Unbreakable Connection
Dear Members of The Waldorf School of Santa Barbara Community,
Ballard Sensei -- WSSB’s Handwork and Japanese teacher -- recently gave seventeen handmade blankets to a woman named Patty. Patty volunteers for the Linus Project, a nonprofit that provides handmade blankets for children in need. Soon these seventeen blankets will be shared with patients in the pediatric unit at Ventura County Medical Center. And these blankets were made by WSSB’s Eighth Grade under Ballard Sensei’s guidance.
To make the nine-patch blankets the students learned about fabrics (their colors and patterns), learned about sewing machines, and learned about the importance of precise measurement. They also learned something about persistence: the blankets took many weeks to complete. Each student hand-sewed her/his name on the back (the soft and fuzzy side) of the quilt. “When I’m scared I still go under my blanket at home,” one Eighth Grader admitted, “and I feel safe. I imagine the kids in the hospital might feel the same way, too.”
Says Brene Brown: “I define spirituality as the belief that we’re inextricably connected to each other by something bigger than us. Some people call that bigger thing God. Some people call it fishing. Some people call it art. Spirituality is no more, no less, than the belief that we’re connected to each other in a way that’s unbreakable. You cannot break the connection between human beings, but you can forget it.”
Thank you, Ballard Sensei, and the Eighth Grade for ensuring that we don’t forget that unbreakable connection between human beings.
On another note, we recently overheard this from a younger student on the playground at recess: “I want to be in the Olympics, I want to be an astronaut, I want to scuba-dive, and I want to find out where exactly Santa lives.”
In gratitude,
The WSSB Admin Team
The Thought of the Day
“When you feel despair, fear, or depression, it may be because you have ingested too many toxins through your sense impressions. Not only children need to be protected from violent and unwholesome films, TV programs, books, magazines, and games. We, too, can be destroyed by these media. We are exposed to invasions of all kinds -- images, sounds, smells, touch, ideas -- and many of these feed craving, violence, fear, and despair in us. The Buddha advised us to post a sentinel, namely mindfulness, at each of our sense doors to protect ourselves. Use your Buddha eyes to look at each nutriment you are about to ingest. If you see that it is toxic, refuse to look at it, listen to it, taste it, or touch it…We must come together as individuals, families, cities, and a nation to discuss strategies of self-protection and survival.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh
(Written before the advent of the Internet, the above insight feels even more relevant.)