it, today- the word- mercy. One word, one deed of justice, one kind effort at a time. Creator God, Sustainer of life, Jesus, our companion Word, Spirit, who, like the air, inspires, give us the simple daring this day to say and to be Mercy.

A prayer and challenge for us all – until next week…

MATT