Well, maybe not yet. So picture this, a girl home alone, her brother is out at a party (because the kid's finally got a social life now) (I say kid, but he's 19), her parents are out dancing a storm (I swear to God, their Saturday nights are so eventful) and the girl who has been told to watch over this chicken broth on the stove until it's 2am. If you haven't figured it out yet, that's what's happening right at this very moment. Alritey, time to talk about the SEEDS OF JUSTICE CONFERENCE and how fabulously, awesomely, terrifically, fantastically, brilliantly awesome it was.
So before I tell you what we did on the SJC, I'll tell you a bit of what's it about. Twice every year, this committee runs a 2 day program for Mercy Schools in Victoria and we come together to share our ideas about social justice and mercy and learn about other people's experiences, listen to guest speakers and for the one I went to go to placements in the local community. The theme this year was "Breaking Open the Heart of Mercy" (So that's what the title meant)
It was a pretty quick ride to the centre they were hosting the conference at, I won't state details unless you really want to know and because the main teacher who was supposed to go with us got sick, our very awkward but still wonderful Irish teacher drove us there. He was making comments like "Oh, just found the brake." The first thing he said to us when we got in the car was "I could be taking you girls to your death and you wouldn't even know." Yes, that was very comforting. Oh and he talked about the Gaelic/Irish language almost the whole way. He's lovely though, to be honest, that trip was one of the funniest car rides I've ever had. On the way, we saw these houses that looked like they were from a Dr. Seuss movie or the neighbourhood in 'Edward Scissorhands.' Actually, houses is a bit of an understatement, more like mansions.
When we got there, we all introduced ourselves and had to sit down and listen to our first guest speaker Sr Giovanna, she's a Sister of Mercy and her job is basically visit and talk to prisoners so they don't feel so isolated. I know what you're thinking, why would she do that? They're prisoners, they don't deserve that sort of compassion. And a quote I got from the video we watched after her talk was something that went like Being in prison is the punishment and if you want to take away their privileges then do so, but you are not helping them. Most likely, they will just end up back in prison when they're released because they haven't learnt anything. Prisons are a place of rehabilitation which is why people keep coming back. If a Sister can help a prisoner and offer their companionship then why not? She talked about this man who had a mental illness in which he had the mental capacity of a five year old and all he did was want to make friends every time he got released from prison and he would be arrested for being a 'public disturbance' or he breached a restraining order. So, at this point, I was crying and a poor girl had to walk out of the room. Thankfully, she told us that when his case got brought to court, the judge found him proper and stable accommodation so he's okay now. :')
After lunch, we were supposed to have another guest speaker but she decided not to come. :| Instead they made us watch this video called "Music and Murder." It was a documentary about 3 men who are all murderers and have a passion for music. And my goodness, it was confronting and challenged everything I ever knew. So there were these three men and they're all very troubled and are imprisoned for murder and they're musically talented. I won't go into detail about why they're in there but I'm pretty sure you could find the video somewhere on the webbynet. But anywho, the first guy and the last guy who were introduced felt deep remorse for their sins, and though they had taken a life, it made us believe that they deserved a second chance. The first guy, I think his name was Vernon or something rather, and now he performs with his guitar in church congregations which I thought was lovely and the last guy was on parole in 2008 but I'm not sure how that turned out. The second guy though, oh man, he challenged all my morals and beliefs so badly. He also was imprisoned for murder of his girlfriend and he was also very musically talented, in fact, the most musically talented. He was going to be released in two months so they gave him a job outside the prison walls as a gardener but he escaped. YES I KNOW. I DON'T UNDERSTAND A PSYCHOPATH'S BRAIN EITHER. IT GET'S WORSE. Not only does he escape but he commits almost the same crime again. He kills another woman the same way he killed his girlfriend. NO COMPRENDO. NO FUDGING COMPRENDO. So now he's going to die in jail. I guess you're thinking, "Serves him right" right? But when you think about it, if he was in another video that presented two other guys that murdered 3 or 4 times, you would feel more empathy towards him, would you not? So it's all about contrast and the media and everything but at the same time all my morals are challenged. Should I feel sympathy for a murderer that's killed twice? Thrice? Four times? Here we are talking about how we should feel empathy and sympathy for the prisoners because they're completely isolated and many underprivileged. But what about the ones who are psychopaths? The ones who will take a life like it doesn't mean anything? Are the priests and nuns supposed to feel empathy and try to strike up a conversation with them? Do they deserve it? And I have no idea how to answer any of these questions. I'm glad that the conference didn't just present one side of the story though. I appreciated the fact that they contradicted they things we watched and instead of preaching to us about some sort of utopia, they let us think for ourselves.
