November 6, 2012
This post was contributed by Geraldine Kilcher, the latest addition to the Amani Institute team. You can view her bio here.
During semester breaks I have been working in a home for children from highly dysfunctional families – social orphans. Not only do they lack healthy family support but they also wage a daily battle with their history of neglect, abuse and adult capriciousness. One evening, after our daily ‘dragon knight training’ for a St. Michael’s celebration theater piece, one of the boys asked: “Geraldine, why are you actually going to Africa, and what do you want to do there?” How could I explain what I have learned to express in academic terms to these children? After a little pause I replied: “Uhm, I am going to help a friend build a school for…well, for dragon fighters. You know, there are real dragons out there in the world, like poverty, violence and wars, right? And people who decide to fight these dragons can do something like a knight training in this school. And you already know from our training here that you don’t need a “real” armor or sword. Remember? Your inner stance, the energy you use to approach the dragon, is way more important. Real knights can fight a dragon without killing him. They transform him, right? So that´s why I am going there.” Another boy, listening, said: “That´s right, because you are really good with the stances and know about the energy. You can teach that, so that´s why you go there.” You gotta love them. And I love the imagery that was born in that moment, depicting a ‘dragon knight school’ in Nairobi, Kenya, which is fostering the growth of modern-day knights, ready to transform dragons into bearers of wisdom and learning.
