The Centre for Ethics
Newsletter Volume 69 - Term 2, 2013
Baroness Thatcher Just before we broke up at the end of Term 1, the funeral of Baroness Thatcher took place in St Paul’s Cathedral. One of the readings chosen by the former Prime Minister for this service was from the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians. It was the reading entrusted to her granddaughter, Amanda Thatcher. This is just the sort of text that would have appealed to Mrs Thatcher who seemed rarely to suffer from doubt. St Paul is making a call to stand firm against evil and to take decisive action based on an unquestioning belief in God. It reads as follows:
The armour of God Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.
Commission, who will bring her own theological reflection to questions of social justice. Claire’s talk is entitled, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” which takes us back again to famous words from the New Testament, this time from the Second Letter to Timothy. That particular letter is a call to move past timidity. Again, one imagines that Baroness Thatcher would approve.
Biblical texts
The Sanctuary Cross It is this section from the New Testament upon which is based the Sanctuary Cross within our own school chapel. When we look at the cross, we can see that the larger boomerang shaped object has a handle. It represents the shield of faith. The smaller one is the breastplate of righteousness. The sword of faith runs through the centre of the sculpture and we can see the helmet of salvation connected to it.
Inwardness Though the sword may be mistaken for an arrow, it most certainly isn’t one since the only reference to arrows in the reading is to those “fiery darts of the wicked.” In other translations it is rendered as “the flaming arrows of the evil one.” But if the reading about putting on the armour of God has a certain militant tone, the sculptor Hans Arkveld brought another sort of perspective to this distinctive and much discussed cross. He picked up on the theme of inwardness and was not all interested in creating a dogmatic or strident work.
A cross for a Christian building In the 1970 edition of The Mitre, Hans Arkveld wrote: “My intention was to construct a cross for a Christian building and Christian
audience which suggested a universal feeling of man’s relationship with his God. From early man’s devotion to the elements and his environment, to man today; how he has gone deeper and deeper within himself; how man’s personal religious development, from his first awareness to his adult convictions, reflects the evolution of religious development throughout all civilizations from the beginning to today.” The Sanctuary Cross is about a search. Hans Arkeveld continues: “The idea of the cross having no resting point or fixed point where it sits (as a standing man is fixed to the earth) is to create a feeling of infinity, a weightlessness, an independent cosmos having no beginning and no end. There is, however, a definite direction, as there is a direction in man’s ideas and aspirations, but the direction always reverts back to within.”
Tempering justice with mercy We have always maintained that ethics is inextricably connected to spirituality. That is what one would expect in a Centre for Ethics within an Anglican school. In Term 2, we will host Thabo Makgoba, the Archbishop of Cape Town, Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s successor. We will also host the theologian Andrew Harvey and Claire Barret-Lennard, Project Officer from the Anglican Social Responsibilities
There is no doubt that people can take great moral strength and encouragement from scriptural texts. In House Chapel held in the last two weeks of term, all senior students were reminded of Christ’s words about those without sin casting the first stone. It is from a scene in John’s Gospel (7:538:11) where a trap is set for Jesus so that he will, on the one hand, appear to lack compassion or, on the other, to be abandoning the Law of Moses.
Ethics and spirituality Jesus deals with the problem by asking the accusers to examine their own hearts and he warns against hypocrisy and harsh judgement. He asks them to temper justice with mercy. He doesn’t say much more but simply starts to write in the sand. We don’t know what he writes. It is all quite intriguing but the result is that a condemned woman’s life is spared and the mob put down their stones and leave. The older ones leave first.
