A Roar So Warm

Dear Member of The Waldorf School of Santa Barbara Community,

The late and great Malidoma Some, a Dagara elder born in Burkina Faso, writes:

"When a baby is coming in the village, everyone gathers round the hut for the first wild cry. From the oldest to the youngest, all are there. When it cries we don't just hear an abstract yawp, we hear several questions: Where am I? Am I safe? Do you claim me? At that moment we respond with a roar so warm and sweet the child continues its transition from the spirit world to ours. We gather it in."

We sincerely hope our recent WSSB graduates -- Owen Anton, Rowan Brownlee, Andrew Gielow, Lillian Hendershot, Esme Mazurkiewicz, Isaac Relis, and Kai Tautrim -- heard our "roar so warm"; felt that we helped claim and gather them in. And we hope that their time at WSSB will help them flourish in high school and beyond.

May the lives of these graduates be full of compassion, humor, and good hard work. May they remember that the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. For their own sake and the sake of those around them, may they always strive to be at home in themselves, tending the suffering that accompanies being human. May they find a calling and not a career. May they really commit to their own particular stomp. And may they always keep in the front of their minds the beauty and mystery of being alive.

What Waldorf education founder Rudolf Steiner did in the aftermath of the First World War -- help create a new society within the shell of the old -- is what we are tasked with now, in 2022, in this time of great speed and turbulence. While the challenges of our time are dizzying indeed, we are lucky to have a community -- a slow community that claims and gathers in its children. We thank you for being a part of this community, for making it what it is; and we look forward to seeing you again at the summer's end.

In gratitude,

The WSSB Admin Team

PS The poem of the day is by Buson of Japan (1716 - 1784):

This is happiness
crossing the stream in summer
carrying my straw sandals