Dearest Ursuline Families (with a special welcome to the Class of 2029 families),

In celebrating our first day, I found myself completely caught up in the excitement of the journey ahead. The campus energy felt bright and alive in a new way this year. As senior advisors, Cidney Ayotte and I are entering the last chapter of our advisees’ Ursuline story. In contrast, my oldest is beginning his high school journey with the Class of 2029. In the most beautiful way, I get the privilege of being fully immersed in the beautiful beginnings and endings simultaneously. Witnessing the full trajectory of a student’s four-year high school growth with the highs and lows, tangled and thorny moments, and incredible victories, makes these years a truly remarkable and unprecedented adventure for each girl and for those of us accompanying her.

This past year’s schoolwide theme of Encounter allowed us to be purposeful and share a common community focus, a theme that bore fruit as we were perpetually recentered on being fully present, open-minded, and connecting with each other and God. In late spring, we began discerning, praying about, and narrowing down themes for this year, eventually fixing our hearts on Seek.

While Encounter involved showing up with a certain disposition, it seemed more of a passive, happen-upon, in-the-moment theme, whereas Seek involves greater intentionality and active work on our part. Seek takes both desire and action. We will never be like Jesus without a desire in our heart and will never be like Jesus without putting that desire into action.

When I was in college, someone told me, “Your faith is your life project.” Most of us have worked through enough group projects (sometimes painfully) to know how easy and comfortable it is to sit back and be carried along passively in a spectator state. This year, we are challenging each student to go beyond mere observer and commit to a personal participation in her faith, her life project, and to actively seek with her whole heart, whatever that looks like.

There are three things about Seek that strike me:

1. Seeking is different than planning. Seeking involves a deliberate open, searching heart, not a scheduled, prearranged life.
2. You can’t seek if you are hiding. To truly seek, we must trust enough to take down our walls and admit that we have a need for something greater than ourselves.
3. If we seek with our whole hearts, what we will find is that the Lord has been seeking us all along.

We invite you as our wider Ursuline community to Seek along with us this year. I am praying for your families as we begin this blessed journey.

“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans for your welfare not your woe, plans to give you a future and a hope. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."

Jeremiah 29:11-13

With joy,

Mandy Briones