a school based on Quaker principles

 

a calling to the Founders

Peter Klopfer insists he, Martha, and the other Founders of CFS

had no vision of what Carolina Friends School would actually be,

what I understand from the caution in his words

is that they could not envision exactly

what the school would look like,

that it wasn't as if the blueprint for the future came to them

like etched stone tablets that answered all questions,

instead, I feel they had a compelling vision

first of a segregated world that should not be,

and second divine leadings of directions toward which to go,

though they were quaking,

how to get from here to there

was not spelled out for them,

like a route from a GPS app,

instead, they saw their own children clearly

and determined to do their best for them,

within the moral reality Quaker leadings gave them,

and, if they took care of their own children,

such a school would draw and benefit all children

whose parents, too,  felt such a calling as they felt

for what is best for their own children,

in a Friends meeting, all work to be open to revelation:

a person speaks from the heart,

and another heart can build upon that leading,

even at the end of the meeting rarely is it as if

we come down from Mt. Sinai with all the answers,

a school is set up, director and teachers hired,

logistics of organization and classrooms decided upon,

classes and years happen,

the school evolves in fits and starts,

always working to be true to a vision

of what it could mean for a school

to be based on Quaker principles:

that there is that of God in everyone,

that truth is continually revealed,

and we should notice and act upon those revelations,

I feel we should honor and celebrate the Founders

who just knew that a school could be as good

as each heart is, as each person is,

at the most basic that God knows,

that we should do our best to see and treasure each individual,

and the whole that each can help build, when shackles are cast away,

Carolina Friends School follows a Light

glimpsed, celebrated, and acted upon

with what I treasure as the vision of the Founders.

by Henry H. Walker

September  19, ‘24