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Mission-in-Action Day Brings Color to Campus
On Monday, March 19, our girls took a day-long break from classes for Mission-in-Action Day, dedicated to strengthening their understanding and appreciation of our Founding Order, the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary’s, mission.
Mission-in-Action Day provides our entire community an opportunity to bond while contemplating the RSHM’s establishing principle – “that all may have life and have it to the full” – and how it affects our current and future interaction with the world.
As part of a global network of RSHM schools, we share six goals and core values. Each year, Marymount’s international network of schools chooses one of our mission’s six pillars to guide our curriculum and activities for the academic year. For the 2017-18 school year, our chosen goal is “to foster a personal relationship with God,” and, at the end of the year, our community gleans a deeper knowledge of how to incorporate our goal into our daily life and lives of those around the world.
We started our day with a Unity in Diversity Mass. During his liturgy, Father Dennis Mongrain celebrated the Solemnity of St. Joseph, noting the importance of patience in friendship and the positive effect friendships have on our souls.
After Mass, students led small-group discussions with topics such as God & Film; Catholicism & Culture: Latin Culture; Catholicism & Culture: Asian Cultures; Unity & Spirituality; Experiences of God in Islam; and The Black Experience in America. Next, our community gathered together again for an Interfaith Panel of six students (Isabella K. ’19, Mary C. ’20, Smriti K. ’20, Mariam K. ’19, Kellen C. ’18 and Presley B. ’21) from four different faiths – Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Hindi – to share their religion’s philosophy, traditions, and how they interpret and practice their faith as a Los Angeles teen in our modern era.
Sophomore Smriti K. highlighted the tradition of the Hindi Holi Festival, the spring Festival of Colors. Together, everyone excitedly moved to Senior Lawn where vivacious Bollywood dancer, Ms. Aakansha Maheshwari, taught the Marymount community the Indian dance forms of Bharatanatyam and Garba. We ended our day with a traditional, colored-powder throw and a school-wide dance party, as our girls laughed and moved among friends and bursts of color.
Holding to Marymount’s RSHM mission, our community is dedicated to diversity and an inclusive, multi-dimensional experience. Our students embrace the richness of human differences and celebrate each other’s race, culture, socioeconomic status and beliefs. Because we are an RSHM school, we take time to consider important elements of our mission in order to better serve our community and world, and this Mission-in-Action Day proved to do just that!
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