Rose Ceremony

Every year, our rhythm begins and ends with a Rose Ceremony.

8th and 5th graders, who are student leaders on our campus, welcome the first graders. The 5th graders hand out a rose as a welcome to the grade-school.  5th graders will become the first graders’ buddies this year and continue as their buddies for the next four years.

The fifth grade and first grade student buddies will meet throughout the year to go on nature walks, jump rope, carve pumpkins, create chalk art, and do other activities that allow them to enjoy their time together.

If Ever Any Rose

by Melissa Kay

If ever any rose has touched your heart –
A sudden fragrance, or a sunlit hue,
Receive it now, enfold it in your soul.
It is the emblem of our hope, our dearest goal.

Consider how from hard dark wood it grows,
Climbing its thorny stem from leaf to leaf,
Until within its yielded calyx shows
An inward leap: a bud – not green – but red,
or white, or gold.

Now from the bud the blossoming begins,
As if an angel would unfold its wings –
Petal upon petal, breath by breath,
A light-borne fragrance floods the hallowed air.

In each of us (and among us all) a bud awaits our tending:
The sweet ascent of love – all thorns
transcending.

Families of students in grade 1 and grade 8 are invited to this special event.