The Glue That Holds ESA Together

How do you boil down 30 years of lessons, stories, chapels, trips, and all the people into a final message? Well, as you may know by now, I’ve always loved to relate seemingly random things to our life together here at ESA. So today, I’m going to start with one of those seemingly random things and tell you about a book that I read last summer. It’s called Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake. It is a book written in a “Mycological Gonzo Journalism” style. Mycological refers to the study of fungus, and Gonzo Journalism is a writing style where the author puts himself or herself in the middle of the story, becomes part of the story, and Merlin certainly does this. This book is a fascinating look at the hidden roles that fungi play in shaping our entire world, from the vast underground networks and symbiotic relationships they form to the way they solve problems, communicate, and manipulate other life forms. It’s really an extraordinary book (especially for me whose PhD is in Evolutionary and Environmental Biology), and it opened my eyes to the amazingly complex world of these seemingly simple life-forms, and how easy it is for us to overlook them and their importance to our everyday life. Fungi are literally the glue that holds ecosystems together, and without them our world would not exist as we know it.

Which gets my wheels turning and makes me ask, so what is the glue that holds ESA together?

Areté is a strong contender, but I don’t think that’s it, actually. Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely a huge part of who we are—excellence, virtue, and becoming the best version of ourselves (that’s huge)—but I think there is another force at play here that makes this place so special. So, if it’s not Areté, could it be Love? We talk about this all the time. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Again, this is one of the most important things about ESA, and a good argument could be made that love is the glue that holds ESA together. But I have a different idea.

Let me take you on a journey through my brain and tell you how I got to my idea.

A few months ago, the Revised Common Lectionary specified that the readings for the 4^th Sunday after the Epiphany should be the Beatitudes found in Matthew, chapter 5. In case you have no idea what I just said, a lot of churches in the Christian tradition follow the same schedule of readings each week, so whether you are Methodist or Catholic or Episcopalian, or another variety, you might hear the very same readings in any church. That’s the lectionary part. The Beatitudes are the beginning of what’s known as the Sermon on the Mount, which represents the central teachings of Jesus. The very core of what he had to teach us can be found here. And they begin with “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Anyway, to end this section, Jesus tells his followers that they are the light of the world and the salt of the earth. This is where we get our song, this little light of mine. I don’t know of a song about salt, but it was a hugely important product back then and an important metaphor for preservation, covenant, purity and distinctiveness. So, as I’m hearing all of this, my mind wanders to the perfect ending of that section, Jesus saying, “Stay salty, my friends.” Which reminded me of a phrase that Mr. Jordan uses, “Stay Frosty,” which in turn got my wheels turning to a phrase that has a similar construction. All of this stream of consciousness led me to:  “Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold.” That line comes from the movie adaptation of a book that many of you have read, one that I read in middle school called, The Outsiders written by SE Hinton in 1967.

It’s about two groups of kids, the Greasers and the Socs who were in constant warfare with each other. The Greasers were from the “wrong side of the tracks,” and the lead character of the book, Ponyboy, was a Greaser whose best friend Johnny (spoiler alert) dies after being injured in a fire while saving some kids. Ponyboy reads a note that Johnny left him before he died that talks about staying gold, and in the movie adaptation, on his deathbed, Johnny tells Ponyboy to “stay gold.” In the book and in the movie, we find out that the idea of staying gold comes from an eight-line poem by Robert Frost that they read in school.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

It’s a poem about how innocence and purity fade as we grow up in the cynical world. The last two lines capture that idea perfectly as the beauty of the dawn, with all of its colors, fades in the harsher sunlight of the day. While that loss of perfect innocence is inevitable, Johnny urges Ponyboy to hold on to it as long as he can. It’s really beautiful writing. Super interesting fact is that SE Hinton began writing this book when she was 15 years old and finished it when she was 17. Pretty amazing work for a teenager. But what does that have to do with my original question? What is the glue that holds ESA together?

I think it is about choosing to stay gold. While that is virtually impossible to do individually because of the toll that life takes on all of us, I believe as a community, we can choose to stay gold. We can create a place filled with ideas and ideals, a place of joyful challenge where we support one another and hold each other accountable. A lot of that, frankly, is because we have our golden students, who come to school every day trying to live out the ideals of Areté and Love. There are those two words again. We talk a lot about the “ESA Bubble” here. In fact, we’ve been criticized over the years for the unrealistic and naïve environment we create, but I have to say that while it may be unrealistic compared to the rest of the world, it is most certainly NOT naïve. Naiveté ignores experience; naiveté ignores red flags; naiveté is unaware of the world.

Living in the Bubble, or, staying gold, is a dynamic, active choice we make every single day. We acknowledge the world and all of its imperfections, yet we choose to live in the innocence and purity of the world that we are trying to create. We choose to model that for our students, so they can model it for the world when they leave here. We choose to create a world where we love and respect every person’s journey, a world where we each strive to become the very best versions of ourselves. So, in the end, a world of Areté and Love, the natural outcomes of that very intentional choice. The glue that holds this place together is the choice we make, every day, with every action, and every word we speak. Areté and Love. Having tough minds and tender hearts. Living in a community that loves and respects every person and holds every person accountable. All the paradoxes that go along with that idea. That’s what holds this place together. So, ESA, my best advice to you as I step away is to keep making that choice. Stay gold, ESA, stay gold.

Areté and Love