The Single Garment
Dear Members of The Waldorf School of Santa Barbara Community,
In this morning’s assembly we learned about Martin Luther King Jr. from Ms. Kaster and the Eighth Grade class. We heard about his life; heard a portion of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963 (recited by the Eighth Grade); and heard (sung by the Eighth Grade) the stirring South African anti-apartheid song, “Freedom is Coming.” This Monday, January 16th, our country will celebrate the day Dr. King was born.
Hearing about Martin Luther King Jr. from the mouths of thirteen and fourteen year olds is not the same as reading about him in a school newsletter. When you hear children speak his words, they live again, they startle, they make you sit up straight. Hearing children speak his words, they’re no longer familiar timeworn wisdoms but the shocking gifts of an enormous unsleeping heart. Hearing children speak his words, you realize the stakes of his words, the implications. (The implications of his words are standing right there before you, in their teenagerish clothes, with their gawkiness and grace, their timidity and bravado; their trust and innocence.) Hearing children speak his words one realizes that we adults -- you and I -- “must have the sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate.” (As King famously noted we are embraced by “the single garment of history,” so a tear in the fabric affects all.) Hearing children speak his words (“with this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood…”), one asks: To whom am I closing my heart? What resentments am I rehearsing and nursing harmfully? What person or group of persons am I holding hostage with my judgment, exclusion, and unbrotherhood?
Thank you, Ms. Kaster and the Eighth Grade for making us reflect on and honor King’s legacy. May we all do so again this Monday, in recognition of his birth.
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And thank you to those who have given to this year's Annual Fund Campaign. Our goal is $80,000 with 100% participation from every parent (as well as staff and board member) at our school. Please know that this campaign is of primary importance as it helps us cover our operating cost. And please do not see giving as some abstract duty you perhaps ought to fulfill. Instead see it as an opportunity to concretely support the wellbeing of your child and her/his classmates. Please also see it as a way to support WSSB’s faculty and staff who work in service of your child and her/his classmates. Amid unprecedented inflation and a soaring cost of living, help us keep (and hire) the faculty and staff who make our great school what it is. We owe it to the children (and the world they inhabit) to expend every resource available to support WSSB's Slow Education. Please visit this link to support your child:
https://waldorfsantabarbara.org/annual-giving-fund
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In gratitude,
The WSSB Admin Team
PS The Thought of the Day is from Martin Luther King Jr.:
"This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: 'Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.' Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day."