to open the doors

Science Day ‘18

we want our middle school students

to function as scientists,

not just like scientists,

just as we want the writer, the artist, the athlete

within them to express itself,

today we celebrate the journey toward truth,

recently travelled by half the school

in their individual experiments,

and workshop 16 different paths 

of experience and understanding,

shared by gifted volunteers,

whose lives speak of the power of science

to do good, to live wonder,

to find keys that open doors,

behind which understanding has been hiding, 

our Science Day begins with Glenn Murphy

honoring Stephen Hawking, whose body left us this week,

but whose mind we followed for a time with Glenn

through centuries of figuring out

where Earth, Sun, planets, and stars

move in relationship to each other,

Glenn, the scientist at his core,

poses a problem to our students:

“Could the dinosaurs have seen the constellation Orion?”

and pushes them to call up questions

that need to be followed

so that a plausible answer to that question can be found, 

generating the right question at the heart of inquiry,

in the afternoon, Bryan Sexton enthralls us all

with the research on stress and burnout,

on the causes of energies diminished or rejuvenating,

the power of the positive, of a friend,

of seeing the stars above more than the mud beneath,

the kids rapt with their attention,

with the resonance within them to the ideas,

his orientation of self with the wholeness

that all of us know

and that we hope will be 

the driver of who we are,

the day finishes with a fun fashion show,

as group after group uses natural and recycled items

to make and share creations

that pull laughter and applause from the group,

Science Day in C.F.S. Middle School

celebrates the scientist within us all,

the scientist who loves to learn,

to ask, to risk, to joy,

to find the way forward

so that all can come closer

to the wholeness that is.

by Henry H. Walker
March 16, ‘18
(Bryan Sexton photo courtesy of Google Images.)

I rise with the turkey vulture

late February in the Piedmont

a turkey vulture glides above the trees,

soaring on whatever currents of warmed, rising air are available,

taking what’s it’s given to soar,

and to find the carrion the wind reveals to it,

the plant world plays the odds,

somehow deciding when it’s worth

sprouting, budding, blooming, risking,

it feels the lengthening days and encroaching warmth,

open to revelation, to risking theNorth Wind

which can nip hope in the bud,

we humans prefer to better our odds,

to plant flowers that come early and that endure the cold, the deer,

to ship ourselves fruits and vegetables and meat from around the world,

in my mind, strawberries taste different

when they’re only available fresh for a few weeks,

sugar snap peas, fresh from the garden, continue to call to me,

evidence that a garden still can be worth the effort,

it’s spring in the world around me,

the years behind me, and the face in the mirror,

speak more of fall than of spring.

by Henry H. Walker

February 24, ‘18

the child, and the adult, within

LEGOs lose how to call

child development levels empower,

even when touched with the tragic:

two sisters play together,

the older fondly remembers the younger within,

the younger embraces the commonality,

till when the older anticipates 

the even older without coming within her,

and the commonality slips away,

her eyes see adolescence and adulthood coming,

and she turns away, for a time, 

from the LEGOS behind her,

including all those elaborate constructions 

of the playful imagination,

that world of magic and possibility

that the child knows and lives so well,

the power within the older feels the pull of the sky,

she readies herself to soar!

later, she can land,

and embrace both the child and the adult

who is within each of us.

by Henry H. Walker, proud grandfather
March 2, ‘18

filling in the holes of ignorance

eldered by the new teenager

what is more cooperative and right

than the search for knowledge, truth?

every individual step forward moves us all forward,

understanding fills the holes within us that ignorance digs,

I love to understand where I am ignorant,

where I don’t know the way 

to where gifts of knowledge can be opened,

I love to be helped to find a path forward,

for example, I love space,

 and I know a lot about the worlds beyond us,

yet what a delight it is

 to have my 13 year old granddaughter

matter-of-factly tell me wonders I did not yet know:

of diamonds raining within Uranus,

of Venus upside-down, rotating backwards,

compared to how other planets move,

it’s as if I sit at her feet,

and I feel wonder,

it feels cooperative, and right.

by Henry H. Walker

March 3, ‘18

Svea Oster, a celebration of life

Svea’s Beautiful Circle

hundreds of us are pulled today,

away from the tangents we individuals can live,

toward a center where circle within circle

holds within them picture and thought and love

of a life still within our hearts,

a body who has passed

with a spirit who still animates

connection and community she built with her life,

one speaker quotes a note which speaks to her

of a light so bright that the light lives on, 

despite the death,

a life that cared, that nurtured,

that worked to facilitate and celebrate birthing:

the emergence into the world of spirit made flesh,

of love manifested in each little one unveiled

in the labor that centers the universe for each parent,

one speaker asks for a show of hands of those present

who Svea helped with the birthing,

those most miraculous moments we need to hold close,

and never allow distance to separate us from their power,

and the room erupts with hand after hand,

each of which echoes baby after baby birthed with her help,

parent after parent speaks of the continuing work

parent and child undertake, and of Svea’s help with it all,

Svea Oster’s light burns in the meeting,

on a day gray and drizzly, 

as if to contrast with her pure light,

one speaker speaks of an image of Svea in her garden,

surrounded by flowers, whose radiance adds to hers,

that speaker pushes us all with the truth that appeared to her:

that Svea’s beauty reached back to infuse the flowers,

one phrase encapsulates it all for me,

the Beautiful Circle,

the geometry of a life lived so well

that it helps us all become better.

with love, by Henry H. Walker

March 11, ‘18

the idea of God

an underlying order to the universe

there is a rightness to the universe,

a divine order I would call God,

but that rightness is not in control,

it needs our hearts, our hands,

to line up people with the underlying rule,

a rightness to which atoms and molecules dance,

with which a plant grows, an animal moves,

we humans stepped out of the unity

and gained power with choice and will,

we need to fit ourselves back into the rightness,

or the universe will not weep for our passing.

by Henry H. Walker

February 17, ‘18