Students

So, I've been teaching these kids. These kids who are in this place that's not quite a juvie hall, but not quite a regular school, and definitely not prison. They've all got pasts, pasts that no kid in his teenaged years should have. But they do. And I'm there, with my buddies from the theatre, teaching them about Macbeth. About actions, about thoughts, about consequences, about humanity. I hope. And these kids get it. They really do. They see the cycles of violence. They see the violence of cycles. And, on a cellular level, they know what it means to literally go through hell. But the hard part is, knowing that they're just at this school for a bit. For a little while, for just enough time to "put a band-aid on" as the principal says, and then they go back out into the cold, cruel world. For most of them, that cold, cruel world is their own home. But while they're here, they get to learn about William Shakespeare. And about playwriting and acting. They get to watch a gaggle of four relatively-starving actors "do their stuff", and while we "do our stuff" we listen to them, we advise them, we write down their stories and put them together in a play that they then get to tell their whole school. So, I guess, we, like them, only have this little bit as well. We have this time, when we don't have to worry about our bills, about our cars in the repair shops, about our email or our long list of things we HAVE to do before we go off and do that other thing we HAVE to do so we can finally get to do what we WANT to do... We get to just be. With these kids. Listening. And watching. And just participating in a little day in the life. A day in theirs and in ours. A day. Where we GET to do this thing. This thing that is so very important to the spiritual survival of all of us: we get to bear witness to the suffering and joy of another. We get to remind them that they are not alone. And in doing that, we remind ourselves. We GET to do this thing.