High School Musical!

 

transformation: the performing arts

Wow!

what a tour de force this upper school musical was!

as long as I have been at Carolina Friends School,

theater has been a prime way

for the individual to shine,

both in individual contributions,

and in what individuals together in a group

can accomplish collectively,

for then community is built,

the first plays at CFS were created

within whatever common spaces the school allowed,

or outside with the glory of space

and the limitations of minimal technology,

then we built a common space, the "Center,"

where the floor was great for dance,

the acoustics challenging, and the seating minimal,

in every venue greatness was created,

for the will worked hard to find the way,

the students at the center of it all, and amazing,

finally, a Performing Arts Center was laboriously planned,

and, for the first time, monies borrowed to enable the building,

this afternoon I joyed in what our high school created and presented,

High School Musical,

a vehicle for near 40% of their unit to let their lights shine:

on the stage, in technical creation and expression,

in the support of the vision in costume, in lighting,

in choreography, in the singing, in the music,

it is not the fabulous directors alone,

or the brilliance of the actors alone,

that created two hours of wonder upon the stage,

it was every hand, every heart,

that lifted the whole into knowing itself,

and expressing itself for the audience who completed the circuit,

the musical lived upon the stage,

once again the performing arts centered us,

and we are all better for such a transformation.

by Henry H. Walker

April 18, ‘26

piedmont vs mountains

 

returning to our Smokies

seasons turn,

for three months we have found ourselves home in the piedmont,

there where we have built a life together

with careers, children, each other,

we have burned wood from our own trees

when the cold of winter got to us,

we have started tomatoes inside early February

and planted them outside mid-March,

despite the fear of frost,

along with lettuce and sugar snap peas,

end of March? potatoes, green beans,

the first summer squash, cucumbers, pumpkins,

the trees around us, once hesitant

are halfway to near full leaf now,

we decide it is time to return to the Smokies,

the home of our heart,

spring here is much more hesitant high up the trees,

but spring here is much more luxuriant on the ground beneath:

phacelia, phlox, white and yellow trillium,

make their "hay" while the sun can get to them,

our souls and bodies now are more of autumn,

anticipating the freeze coming soon,

our hearts are still of the spring,

the ephemeral means even more to us

as we feel the ephemeral in our own bones.

by Henry H. Walker

March 31, ‘26

the cabin as expression of connection

 to love the earth

Lao Tzu reminds us to "love the earth" in our dwellings,

our Smoky Mountain retreat, 

what we call "the cabin,"

is a comfortable house: a good place to sit, sleep, eat, visit,

with window and porch and attitude

oriented to the rushing murmur of the clear creek flowing by,

all within the touch of the great forest

that owns this section of the Appalachian range massif,

the close-by rhododendron, beech, buckeye, sycamore,

have been my friends since childhood,

we have filled the walls with photos of named flowers,

of the ubiquitous bears and the occasional heron,

of the great mountain above, called "Walasiyi" by the Cherokee,

and photos of the family whose lives enrich us all,

while the earth and nature literally ground us,

we need to commit ourselves to a covenant 

within which we remember to be larger

than our finite years,

for we are also of the infinite, as Lao Tzu reminds us,

I started this writing because a friend gifted me

a great hornet nest from the Blue Ridge Parkway,

the dry remnant of a great colony,

scary in its prime,

I want to display it in our cabin,

I fear, though, that, rather than embracing

this creation from our long-distant cousins,

they who created this brooding home,

visitors at the cabin might instead fear,

for what we do not control can be frightening,

if we must "love the earth,"

we must trust that that means reaching for the larger self

toward which the best of all religions aches,

we need to expand and not limit who we are,

still, I do not yet know if displaying the great hornet nest

will move us forward, or into retreat from the unknown, 

and into fear rather than the desired awe.

by Henry H. Walker

April 4, ‘26

evolving the self

 

the gift of ignorance

what do we really know of another?

let alone, what do we ever really know of our self?

what do we really know at all?

we live in ignorance,

and we can easily convince ourselves 

instead that "we've got it,"

I feel that my father gave me a great gift,

the wisdom to embrace

the realizing that we are ignorant,

for then we have a hole that can be filled,

questions arise that thirst for answers,

and we become more of value

as understanding starts to fill the hole,

and our thirst is assuaged for awhile,

too much sureness is dangerous,

for then we are not curious,

it is in being curious and seeking to know better

that the evolution of our self stumbles forward.

by Henry H. Walker

April 2, ‘26

reprising creation

 

the artist within

there is the soul of an artist within each of us,

one who sees a rightness that can exist

and hopes to make it so,

I look at a magnificent bluff in Utah,

and I see pattern that aches to be noticed,

I see petroglyphs that ache to make it so,

this artist within grasps burgeoning pattern

and feels how it can come together,

upon paper, upon the stage,

within things that we make,

in whatever crafting of beauty we undertake,

with whatever tools are available,

and then it can be so,

for me, words are my tools,

I build frameworks to hold 

as much of what reveals itself to me

as I can contain within the net I build with words,

I still wonder about the source of the creative impulse,

something in the universe loves the building

of the random into complexity, chaos into order,

our pink dogwood spent the winter with tight terminal buds,

and now each bud releases the flower within,

to manifest as the flower without,

every blossom is defiance against entropy,

order against meaninglessness,

and, in the noticing, joy should coalesce within us,

we should notice, and mark, and commemorate

what we can know and celebrate

as order and meaning strive hard to birth themselves

into the world we all share,

the artist within can then exult

in every reprise of creation itself

however true or clumsy that reprise might be.

by Henry H. Walker

March 26, ‘26