a keeper of the flame
who is the "keeper of the flame" at CFS these days?
John Baird, longtime head of the school at CFS,
wrote me years ago and addressed the physical letter to me,
Henry Walker, "The Keeper of the Flame,"
what I heard in that is that Friends School
has a sacred charge to not just be a regular school but more,
not restricting ourselves to making sure students
are given the right support for "reading, writing, arithmetic,"
but also following a charge to support
the "finer qualities of our nature" in the students, and in the staff,
Thoreau's term for the potential part of us
that notices and resists such as the government willy-nilly
taking over another country, as the US did to Mexico during Thoreau's time,
that notices, appreciates, and preserves the natural world,
like Thoreau did at Walden Pond,
that sees, that knows, that loves, the piercing truth of art, of nature,
of ancestors', and of our own insights,
revelations of the profundity available to us,
if we can stay open to such revelation,
the softer sides of ourselves, the vulnerable, the unsure,
the part of us that can risk
becoming larger, that can put one block on top of another
until a new thing is created,
a soft mirror of the Creator in the Beginning,
as a teacher, I focused on the glory of each individual student,
as a colleague, I focused on what charges we should heed
as to what structures and callings could lead us to the heights and the depths
a good school needs if we are to support and implement
how to become a great school,
a school needs to both concentrate its efforts
on the individual light of each student,
and also on the collective light that should call us to blaze bright,
on the subtle but vital "finer qualities of our nature,"
it is wondrous when a teacher is there for a student, for a class,
it is important also, when a school finds as many as it can find
to be there for the wholeness of a school's vision,
and works to make it so,
the flame needs attention.
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