October Letter to KWS Community
By Brad Kershner
Dear Families,
As the leaves make their way from branch to earth, and the warmth of the autumn sun finally subsides to allow for the coolness of November, I find myself wondering how you are doing, and how we are all doing, collectively. How are you? Hanging in there? Wondering how you’d even begin to answer such a question?
There is much to celebrate and appreciate in these first two months of school. We’ve already done so much! And there’s more to come as we move through the winter holidays, which are sure to be filled with meaningful main lessons, off campus adventures, artistic expressions, and enough assemblies and special events to ensure that we all have plenty of chances to revel in the camaraderie of our community, and to enjoy some of the simple pleasures of life that come with raising children within a small Waldorf school, nestled in the beautiful landscape that we call Kimberton.
And yet, our hearts are broken. The indescribable tragedies of the world around us continue to pound on the doors of our conscience and reverberate throughout the many layers of our collective psyche. The contrast between the daily blessings of our community life and the ongoing horrors of war and terror that scream their cries to our unprepared ears couldn’t be more stark or extreme. How could we ever make peace with this situation? How can we come to terms with the injustice of this existential discrepancy? I don’t know. I really don’t know, and I doubt that we can.
But there are some things I do know. I know that we can love and care for each other ever more and even better than we do, and that is worth striving for. I know that everything that we do here in our little corner of the world does matter. And I know that the seeds of peace are best planted in the ground beneath one’s feet, in soil that’s been tended and prepared by loving relationships, for that is where they are most likely to grow strong and tall.
There is much more to say, with many different kinds of truths to be shared and many different perspectives from which to understand our predicament, but I hope you don’t mind my attempt to say something, and I hope you will join me in continuing to work for peace close to home while seeking to understand the wars that rage around us. As was discussed at our recent community education event, there is no way to avoid our shared plight of living through a metacrisis, but the work we are doing here together is a small but meaningful part of what needs to happen for a new and more peaceful world to be born.
May peace be with you,
Brad Kershner
Dean of School
Kimberton Waldorf School
