Stardust

Life is incredibly fragile. But it is also profoundly hardy. Go figure.

Last night we attended the school’s annual Spring Gala, a delightful affair with good food, terrific company and a fabulous collection of baskets, services, tickets, trips and hundreds of other tempting items that can be obtained through silent and live auction. Parents and school folks alike work for months to make this happen, and everyone looks forward to the evening.

So do the Sisters. We founded this School forty years ago, and they are thriving. This benefit evening is wildly succcessful, and we are deeply grateful for our excellent administrators, staff, teachers, students and parents. On this night there’s always something being auctioned that fits in nicely with our own focus of Earth education through sustainable and simple living. So we join in the fun, bid on a few things, renew friendships, and probably eat more than we should. It’s a wonderful night.

Unfortunately and quite unexpectedly, one of our youngest Sisters, sitting quietly at a table, passed out. There was immediate help for her; the chef was a paramedic, two nurses and a doctor appeared from the group of party-goers, one parent called 911, and the entire group supported the mini-drama with prayers.

Our Sister was taken to the hospital where she’s suffering the predictable poking and prodding to see if anyone can discover what caused her loss of consciousness. She seems fine this morning and is a bit embarrassed about the whole thing, though they’re still x-raying and scanning and drawing blood to complete the detective process. God willing they find nothing and life will go on as before. Almost.

This Sister is unusually hardy; last summer she spent nearly every day, all day, out in the sun in our first-year garden. That’s a lot of back-breaking work in really hot weather. She didn’t faint then. She teaches every day and only misses a day when our Community activities demand it. She doesn’t faint there. She does everything everyone else does throughout their lives — she cooks and cleans and plays and studies … and she doesn’t faint during any of those efforts.

We may never know what caused last night’s episode. Probably not, in fact. There is so very much we don’t know about the grandeur and mysteries of our bodies. So we enjoy our hardiness when that’s what’s happening, and we remember that this, too, shall pass.

By the way, we won a gorgeous outdoor moss-lined planter, already filled with an assortment of beautiful plants. It is designed to stay outside year-round, so we’ll watch those lovely plants bloom and grow, mature, wither, die back, rest, and reappear next spring as if by magic.

I think we’ll put this by our new kitchen garden, where everyone who comes to school or to see us can enjoy it. When I look at it, I will remember that life is an upward spiral with no real beginning or end. Birth – life – death – transformation – resurrection – birth – life – death- transformation … from stardust we are formed, and to stardust we shall return.