Simon walked into the dining hall and wandered the room watching the many tables of young people eating and chatting with one another. Suny’s table looked rather subdued, almost hushed. Benjamin’s table of usually boisterous boys looked exhausted. They must have spent their free day at the creek again.
He waited until most of the plates were cleared and the last glasses of milk had been downed. Then he went to the back of the hall near the large window which opened into the kitchen. He had learned long ago that calling for attention was seldom effective. All he needed to do was to put his hands out to “hold the silence” and one by one, all the members of the camp would notice, stand, and put their own palms flat out in front of them. Within minutes, the entire camp was holding the silence and all the noise, busy energy had fled the room. It was magical.
When he had their attention and silence, he said, “Good evening my children. I hope you have had a wonderful free day and were able to fill up on all that nature has provided as nourishment for us poor human beings.”
A couple of the boys laughed and he smiled at them. “Tonight, I have decided to have a special game session. We will do a Tandem Storytelling game.”
In spite of the out held palms, the excitement in the room was palpable. The children were smiling and nodding at him. They loved Tandem games where each boy teamed up with one of the girls and they told stories in tandem using the Storyboard Game. Generally, the boys and girls were kept fairly separate. It was not that the cabin parents did not trust the mixing up of young boys and girls, it was just that they found that students concentrated better when there was no posturing or preening for one another. Even very young children acted differently when in the company of the opposite sex. It was human nature. So the occasions where boys and girls worked together were fairly rare and thus, special fun.
Simon had the boys form a circle and the girls form another circle within the male ring. He went to the special cupboard that held his fiddle, took it down from the shelf, opened the case, and quickly tuned the strings. The students were already tapping their toes. The circle dances were also a favored activity—and one that led to a storyboard game was even better. Simon began to play and the girls began to weave in and out of the boys circle, hooking arms and swinging in and out of the hooked arms of the boys. As he picked up the tempo, the cabin parents began to sing along and clap their hands. Whenever Simon reached a certain point in the song, he paused and the circle reversed and began to weave back the way it had come.
When the song ended, the children knew that the arm they were linked to when the music stopped would be their story partner for the night’s game. Simon took his time replaying several refrains to allow the children to release their shyness and tension and to find the right rhythm for the upcoming game. He thought of it as aligning the energies prior to beginning.
Finally he ended the song and watched as the boys took their partners back to the tables. Together they cleared all the supper dishes, wiped the tables, pushed them together to allow for the larger groups, and then each student stood quietly when they were finished, palms out to signal they were ready. The entire clean-up and preparation for the game was done in fifteen minutes.
“Well done, children. Well done.” Simon said. “You may sit. Cabin fathers—you may get your game boards.”
A small reflection:
Notice what changes when silence is held rather than demanded. What in your own life settles when no one rushes it to begin?
Notice what changes when silence is held rather than demanded. What in your own life settles when no one rushes it to begin?
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