Dear St Mary’s Community
January and February have flown!
As I sit and write this letter the skies are cloudy and blissfully cool. As always I am trying to think what needs to be said and what the community needs to hear.
Perhaps, in the context of the present drought, I can write about the message I gave the girls these last two weeks in assembly. Having returned from a few days in the bush over half term I was struck once again by the deception of “groen droogte,” that is having enough rain to keep the surface green but not enough to sustain real growth for feeding.
The analogy for us and St Mary’s DSG could not be clearer. “Character” is about who you are, personality is how you behave. If you do not have depth of character, those positive attributes of personality will not emerge and the negative attributes of personality will not be under control.
I read a great quote in this regard “if you are not careful you will be measured by what you do and not by who you are.”
Let me give an example. The great adult instruction “Do what I tell you to do not what you see me do” is wasted breath. Children will echo another quote “What you do speaks to me much more loudly than what you say.” Even more importantly is this famous quote “Who you are speaks so loud that I can’t hear a word you are saying.”
At St Mary’s DSG we are most interested in character; that is the moulding of girls of integrity whose values resonate with the needs of the world and her peoples. We cannot preach a loving world if how we talk and act towards each other is not loving; we cannot preach a transformed society if our hearts are not transformed; we cannot preach a common humanity if we do not act humanely towards all; we cannot preach understanding if we don’t make the effort to understand.
Our country is beset by problems resulting from exactly the issue I am raising. I am continually amazed at how little actual listening is done…listening from the context of the other. It seems that more and more people listen with their ears and not their hearts. That is not listening at all.
I am determined that St Mary’s DSG (with all its flaws) will make every effort to be a microcosm of how the world and this nation should and could be.
Belonging, purpose and hope 