A personal essay from Marsha Johnson, teacher.........

People ask.........how shall Shining Star grow?  Where will we go?  What will happen tomorrow, next month, in the summer, next year, in the future? 

I don't know.  At least I am not sure.  I am comfortable with this, I do not feel that I must know or already be sure! 

The thought that we must be sure is one that I question.  Perhaps one could ask, how many times a minute will your heart beat next January?  It falls into the same line of logic for me, I shall know that answer after January has passed, and then I can say.

A school has a heart that beats.  A community has a pulse and respirations.  Sometimes we can oh so easily run marathons and hardly become breathless!  Sometimes we can barely stagger out to answer the front door! 

A school has a living quality, a living warmth and being that is an independent spirit-based entity.  A real being, in a way!  If you wonder about this, be with the children during one of our rich and deeply moving festivals or ceremonies.....during the Winter Spiral of Lights, the Winter Garden where we gather to observe a very solemn spiral journey of each little soul in our community, when the greens on the floor and the beeswax candles and the freshly carved apple holders fill that physical space with enormous content, enormous presence, enormous spiritual presence, you can literally taste and perceive and sense the beautiful community being!  In the singing, in the movement during Eurythmy, in the gleam of the candle flame in the eyes of the beautiful faces of our community members, we can be absolutely certain that the school is a living creation.

Hearts are responsive.  They are quietly and efficiently responsive listeners, who instantly know what is needed and what is to be accomplished to meet the needs of the body.

The Shining Star School I love and respect is a responsive spirit, ready to take up the tasks or meeting the needs of what comes from the body of the parents, children, teachers, and responsible community members.  We can respond to one another, and benefit from the blessings that then flow forth for all of us, in that springing up of new events, new classes, new ways. 

With a warm and steady heart rhythm married to the warmth and enthusiasm to create something different, and the sincere desire to remain flexible in our thinking and practices, to really listen effectively to one another with kind and imaginative responses, why, we shall find out, together, where Shining Star School goes and grows.  Just as the heart does not decide suddenly to leap out of the body and depart, our community shall not depart from its questing task to meet the needs of our children and our adult members for a rich array of spirit-based educational offerings. Head, heart, and hand, for humans of all ages!  For anyone who wishes to come.......we open our doors and our hearts, so easily and lovingly.

It is a journey of faith, of dedication, of perseverance, and self-awareness and awareness of the 'other', that we embark on.  Every day, every breath, every waking and sleeping moment.

We could compare it a bit to stepping out, of our safe-past, into a brand new world, a land of great possibilities and reward.  Stepping out, we may feel a bit off balance at time, or find ourselves a bit lost or in the dark parts of the forest, and yet, oh yet, we are so very much together and respond with tighter hand holds and encouraging words and inspiring songs, and guess what?  We go forward!

Losing and finding, wondering and praising, seeking guidance and confirmation, accepting responsibility for our own strengths and challenges, we still go FORWARD, together. 

That is where I believe Shining Star School will go and grow!  FORWARD.

Blessings on all your own furtherings in this earthly moments.

Mrs Marsha Johnson

October 2007