A New Face By the End: What Happens in the Children’s Program
A New Face by the End: What Happens in the Children’s Program
Blog post brought to you by Laila Katie Helms
Ask Maryam Dawn, who has spent years holding space in SSC’s Children’s Program, what actually happens there, and her answer isn’t really about the activities:
“There’s this thread of teaching that runs through the main program,” Maryam Dawn explains, “and somehow, even without being in the teaching directly, that light is guiding the kids’ program too. We’re sort of parallel traveling – co-traveling – on those same waves. There’s a transformational process happening.
On the outside, it looks like making a tasbih with beads, or talking about the qualities, or some kind of game of ‘steal from the Imam.’ But on the inside, they’re really changing. The kids you meet at the beginning of the program – just to witness their face by the end – they don’t have the same face when they leave. They have a new countenance. A new belonging.
And it’s not because we did anything, really. It’s something about the holding, the space, and whatever Allah makes of it. It’s an incredible thing, and it tends to be so far beyond whatever I think we’re doing, or could even imagine. It really is a growth process for them. Sometimes on the outside, we’re not making it into ‘a thing’ — but it seems like that’s what Allah makes anyway.”
For families wondering what the Children’s Program will actually be like this October: the games and activities are real, and your kids will have fun. And, underneath all the fun is something the people running this program have watched happen year after year: kids arriving as themselves, and leaving a little more fully themselves, carried by something bigger than any single activity or lesson plan, and shining out an ineffable light.
That’s the part no schedule or activity description can quite capture. You’ll just get to notice your child’s face at the end of the gathering, and see it for yourself.
