At a certain
point you say
to the woods, to the sea,
to the mountains,
the world,
Now I am ready.
Now I will stop and be wholly attentive.
You empty yourself and wait,
listening...
Annie Dillard
2005 seems to have been the year of Mater Admirabilis at Burke Rd, Melbourne. While for more than one hundred years there has been a fine painting in Mater's Chapel, this year saw the refurbishment and rehanging of another Mater which came to Sacre Coeur from the convent in Braybrook.
As the
picture was to be hung in Joigny, the Junior School, it was decided to involve a
number of students from Year 6 in projects that marked this event. One group
undertook a particularly interesting task which involved contacting by email as
many Sacred Heart schools as they could.
Each school was asked to send a picture of Mater in situ and over the days and weeks that followed the request, many different images arrived at the school. In all, images from nearly twenty schools were made available which the girls organized into a framed collage to be placed in Joigny. There were pictures from Malta, the United States of America, England, Scotland, Canada, France, Italy, Chile, New Zealand and from our sister schools in Australia.
This project gave the students a real sense of the internationality of the school community and as school archivist it allowed me to share some of the history of Mater's Chapel and the original painting in the Trinita dei Monti.
The students and I also entered into close consultation and discussion with the R.S.C.J in the Barat Community as we pursued various uncertainties about our pictures.
The photos
for the collage allowed the students to see the small but fascinating
differences there are in the pictures: from flowers to halos, from coronets to
colour tones. It was a delight to look at how each picture was placed in its
school and for the girls to come to the realization that this central image in
all our schools is always part of the life of Children of the Sacred Heart
throughout the world.
Mrs
Virginia Kennedy
Teacher / Archivist – Sacre Coeur