Okay, so we ate lunch after that. And my Lord, it was heavenly. Or as a girl from my school put it "Scrumdiddiumptious." It was this magical lasagne with your ordinary vegies, and the best birthday cake ever even though it wasn't anyone's birthday! LOL After eating lunch, it was time to talk placements.
There were about eight different placements I think and they consisted of places like soup vans, nursing homes, women shelters, ministries, charities...you get the picture. So one of the girls from my school went to a soup van. (I'm not stating who or where for security and privacy reasons) Umm, two other girls went to do their placement at a nursing home and I went to do at an Aboriginal Ministry. The bus took forever to get anywhere and didn't know any shortcuts so everyone's placement times got cut short and people were late. I don't think the bus driver knew what he was doing but oh well, he tried. When I got to the centre where I was supposed to be doing my placement, it was closed because they had waited for us over 45 minutes. :'( I was devastates because it was a really rare experience and I was looking forward to learn from the Aboriginal community and be told stories and all that beautiful jazz but sadly, no. :( A couple blocks down from the road though was an Aboriginal mural which is decaying and they need money to restore that so I think that might be one of school's social justice team's ideas soon! :D WOOPWOOP! And we tried interpreting that in out own weird way which was was probably extremely inaccurate but at least we tried. Oh I was with a teacher from another school and two other girls from a different school as well and they were all lovely. In fact, everyone at that conference was just so unbelievably lovely and friendly. So after intepreting the mural, we all went to sit in KFC and I ate my packed sandwhich while hiding behind these bamboo room divider things so the KFC staff wouldn't realise. HAHAHAH I just realised how stupid that sounded now. So after a while, we got picked up and every one was talking to each other on the ride back and I found out that I might see a lot of the students that came at Frayne (A speech festival held in August for Mercy school to participate in Voice Choir, Debating and Public Speaking)! WOOOPPPPP!
We got back to the centre and we had a nice little reflection and meditation about our placements and they played some nice calming music before we went to sleep. We got to our rooms and brushed our teeth and all that jazz my friend (who I was sharing the room with) and I were knocked out by around 11:30 which is weird because usually on camp, I stay up till around 2am or something but I think we were all just so tired.
DIA NUMERO DOS DE SEEDS OF JUSTICE BEBS.
Woke up. Obviously. We sang a nice Catherine McAuley song (which we are definitely singing for Choir because it is brilliant) and ate breakfast. The prayer that was said was only a couple of lines and it was "Be still and know that I am God." and the man kept saying this over and over each time dropping a couple words off so we could think of our interpretations and visualise different things with lesser words. It was quite nice and calming actually. (Seriously, I'm not even Catholic). We then listened to a teacher talk about how he took a couple students from his school to Papua New Guinea to offer "kindness, compassion and gentle words" to the people there which was really inspirational and definitely makes me want to do that kind of work one day. But I'm pretty sure that by the time it'll be organised that my high school years would have ended. :(((
We ate lunch and then played some games together. It was like a massive game of rock, paper, scissors and right now, I'm actually too lazy to explain it but if you ask nicely (okay, you could ask roughly too and I'll still answer you) I'll explain it. We then had a nice reflection and wrote down the ideas we would try to implement at our own schools and we came up with a lot of ideas so social justice girls, you better be ready for them! :D AND WE GOT BADGES!!! YEAAAHHHAHAHHAHAHHAHA!!
And then the car trip home was nice and normal and our teacher knew how to drive the car and didn't make as 'comforting' comments. HAHAHAHhahaha, no really he's actually really lovely. :D
I got back to school and decided to join the Literature class because I don't have a chance to do it this year because it clashes with my advanced Math class. :'( So I decided to join their class and oh my god, it was sooo good. Some of the girls there were practically falling asleep and obviously treated the class as a bludge subject but seriously, in that moment, I loved it. Especially because they were reading "Medea and other Plays" by Euripedes and I had just finished reading the Percy Jackson book that introduced Jason and Medea and I was so excited because I could piece the information I knew from the book together and it was just amazing. I swear, I feel so bad for Tash because if I was feeling like that because I enjoy Greek Mythology, she's absolutely insane with it and would probably give up her life in Australia to go learn Greek Mythology in the Philippines because as she's informed me many many times, they teach it there as a subject. The only reason she can't do Literature is because it clashes with her advanced Bio class (that nerdy bum). :((( Anywho, I'm going to leave you now, because this is a really really long post and 30% are probably typos. Bye, love you all but I'm going to be disabling all my social networking accounts by Sunday night so I can study for my exams which are next next week. I'll see you tomorrow then for my last blog post before the two week hiatus. :) LOVE YOU LOVE YOU LOVE YOU!
GOOD (NIGHT/MORNING/AFTERNOON/EVENING/DAWN/SUNRISE/SUNSET) TO YOU MY DEAREST DEARY PIE!
MAARY.
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