Wrestling with the questions By wrestling with such matters, people are enabled to arrive at a compassionate understanding of their own mistakes and then to be much more understanding of the mistakes of others. In examining this scene, we looked at some well known works of art which depict aspects of the story. This particular scene was a favourite with painters during the Renaissance. We spent time in silence and we heard a prayer about having loving hearts. It is all the material with which we nurture spirituality and then try to incorporate it into the choices we make to live an ethical life. Frank Sheehan School Chaplain
Andrew Harvey Andrew Harvey is Founder Director of the Institute of Sacred Activism, an international organisation focused on inviting concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary global crises by becoming inspired, effective and practical agents of institutional and systemic change, in order to create peace and sustainability. Sacred Activism is a transforming force of compassion-in-action that is born of a fusion of deep spiritual knowledge, courage, love and passion, with wise radical action in the world. The large-scale practice of Sacred Activism can become an essential force for preserving and healing the planet and its inhabitants. Harvey was born in south India in 1952, where he lived until he was nine years old. It is this early period that he credits with shaping his sense of the inner unity of all religions and providing him with a permanent and inspiring vision of a world infused with the sacred. He left India to attend private school in England and went to Oxford University in 1970 to study history as a scholarship student. At the age of 21, he became the youngest person ever to be awarded a fellowship to All Soul’s College, England’s highest academic honour. By 1977, Harvey had become disillusioned with life at Oxford and returned to his native India, where a series of mystical experiences initiated his spiritual journey. Over the next thirty years he plunged into different mystical traditions to learn their secrets and practices. In 1978 he met a succession of Indian saints and sages, and began his long study and practice of Hinduism. In 1983, in Ladakh, he met the great Tibetan adept, Thuksey Rinpoche and undertook with him the Mahayana
Buddhist Bodhisattva vows. Harvey’s book about that experience, Journey in Ladakh, won the Christmas Humphries Award. In 1984, Harvey began a life-long exploration and explication of Rumi and Sufi mysticism in Paris with a group of French Sufis. Andrew has written three books on that subject. In 1992, he met Father Bede Griffiths in his ashram in south India near where Harvey had been born. It was this meeting that helped him synthesize the whole of his mystical explorations and reconcile eastern with western mysticism. Harvey has since lived in London, Paris, New York and San Francisco, and has continued to study a variety of religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity.
In 2012, Harvey’s latest book, Radical Passion: Sacred Love and Wisdom in Action, was published. This culmination of Harvey’s life’s work bridges the great divide between spiritual resignation and engaged spiritual activism. Harvey has taught at Oxford University, Cornell University, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, The California Institute of Integral Studies and the University of Creation Spirituality for A New Humanity. He has also worked with the great Iranian Sufi dancer, Banfsheh Sayyad, in producing a film, In the Fire of Grace, which marries Sufi inspired dances to the stages of Rumi’s understanding of the path of divine love.
Celia Lashlie Adolescent boys seem to disappear into another world where they barely communicate, and where fast cars, alcohol and drugs are constant temptations. How do you raise boys to men in a world where trouble beckons at every turn? How do you make sure they learn the ‘right’ lessons, stay out of danger, and find a path to follow? How do you ensure they’ll be OK? Will they survive and become good men? How can parents and schools understand them and help them through this difficult and dangerous time? After years working in the prison service, Celia Lashlie knows what can happen when boys make the wrong choices. She also knows what it’s like to be a parent — she raised a son on her own and feared for his survival. As a crucial part of the New Zealand Good Man Project, she talked to 180 classes of boys throughout the country. Her insights into what
boys need − and what parents can do to help them − are groundbreaking. Lashlie reveals what goes on inside the world of boys. She offers parents − especially mothers − practical and reassuring advice on raising their boys to become good, loving, articulate men.
