a new performing arts building at CFS?

Performing Arts, Centered

what do I think is most important?
for me, the teacher, it is each and every student,
and the long pursuit of what structures, external to them,
can most fully serve the best that is within them,
there can then be that incredible symbiosis
when that of God within works together with the choices of the self
and the light within shines out more and more brightly,

I have yet to find a structure better than drama,
for who I am,
for who we are,
to be the working structure
for the potential to become the actual,
and the actor, out of self,
in some wondrous sleight of self,
takes the risk of being true to his and her gifts,
and the impostor within can then realize
that he, that she is real and fulfilled in the journey,

now at Friends School, we dream of a performing arts center,
where the physical structures are so much more there already
than the make-do, make-up, jerry-rig reality we live now,
where we have the right time, space, and opportunity
to devote much more of our energies to helping each student realize their gifts,
instead of each time having to reinvent and build the physical steps up the mountain,
instead we can concentrate on the metaphorical steps
and more easily help each student climb,
climb until we break through to the top
and we’re at the summit
where more and more students
express the light of their gifts,

if we build it right
and if we use it well,
this new external structure
will even more fully allow us
to help our students be true
to themselves and to their gifts.

by Henry Walker
February 19, 2010