Spirituality: the energy derived from a lived life. (Bishop George Browning)
A lived life is corporate: there is no flourishing outside of relating.
A lived life is creative: the ideas, abilities and talents within must find their expression without.
A lived life belongs to the truth and is rooted in compassion and wisdom.
From this life comes an energy that is empowering, vitalising, restorative.
Radford is a Christian school in the Anglican tradition and takes seriously the education of the whole person. There are four elements to Radford College: academic, co-curricula, pastoral and spiritual. The core values at the heart of Radford College are inextricably linked, as depicted by the diagram below:
It is the School’s conviction that the Christian ethos should be a living part of College life, woven, not just into what it does, but how it goes about doing what it does.
Ethos
Truth, Compassion and Wisdom
Truth is something that you belong to, that you love, something that sets you free and makes you more real.
Compassion cannot be directed by whim or fancy. Unlike courage or loyalty, or even love, compassion is an incorruptible virtue. It moves outwards with grace and healing.
Wisdom is not just being clever; it is living in a way that gives life to others.
Christ is the incarnation of truth, compassion and wisdom.
Truth, Compassion and Wisdom are Radford's three foundational virtues. They are truly catholic in that they are universal, and belong to all the great human endeavours. They also reflect a particularly Christian value system.
These cardinal values, are undergirded by three other active elements without which the cardinal virtues are mere abstractions on paper – they are: imagine, listen and respect.
Imagine Listen and Respect
In fervently striving to fulfil the aims of the College, these three active verbs link who we are, with what we do. Imagine, listen and respect are verbs that direct not what we do, but how we do it. The verbs are grounded in the Christian name for God. For it was out of the imagination of God that the world came into being, that out of the respect for the creation, and listening to the cries of the distress of humanity, God is acting in redemption. Inviting the Radford Community to be creative, to be responsible, to be intelligent, compassionate and committed to the truth, is a shared culture, cultivated by a collective commitment to imagine and listen and respect in all our relating and creating.
The three virtues of truth, compassion and wisdom cannot be treated in isolation, as if one can be done today, and another tomorrow. They are interwoven and inseparable. They are knowable, but cannot be confined to the known. They can be lived, but cannot easily be defined. Within the demands and sometimes the monotony of daily routine, the three virtues dwell within our choosing and behaving, relating and creating.
The terms ‘truth’, ‘compassion’, ‘wisdom’, do not, however, sit comfortably within the vernacular, for they so easily become clichéd and denuded of their grace and power by reason of their abstraction. The three verbs imagine, listen, respect, equally interwoven and inseparable, permit an accountability to those very virtues in a dynamic, daily and life-giving way. Using them is a way of empowering people to be a community grounded in three of the most profound qualities of life - which brings us to our last sets of values:
‘Just’, ‘ Inclusive’, ‘Diverse’, ‘Sustainable’
These key words interlocking with the cardinal virtues and the key Aims of the College, also help to describe the kind of community Radford seeks to shape and become. They are the words that throw into relief the work of RAS (the Radford Awareness and Service Programme). It is our conviction that when we are aware of the issues that shape the world in which we live, then we have the power to do something about them. Radford has a strong emphasis on Service across the Junior, High and Senior Schools.
Potential, Learning, Moral & Spiritual Values and Attitudes
And so, as a consequence of the interplay of the key values of the College, we see its aims fulfilled: a well rounded student realising his and her full potential, who is nurtured in a culture committed to learning in and for itself, and for life, and whose attitudes are imbued with the moral and spiritual values that uphold civilised life.
College Prayer
Great Creator God
you sing the world into life and fill it with love;
binding the things of earth with the Kingdom of heaven.
Breathe your Spirit over this land –
awaken our senses and
fill us with light –
that with Christ your Son
we would live in the truth
rise in compassion
and walk in wisdom.
Amen.
‘Yungbali’
A myth of creation and flood that narrates a story for Radford College.
The Telling
On Foundation Day 2008, the story of Yungbali was enacted before the whole school. This event is the way the College seeks to tell its story in order to remember who we are as a community and take creative charge of where we are going. We invite you to explore Yungbali via the links below.
Chaplaincy and Radford Chapel
CHAPLAINCY
Radford has two chaplains, each with diverse gifts and interests to offer.
Weekly Reflection from the Chaplains appear in the Weekly Bulletin
CHAPEL
Introduction
Paintings
Bookings
Services: baptisms, funerals, weddings
Saturday Sunset
LINKS
Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn www.canberragoulburn.anglican.org/
Holy Covenant Churchwww.holycovenant.org.au/
CHAPEL BOOKINGS
For details about booking Radford Chapel, please visit our Chapel page
Religion and Values Education (RAVE)
Under the banner of RAVE (Religious and Values Education) our purpose is to create space (‘schola’ = free time) to reflect, with the purpose of empowering our students to explore the spiritual dimension for themselves, by listening to the ‘still small voice of God’ in the world, and so creating:
- a learning space where ‘doubts and loves dig up the world, like a mole, or a plough’ (Yehudi Amichal, Jewish poet) – where we are blessed with an imagination strong enough to understand the points of view of others, even when they differ from our own, and even when they deny the faith, more concerned to understand than to refute
- a learning space where no one claims a monopoly on truth, but where truth possesses us – engendering a respect for the value and the diversity of the other great faith traditions
- a learning space where being ‘right’ is not as important as ‘love’ and ‘compassion’: ‘(For) the place where we are right, is hard and trampled like a yard’ (ibid)
- a learning space that engages with the pain of the world, rather than avoiding it, or as Thomas Merton puts it, that discovers the desert of compassion, ‘… the only desert that shall truly flourish like the lily.’
- a learning space that creates an environment where students and teachers listen together, while losing themselves in the joys, the hopes, the griefs, the anxieties, the doubts of this age, yet finding themselves again in a faith that survives times of massive change
- a learning space that encourages a faith well grounded in the reality of this world in terms of social justice, while reaching into the next – that helps students to connect with the idea of the ‘kingdom of God’ and the life and ministry of Jesus as understood against the backdrop of the Old Testament, the Gospels and the remainder of the New Testament
- a learning space that encourages our students to meld ‘contemplation’ and reflection (dialogue), with ‘action’ (‘praxis’): i.e. ‘we don’t just think and talk, we do something about it.’
- a learning space that encourages students to see the world through the lens of allegory, myth, icon and the symbols of faith as expressed in the liturgies of the Anglican church, and other faith traditions
- a learning space where the value of what we learn is more than just a grade and a mark, but is, in and for itself, valuable – RAVE is compulsory and assessable, and is treated as an integral part of the curriculum for all students from K-10
RAVE
Religious and Values Education at Radford is built on the Vardy Five Strand Model i.e. we use the model as a foundation, but also depart from it to accommodate our students’ needs at Radford in an Australian setting:
Bible and Christian Tradition
We cannot engage our history, our literature, our calendar, our political and welfare systems without having a real respect and understanding of the Christian story and tradition which has shaped all these elements of our culture.
Values and Ethics
More than ever before, we must increase the literacy of ideas that lie behind humankind's moral and ethical engagement with the world.
Philosophy
Without the skills to reflect on the way we think, or understand the categories and systems we devise to make sense of the world, we will always be at a disadvantage.
Comparative Religion
We have a responsibility to enhance student ability to understand and respect those who are faithful Jews or Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists.
Stillness
Without stillness, there is little appropriation of meaning, there is anxiety rather than identity, emptiness rather than peace, apathy rather than courage. Engaging the affective domain is one of the most poplar aspects about this course for students.