With the news of Mikayla Martin’s passing has come an outpouring of support from parents, friends and the greater Waldorf community. People have asked us, “what can I do to help?” This need to come together and act in the face of a shocking event is a beautiful and important impulse that helps ourselves and our children process and find hope, while giving comfort to those who are hurting. Actions such as making a meal, creating a card, helping with a chore, or removing a burden are powerful gifts of love.
Waldorf has also taught me that our thoughts can be the most powerful action of all, particularly when something seems too big to bear. Wednesday at our school was perhaps the most beautiful day that I have experienced in our community, even though it was very sad. The grounded, caring presence of mindful adults and the wise stories we work with thickened the air with love and support, creating space for the children’s grief and questions to unfold. Our loving thoughts are very real, and they will help our children, Christine, Mikayla and her family more than we can know. Nature, too, is the wisest of story tellers, and I encourage families to practice presence with their children outdoors. When we observe salmon returning to the streams where they were born, when we watch the leaves turn and next year’s seeds fall to the ground, children see and understand the truth of transience and what persists, and they are strengthened by knowing there is beauty and wisdom behind it all.
It is poignant and significant that Mikayla, whose name echoes St. Michael, passed from us in this season of Michaelmas, for she embodies the same virtues of courage, perseverance and compassion. Here is the courage meditation given to us by Rudolf Steiner:
We must eradicate from the soul all fear and terror of what comes to us from the future
We must acquire serenity in all feelings and sensations about the future
We must look forward with absolute equanimity to everything that may come and
We must think only that whatever comes is given by world direction, full of wisdom.
This is what we must learn in this age, namely to live out of pure trust
Without any security in existence, trusting in the ever present help of the spiritual world.
Truly, nothing else will do if our courage is not to fail.
Let us discipline our will and seek the awakening from within ourselves
Every morning and every evening.