From the Desk of Joy McGrath ’92

It was good to see some of you as the students returned this week. I hope you enjoyed being with them over the recess. Ty and I spent part of the break traveling through California and meeting with alumni and parents. I love this work, because it gives me perspective on what we are doing at St. Andrew’s. Over and over, alumni spoke with me about the education they earned here—what they learned in and out of the classroom, the important challenges of the academic program, and the character and courage they developed to take risks and ask questions. Courage often seems to be in short supply in the world. At St. Andrew’s, all you need to do is walk around practices to see, for example, a III Former learning a new sport. Sometimes it seems like everyone is watching, and you are making every kind of mistake. It feels risky, and it takes guts.

We are all privileged to be in an environment where we can practice courage daily. I reminded the students in a meeting Monday night that we are here to get that education—the one earned by those who came before us. We pursue truth, beauty, and wisdom at St. Andrew’s, a school that is both a collection of people and a place. We see truth, beauty, and wisdom in each other and in nature all around us.

Yesterday, the season shifted, with 12 hours and 8 minutes of sunshine. This spring, I hope we can be restless in seeking the light of knowledge, never satisfied with what we know, yet free of anxiety and worry. I hope we can have the courage to do big things that matter yet put aside our pride and ask for help. Knowing that our goal is good and great—free of the distractions of phones and devices, uplifted by those who show up in the fullness of their being to support us—we will commit to doing the hard things, accomplishing together what not one of us could do alone.

When we gathered on Monday, I shared a prayer that Eleanor Roosevelt included in her national newspaper column in March 1940, almost 85 years ago to the day. She heard it at St. John’s Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square and she wrote that it made a “deep impression” on her. All of us can find something in this prayer to reassure, to guide, and most of all, to inspire.  The prayer’s evocation of “a world made new” resonates in this spring season, when I hope we will again find what is good in the world that we make and remake again.

“Our Father, who hast set a restlessness in our hearts, and made us all seekers after that which we can never fully find; forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life. Draw us from base content, and set our eyes on far-off goals. Keep us at tasks too hard for us, that we may be driven to Thee for strength. Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pity; make us sure of the goal we cannot see, and of the hidden good in the world. Open our eyes to simple beauty all around us, and our hearts to the loveliness men hide from us because we do not try enough to understand them. Save us from ourselves, and show us a vision of a world made new. May Thy spirit of peace and illumination so enlighten our minds that all life shall glow with new meaning and new purpose; through Jesus Christ Our Lord."

And the people said, “Amen.”