Most of the time we spend is forgettable. Maybe that’s sad, or maybe it points to how lucky we are to have such long lives and such short memories. Who can remember what he ate for lunch three weeks ago, much less the thoughts and feelings of a given hour on a thrown-away page of the calendar? (Who can remember calendars with pages!) The morning I spent at Still Waters was time spent thrillingly, time I will remember and cherish for a long time. I brought my six-year-old son, Sasha, along, and it was quite clear from the start that no one was going to be concerned with titles, or ages, or experience. We were there to learn from one another, to excite one another’s imagination and compassion, to plunge, as a community, into our very individual depths. We challenged one another, concentrated until it hurt, laughed until it hurt, took a break to play freeze-tag, went back in and unfroze one another. It was wonderful.

Jonathan Safran Foer