August 5, 2008

Children deepen compassion at Camp Bodhi Root

Words by Marie Block; Photos by Michael DeMark

Saturday's sun welcomed the Original Root Zen Center's 1st Annual Camp Bodhi Root at the DeKoven Center. The camp was designed by ORZC's community to provide a safe place for children to nurture connections through compassionate action and deepen interdependent relationships with each other and this environment. Ten children ages 2-11 and more than a dozen adults participated to make the first camp a great success.

Camp Bodhi Root

Morning activities began with a nature scavenger hunt in the gardens.
Each child had an adult guide and they thanked the earth for the freely offered gifts.


Jeno Somlai and Jay Mollerskov, professional jazz musicians, lead Earth Band.
The children created instruments using items found on their nature scavenger hunt.
Jeno asks the children to listen to sounds around them, then use their
instruments to mimic the rhythms they hear.

The children experiment with a variety of instruments.

After lunch, the older children form a human mural.

The group takes a silent walk around the DeKoven grounds with their eyes closed.
They listen to their environment and build trust in one another.


Go under, out, under, out.
Now wave the sheet and keep the bouncy ball on!

New friendships are discovered.

Smiles abound.

No outs here!

All campers participate in constructing the "Biggest Story Ever."
Ten pieces of four foot cardboard are painted on, colored on, and written on
to capture the energy and memories of camp.

An artist at work.

"Our path is to deeply plant the roots of wisdom."

2 comments:

  1. Thank you for putting the story about Camp Bodhi Root up on your site! It truly was a wonderful fun-filled day for the kids. The three children my partner, Darin, and I brought to the camp...Cassidy, Lonnie and Charlie...loved it so much they wanted to do it all over again the next day. And I want to shout out a huge thanks to my brother, Michael DeMark for taking such lovely photographs to commemorate the day =) Looking forward to the 2nd annual Camp Bodhi Root! Sincere thanks to Marie, Brie and Mathew for all of your work organizing and planning this special day for the kids.

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  2. Thank you for putting this on your site. It was nice to see what my daughter, nephew and niece did that weekend at Camp Bodhi. I am currently deployed to Afghanistan and any chance to see my family is a gift in itself. I would also like to thank my cousin and her husband (Bethany and Darin) for taking Cassidy to an event like this. I am sure she had a blast and cant wait to go again.

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