dr. paul’s blog

This past Wednesday morning (September 9th, 2026), I was grateful to join our Kitchen Manager, Pam Nears as she shopped at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market located near Ocean and Arizona avenues, just a block from the beach. I tagged along, carried some boxes, helped load the truck, and admired her tremendous rapport and connection with so many local farmers. On our visit to the market, we also ran into Chuck Barth, one of the co-founders of our food program. He was shopping specifically for proteins (meat and chicken) for the school, his area of expertise. Our tremendous “School of Lunch” (SOL) program was founded by Hilary Boynton and Chuck, and provides the most nutritious meals imaginable. There may not be a healthier school lunch program anywhere in the country. Every day, our Manzanita students are served these super flavorful, nutrient dense, locally sourced, and largely organic meals, made with great care and creativity. The food in MNZ’s meal program is extremely fresh, and is included under the tuition umbrella for all families. Both snack and lunch, as well as sandwich bars for Hawk Day students, are carefully crafted by loving hands. And our kitchen staff is comprised of a beautiful group of hard-working and super compassionate people. The students love the SOL team, and we do too! If you’d like to express your gratitude for the food, send an email to Dr. Paul, and I’ll pass it along to the SOL Team! 

Greetings, Manzanita community, and welcome to the new school year! It's thrilling to walk the campus and to see the students smiling, connected, even in the heat. I'm excited to be adding regular videos and blogs to our website, as we learn together about ideas that inform our school vision. Manzanita brings something unique to the world of education and to the students that join us and families that are part of our extended community. Today I'm going to talk about something that frames the big picture of why we do what we do at Manzanita. 

We talk a lot about story and the importance of telling what we've called “the new story.” And by new story, we mean what is it that we're narrating for ourselves about ourselves in this time, and why. Why are we choosing to talk about our time in the way that we do? And I say “we,” not me, not the school, just all of us. We're storytellers as a species. Here’s a great quote by Lisa Cron, who wrote Wired for Story, “story, as it turns out, was crucial to our evolution, more so than opposable thumbs. Opposable thumbs let us hang on. Story told us what to hang on to.” 

So what I wanted to share today is that one of the ways the present has been described, the present moment is that it's in transition. We're leaving behind the story of progress, the one that said with just the right technology, the right discoveries in medicine, we're going to be freed from the toil of work, we're going to be healed of all disease, everyone's going to be fed. And that story was built largely during the Scientific Revolution and in the following discoveries of the Industrial Revolution. And it has led to what we now call climate change, species extinction, global warming, and other challenges, including the famines and disruptions in cultures that are a result of climate change in certain parts of the world. So we know that the story, that original version, the story of progress, is inadequate. And we also have a story that we are a species of great capacity, and potential, and possibility.

So somewhere, lingering for many of us, is this vision of the future. Charles Eisenstein called it “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.” One way that's helpful for me is to see us as positioned between a story that's becoming somewhat extinct, which is the story that progress is going to solve everything, and the story that's not yet here, which is that humans are kind, compassionate, problem solving, creative, and innovative. And so we're in the place of trying to tell a version of a story that might bridge our way. I was recently at a retreat with a great mythologist, Michael Meade, and he said, the world we grew up in is gone, and the world we are seeking is not yet here. We are all in the liminal.

The liminal is the space that the initiate is in during the rite of passage. They're no longer a child, and they're not yet adult. They're in the liminal, ritual, transition space. And it's the space I think we're in. So it calls on us to bring something new, to align ourselves with creativity and emergence, to have faith and hope, and to hold on to love, care, and compassion. And with that, parents, I welcome you back to the new school year.