Downlands – Where your heart finds a home

Inevitably, hopefully, at some point of their Downlands journey, our students will ask, “How can I set about living the unique, authentic, heartfelt life that only I can live - with purpose and passion, grace and generosity, and above all with gratitude and a desire to be of service to others?”1. An environment where one’s heart finds a home, and is ‘at home’, is one in which students can comfortably ask this question, and where there is innate understanding that the searching is part of the journey. It is only in a school where a student’s heart feels at home, where there is a shared humanity, where there is a felt concern for the “subjectivity and identity” of each child, that the child will learn the dignity of self and others, and intricately woven with the pursuit of truth and excellence will always be the search for meaning and purpose in life – the “Who am I?” question.

To be able to grow and flourish as people of kindness, compassion, humility, gentleness and courage, both students and adults in our Downlands community must feel at ease, and must experience the school environment as sanctuary, as community, as a place ‘to come home to’

and in which to feel ‘at home’ amid the pace and compelling demands of life. As the saying goes, ‘Home is where the heart is’, a place where one can truly be oneself, and often, this is an intangible place – a feeling, an understanding.

One might say that this feeling, this understanding, this ‘intangible’, flows from our Spirituality of the Heart, which permeates all aspects of life at Downlands and nestles so beautifully with young people’s attraction to recover the sacred and mystical potentials of our faith tradition, and indeed of their true selves. It is this spirituality, well lived, which ensures that our College community is indeed a place ‘where your heart finds a home’- where the heart comes home to itself.

“Heart” - the most common word used in the Bible (over 800 times) to refer to the inner depths of a person … is described as “the essence of a person; in the eyes of God, the heart is the real person.” (Dennis Murphy MSC). At Downlands, we are committed to compassionate acceptance of this “essence”, of every individual, in all their differences, uniqueness, strengths, vulnerabilities and weaknesses. We recognise that only in a place where one’s heart - oneself - is at home, and which is a life-enhancing environment, will growth occur. And it is only in daily creating a place where the hearts of all members of the Downlands community can find a home, a place where all in our community can flourish, that we can be true to our mission as an MSC school.

It is entirely plausible that our young people intuitively know what their hearts need, that their hearts thirst for ‘home’, for a place where there can be the gentle nourishment needed for the development of the whole person, a place of belonging and a place for self -acceptance, as it is self -acceptance which gives one ‘peace of heart’.

This claim is significant, and it calls us to strive to do all we can to ensure that it is one we live authentically. If Catholic schools are increasingly “serv[ing] young people and adults as the face and place of the Church”2, then they must be places of becoming, of “learning human” (Les Murray), places full of “signposts showing the young the way to their hearts”. They must be places where the heart feels at home, can find a home and can flourish along the way of the “longest journey anyone will ever make - the journey to one’s heart”3.

Downlands is a place where one’s heart can find a home - where students can grow and flourish as they develop a sense of truth, goodness and beauty and so be ready to go out and to make a difference in the world.