Biography Researcher and Social Justice Advocate, Lashlie is the author of two best-selling books. Her first book The Journey to Prison: Who goes and why? was published in 2002 and was followed in 2005 with the hugely successful He’ll be OK: Growing Gorgeous Boys into Good Men, a book based on the Good Man Project she undertook in 25 boys’ schools in New Zealand. This book has since been released in both Australia and the UK. The first woman prison officer to work in a male prison in New Zealand, starting at Rimutaka Prison in December 1985, Lashlie became
the Manager of Christchurch Women’s Prison in 1996. Since leaving Corrections in 1999, she has continued to work in a number of areas linked to at-risk children, her work focusing on ways in which to stem the flow of so many of New Zealand’s young people into prison. The two tenets underpinning her work are her belief that all children are born filled with magic, their own unique brand of magic, and that communities rather than central government hold the answers to the problems New Zealand is facing in terms of the negative statistics of child abuse, prison numbers and social disconnection. Lashlie has a degree in Maori Anthropology, is the mother of two adult children and now has two gorgeous grandsons. She lives in Wellington.
Tim Kenworthy Big Help Mob makes it possible for all sorts of people to be involved as volunteers in a great variety of projects. At the same time, it wants them to have a lot of fun. Tim Kenworthy believes that it is a lack of awareness about opportunities for service rather than an unwillingness to give that limits young people. He believes that they want to give and need to contribute to society. He began Big Help Mob when he was 19 and feels that “if more people my age just knew about the opportunities ... you can call it volunteer, get involved, give back, contribute ... they’d be breaking down the door.” He thinks that WA’s young people are the State’s greatest untapped resource for positive change. There is a sense within the organisation that just about anything is possible if people put their minds, hearts and hands to it. On their website they say that “Big Help Mobber’s are hundreds of young people across Perth who get together to do superhuman acts of awesomeness,
helping non-profits and communities in Perth achieve something only 100’s of helpful people can. One day it’s planting 10,000 trees in a few hours, the next it’s cleaning up a place that’s been forgotten and trashed or performing a ridiculous flash mob in public to draw attention to a good cause that needs it. Nothing is too big for Big Help Mob
and we’re not afraid to get our hands dirty; all 200 of them.” Tim is at pains to stress that it is not all about him. But it has been his vision and energy that has helped nurture the growth of an extraordinary movement within our local community. We look forward to his visit to the School.
Roland Leach Roland Leach is a poet, short story writer, teacher of Secondary English and Literature and editor of Brillig, a magazine for young writers. He has won several major prizes for poetry including the South-West Literary Prize, the Tom Collins Poetry Prize, the Newcastle Poetry Prize, the Lancaster Litfest Poetry Prize (England), and the National Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize. His poems are published in numerous
magazines, newspapers and journals including Southerly, Westerly, Imago, LINQ, Overland and Fremantle Arts Review. His work is featured in Shorelines: Three Poets Beneath the Reef, an anthology of three West Australian poets published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press. A major collection of his poetry, Drowning Ophelia, was published in 2000 by Sunline Press.
Claire Barrett-Lennard Claire Barrett-Lennard is a behavioural scientist, who currently works for the Anglican Social Responsibility and EcoCare Commissions of the Anglican Church in Perth. Barrett-Lennard’s role is to educate and advocate on topical social and environmental issues to Anglican schools, parishes and agencies within the Diocese. Her personal and professional
commitment to justice issues has seen her campaign publically in film and print media, as well as in negotiations such as the United Nations Conference of Parties. Barrett-Lennard has just been announced as Deputy Chair of Anglican Board of Mission Australia, which supports 51 community and evangelism projects in 13 countries around the world.
of three consecutive National Horticulture to promoting water sensitive gardening through the media. He is an Ambassador for the WA State Government’s Living
Smart Household Sustainability Programme, Patron for the Conservation Council of WA and Patron for the WA chapter of Sustainable Gardening Australia.
