The Light within students

 

The Light Within

there before me on the desktop computer

I see four former students from my first decade of teaching

who are vibrant and real, even in the two dimensions on Zoom,

their personalities, their selves,

add dimensions of depth and time,

yet, most truly, they add the dimension of the Light within them

that blazes before me with a fierceness all should be able to live,

Henry Walker, Rebecca Laszlo, Lisa Long Jackson,
Michael (Misi) Polgar, Gretchen Klopfer Wing

they each know themselves, like themselves,

live their selves with a wholeness

I hope for all people to be able to find,

certainly for the students I still have before me,

they are each true to their own self,

and they each love the other as a part of who they are,

even the other they don’t know yet,

but who they continually realize is just as much

a part of the larger self as each of them is,

inclusivity, diversity, social justice:

wording that reaches to hold

the wholeness that calls to them,

I work in Zoom to let them speak

as to who they were and are within Friends School,

as to who they are now within the tumult 

of their present lives some forty years later 

than our earlier time together,

tomorrow, CFS middle school will welcome many students

back into person-to-person learning,

each student a bundle of hopes and fears, 

strengths and needs,

each a center of the universe,

the path forward for a middle schooler

is never as straight-forward as a line,

now the paths forward proliferate with possibility,

far too many possibilities and adventures 

those one would not choose if given the choice,

we believe in the Light within each student

that circumstance can too easily block from releasing itself,

whether the circumstance of their own lives or their schooling,

our goal tomorrow, and the next day, and the next week,

and every moment we are given with such amazing young people

is to help them find the Light within,

the Light that aches to shine forth from them,

just as that Light today shines so clearly

from my former students on the screen before me,

education is a sacred calling,

and the Light within students can answer that call.

by Henry H. Walker

October 7, ‘20