This week we celebrate the arrival of the warmth, the light and the new life that we call Spring. Days are getting longer, the sunlight feels warmer, and all around us we see new leaves, flowers and everything green seems to be growing. What a sense of joy and expansion!
We can’t come together to celebrate in our festivals this year, but every one of us can enjoy the sense of new life nearby, just by looking at it. Let’s have private festivals of joy, where we quietly look on all the growing around us and say a simple Thank You to a world of Nature that is not in lockdown like us, but is in fact expanding and flourishing. This is a time for gratitude and awe, such simple feelings that the season evokes. Whatever our age, the new life of Nature in Spring can make us feel happy, young and fresh.
These feelings just bubble up in us during Spring as a normal enjoyment of the season. If you want some science in there as well, it’s worth noting that there are many studies now showing connections between cultivating these feelings of awe over time with very positive mental health benefits. Some studies even suggest a positive impact of physical health.
Julia Baird’s recent book Phosphorescence gives a beautiful commentary on our deep need for these moments as a kind of inner nourishment for our souls. This lockdown season has shown us more than ever how much we need the feelings of awe and wonder, the phosphorescence that Nature provides. In Spring it comes in abundance. May Leunig’s little hymn be a kind of meditation for us on the power of Nature to bring us a “wisdom that will heal the world”.
End of Term:
It’s been a long and winding road this term, but we are about there. Thank you for to everyone for staying the course. There’s been a lot of strength of character on display this term, and we can be very proud of our community. Our teachers have been magnificent, going above and beyond on every front, and I thank them for the quality and richness of learning they have offered to our students even over the distance of remote.
To all families I wish you a well-deserved break, a restful and fulfilling holiday period, and we look forward to resuming our teaching and learning on Wednesday October 6th. By then we will have more clarity from NSW Health on the roadmap back to regular in person schooling, and we will provide you with a detailed plan for the return to school commencing on Monday October 25th.
Until then, best wishes for the break!
Andrew Hill
Head of School