The Sunlight and Pure Wind

Dear Members of The Waldorf School of Santa Barbara Community,

"One of the impulses of Rudolf Steiner education," says teacher and author Astrid Schmitt-Stegmann, "is its focus on healing."

Today, it’s fair to say, healing was had by all who partook of our Michaelmas Festival. The children began the day in a circle (Preschool through Grade 8), singing songs of autumn and of Saint Michael; they then ate jam-slathered dragon bread (multiple loaves baked and decorated yesterday on campus which were composed into the shape of the mythic beast); then the students (Grades 1 through 8) created-- in mixed-age teams -- baroque, funny, solemn, peaceful, rampageous dragons from clay (truly astonishing creations adorned with acorns, pine needles, chicken feathers, and other precious resources from campus); then they ate more jam-slathered dragon bread (and other snacks, among which were fresh apples generously given to the school by Katie Hames); and then they participated (still in their mixed-aged teams) in various challenges on the field: an obstacle course; hula hoop games; a burlap-sack race; a run-to-a-bucket-then-wring-a-wet-sponge-in-that-bucket-and-then-run-back race. Then they played a huge, glad, and very intense game of tug-of-war. Finally, they played a huge, glad, and very intense game of tug-of-war against the faculty/staff—and won. Twice actually. They beat us twice. "The heart has its jubilees," said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Today was one of those days.

"The health and well-being of children," writes social thinker David Orr, "not the gross national product, is the best indicator of the health of our civilization." Amen. And we at WSSB believe that our "Rudolf Steiner education," with its emphasis on the whole human being, with its approach of reverence, with its attunement to beauty and the spiritual dimension of life (attunement that we know is actually crucially practical), with its rigor, its fostering of will and self-discipline, with its technological prudence, and its rich festival life (festivals like Michaelmas)—we believe such an alternative, beyond-the-mainstream education contributes to such health and well-being. Emerson again: "Let us get out of these indoor narrow modern days, whose twelve hours have become shortened, into the sunlight and pure wind." Today every WSSB child knew the sunlight and pure wind.

(And a thousand, thousand bows to all who made this day happen!)

In gratitude,

The WSSB Admin Team

PS The poem of the day is a Waldorf meal blessing:

Earth who gives to us this food,
Sun who makes it ripe and good,
Dear Earth, dear Sun,
By you we live,
Our loving thanks
To you we give.