RESOURCES

In her teenage years my mother was arrested on the corner of Haight and Ashbery. She was also student body president of her exclusive private school. She was, even then, modeling her capacity to run with both the sheep and the wolves, the coyotes and the rabbits. She was already becoming committed to the idea that there is no us and them, no good and bad, no wrong belief that needs correcting. She was learning how to see every human as truly worthy of her compassion and attention. This gift that she developed over the coming years became the heart and lungs of The School of Lost Borders. It filled dad’s skeleton of a dream, to bring rites of passage to the people, and over the last 45 years has held participants with true grace and wisdom. 

It feels controversial to suggest that we as humans must forgive one another our darkest truths. We must forgive the ICE agent for killing an innocent. We must forgive the fisherman for harvesting shark fins. But mom would point out that there is always more to the story, and she would want to hear it. She would welcome the sheep and the wolf, the coyote and the rabbit, the sinner and the saint to her campfire, and they would leave with tears in their eyes.

I’ve never known mom without her work as a guide. She’s scarcely known herself. It’s time. It’s time for her to retire, and it’s time for the School to find a new foundation. The torch has been passed in both great silence and with great fanfare. No doubt dad would find the right poem for this moment. Perhaps this one: 

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise

You, jaded, lét be; call off thoughts awhile

Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size

-Gerard Manley Hopkins, [“My own heart let me more have pity on”]

Selene Foster

1/28/2026