Setting Hearts Right

Dear Member of The Waldorf School of Santa Barbara Community,

In these last days of the year together, Grade 1 is practicing the song “The Humble Bumblebee” on the flute (striving to develop good embouchure, which is the way in which a player applies her mouth to the mouthpiece of the instrument); Grade 2 is learning to write better sentences by fashioning thank-you letters; Grade 3/4 is concluding a camping trip at the Santa Barbara Zoo (apparently they slept by the lions); Grade 5/6 is resting after the Pentathlon and Medieval Games (two different athletic contests involving other Waldorf schools wherein WSSB was -- forgive the boasting -- notably the best); and Grade 7/8 is having a “pajama day” after a successful run of the play “Snow White.” In general, there is a feeling of happiness on campus, of giddiness and repletion.

Many assert that the rectification of the global can only begin in the local. “To put the world in order,” Confucius says in his Great Learning, “we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life: we must first set our hearts right.”

Here at WSSB we aim to rectify and heal our beautiful, anguished world by making of this school a sanctuary for the children of the Santa Barbara area, a place where we can “set hearts right.” And based on the activities listed above and the joy that is in the air, WSSB is doing just that.

In gratitude,

The WSSB Admin Team

PS The poem of the day is by Spanish poet Antonio Machado:

FIELD
The afternoon is dying like a small fire in the hearth.
There between the mountains a few embers still glimmer.
And that broken tree on the white road makes you sob with compassion.
Two branches on a wounded trunk and a scorched black leaf on each branch!
Are you crying? Between the golden poplars, just down the road, the shadow of love
waits for you.