Josh Byrne Josh Byrne is an environmental scientist with a unique and integrated approach to both landscape and broader environmental design that combines his academic background with over 15 years hands on experience as a sustainability practitioner. He has extensive experience in community consultation and education and sees this as a key step in achieving sustainable outcomes that are responsive to both local environmental conditions as well as the people who interact with them. Byrne is well known for his media work with ABC television as the WA presenter on Gardening Australia and is the author of two books on sustainable gardening and landscape design. His media achievements have been acknowledged as a recipient
Julie Lee Julie Lee is a Winthrop Professor at the University of Western Australia. She returned home to Perth ten years ago, after spending over a decade studying and teaching in Illinois, Hawaii and Miami. Her main interest is in understanding cultural and personal values. Julie has published almost 100 articles and conference papers in this area and her book, Marketing Across Cultures (with Jean-Claude Usunier), is in its sixth edition. Recently, Julie extended her research to examine children’s motivational goals, the subject of her talk.
The Most Reverend Dr Thabo Makgoba Archbishop of Cape Town and Primate of Southern Africa Thabo Cecil Makgoba is the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town. In 2008 he was awarded the Cross of St Augustine, the second highest international award for outstanding service to the Anglican Communion, by the Archbishop of Canterbury. He graduated from Orlando High, Soweto and completed a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of the Witwatersrand before going to St Paul’s College in Grahamstown to study for the Anglican ministry. Since then he has obtained a Masters in Educational Psychology. He was made Bishop of Queenstown on 25 May 2002 and became Bishop of Grahamstown in 2004. Until he moved to the Diocese of Grahamstown as Bishop Suffragan, Makgoba’s ministry had been spent in the Diocese of Johannesburg, first as a curate at
the Cathedral and then as the university’s chaplain. After that he was put in charge of St Alban’s Church and later of Christ the King, Sophiatown. He became Archbishop of Cape Town on 31 December 2007, the youngest person ever to be elected to this position. He received an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from the General Theological Seminary and graduated with a PhD from the University of Cape Town. He is currently the Chancellor of the University of the Western Cape. He believes that ‘We must each ask, “Who is my neighbour?” and then treat every individual and our whole global community in ways that uphold the sanctity of life, the dignity of humanity in all
our differences, and the integrity of creation. These are our touchstones as we follow God’s call for social justice.
The Centre for Ethics
Calendar DATE
EVENT AND TOPIC
SPEAKER
TIME
LOCATION
Friday 3 May
Radical passion: sacred love and wisdom in action
Andrew Harvey
7.30pm
Chapel
Sunday 5 May
Australian doctors for Africa walk
9.00am
RSVP 9442 1705
Thursday 9 May
Big Help Mob
Tim Kenworthy
9.00am
Chapel
Wednesday 15 May
He’ll be ok – growing gorgeous boys into good men (In collaboration with UWA Extension)
Celia Lashlie
7.00pm
Chapel
Thursday 16 May
Roland Leach on poetry
Roland Leach
Morning
Classroom
Tuesday 21 May
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith
Claire Barrett-Lennard
Morning
Classroom
Tuesday 21 May
Sustainable gardening with Josh Byrne
Josh Byrne
7.30pm
RSVP Lane Bookshop 9384 4423
Thursday 23 May
Family
Roland Leach
9.00am
Chapel
Saturday 25 May
50th anniversary of Red Cross clothing sales and auctions
8.30am
Claremont Showgrounds
Wednesday 29 May
Care through fitness
Richard Daly
7.00pm to 8.00pm
Senior Common Room
Tuesday 4 June
Children’s motivational goals: compatibilities and conflicts and gender roles
Julie Lee
7.30pm
RSVP Teresa Scott 9442 1705
Monday 10 June
Resilience and independence
Space Productions
1.25pm
Year 6 Chapel
Sunday 16 June
“Black and White” to “Rainbow Nation” perspectives on multiculturalism from postapartheid South Africa
The Most Reverend Dr Thabo Makgoba Archbishop of Cape Town and Primate of Southern Africa
3.00pm to 5.00pm
Chapel
Please contact Mrs Teresa Scott on 9442 1705 beforehand, in case there is a change in the programme. A map of Christ Church Grammar School is available on our website www.ccgs.wa.edu.au/about-us/our-location/campus-map