Sunday, August 29, 2010

Carolina Friends School

the circle continues

I celebrate the circle around me,







the circles of staffing before this one,

the circles that will come after those who are here now,
as change waves over the school again and again,
I hope for the school, at the heart,
to stay the same, true to the directions,
though the hands doing the lifting and carrying, change,

this school dares to seek the truth continually revealed,
dares to be audacious enough to realize there is that of God in everyone,
and to seek and find it in staff and student, and parent,
dares to be undaunted by feeling the wholeness of self as our charge,
each discrete skill a means in service to the holistic end
of each becoming the best possible,

I still miss fellow teachers who moved on decades ago,
I still joy in new teachers who enthusiastically throw themselves into the work,
I anticipate and value future teachers who will hear the call
and sing their response in ways that will hold to what needs keeping
and find sureness in what new needs to be,

everyone of us is born with the ideal within us,
that can seem to demand more
than our energies can feel up to providing,

the possibilities can diminish as each runs a gauntlet of forces
that make it hard to release that best--
the gauntlet of body or spirit, family or culture,
the way we are treated,
or from our own decisions,

the great challenge and success of our school?
we get the truth that each person is wonderful at heart
and that our job is to clear the path
so that the best within can burst forth
with a smile, a tear, a laugh,
with the right effort to succeed,
and the world is better for each birth of each best,

the circle holds against dissolution.

by Henry Walker
August 28, ’10

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