As in previous years, Kamil Cyganik has prepared a short reflection—the guiding theme that will accompany us throughout the festival week.
One of the most beautiful sounds is the very first cry announcing that a new life has come into being. It has already been in this world for several months, but is only now letting the world see it. The cry is a sign that the young lungs have happily drawn in their first breath of air; it is a testimony to ascending the first, not that high yet, but very important...
Mountain
The stones of minutes, the boughs of hours, the slope of the subsequent week, month, year... A slope only slightly deviating from the vertical to allow hope that it will be possible to climb it after all, that there is a summit waiting up there. And the summit is a moment of respite before descending to a nearer or farther pass only to start a strenuous hike up another mountain. And that is what human existence is about...
Fortunately, this - as the late and much lamented Rev. Prof. Józef Tischner would say - SUMMITING of ours is about summits on which we stop not only to rest but also to become filled. On the summit we feel God’s Love more than anywhere else (because even physically we are closer to it) and experience our own value. After all, we had to overcome something. Something like fatigue, discouragement, voices saying that we would never make it. We had no option but to win, so as winners, conquerors of another mountain, we raise our arms triumphantly and begin...
The Festival
Time has not stopped, but only seems to have slowed down. You can get up a little later, stay up a little longer in the evening. You can sit with others around the table, eat lunch leisurely. You can go for a walk, to the theatre, to the cinema...
Yes, you can do all these things. However, there is more to the Festival than that!
The Festival is - as the name suggests - a time of festivity, and hence of some excellence. Therefore, it is worth looking for that excellence, that extraordinariness, that uncommonness in it. But why? To take all this then into your everyday life, like dry provisions for a long hike, a skin full of water that provides life as well as longing for another Festival. In a word, all that will make the next summit easier to climb.
For as long as I can remember, the organisers of the FESTIVAL OF THE CHILDREN OF MOUNTAINS have been saying that the next FESTIVAL begins the moment the previous one ends, but in fact it is the road leading to the next SUMMITING in the following July that begins. How much more difficult it would be if those in charge of the Festival have not been carrying the experience of the previous editions in themselves, if they had not taken with them on this journey that excellence, the source of which in the height of the summer holidays in Nowy Sącz is...
The Child
A child is something... someone absolutely amazing!
On the one hand, it is a mystery. Although it often carries on its still frail shoulders the experience of the past few years - the experience that is often not easy - it is still developing, and the effect of this development remains more or less - unknown. For the time being.
This is because on the other hand, a child is an adult-to-be. What this girl or boy lives through, what they experience, what they overcome and what they succumb to, will one day become an immanent part of some woman or man.
As I - already much more grown up than I am willing to admit - come to the FESTIVAL OF THE CHILDREN OF MOUNTAINS, I try to find the little Kamil inside me; I am sure he is somewhere there, deep down. Here, among the children attending the Nowy Sącz Festival, it is much easier to meet the children we once were, and whom we have never ceased to be.
Mountain
The stones of minutes, the boughs of hours, the slope of the subsequent week, month, year... A slope only slightly deviating from the vertical to allow hope that it will be possible to climb it after all, that there is a summit waiting up there. And the summit is a moment of respite before descending to a nearer or farther pass only to start a strenuous hike up another mountain. And that is what human existence is about...
Fortunately, this - as the late and much lamented Rev. Prof. Józef Tischner would say - SUMMITING of ours is about summits on which we stop not only to rest but also to become filled. On the summit we feel God’s Love more than anywhere else (because even physically we are closer to it) and experience our own value. After all, we had to overcome something. Something like fatigue, discouragement, voices saying that we would never make it. We had no option but to win, so as winners, conquerors of another mountain, we raise our arms triumphantly and begin...
The Festival
Time has not stopped, but only seems to have slowed down. You can get up a little later, stay up a little longer in the evening. You can sit with others around the table, eat lunch leisurely. You can go for a walk, to the theatre, to the cinema...
Yes, you can do all these things. However, there is more to the Festival than that!
The Festival is - as the name suggests - a time of festivity, and hence of some excellence. Therefore, it is worth looking for that excellence, that extraordinariness, that uncommonness in it. But why? To take all this then into your everyday life, like dry provisions for a long hike, a skin full of water that provides life as well as longing for another Festival. In a word, all that will make the next summit easier to climb.
For as long as I can remember, the organisers of the FESTIVAL OF THE CHILDREN OF MOUNTAINS have been saying that the next FESTIVAL begins the moment the previous one ends, but in fact it is the road leading to the next SUMMITING in the following July that begins. How much more difficult it would be if those in charge of the Festival have not been carrying the experience of the previous editions in themselves, if they had not taken with them on this journey that excellence, the source of which in the height of the summer holidays in Nowy Sącz is...
The Child
A child is something... someone absolutely amazing!
On the one hand, it is a mystery. Although it often carries on its still frail shoulders the experience of the past few years - the experience that is often not easy - it is still developing, and the effect of this development remains more or less - unknown. For the time being.
This is because on the other hand, a child is an adult-to-be. What this girl or boy lives through, what they experience, what they overcome and what they succumb to, will one day become an immanent part of some woman or man.
As I - already much more grown up than I am willing to admit - come to the FESTIVAL OF THE CHILDREN OF MOUNTAINS, I try to find the little Kamil inside me; I am sure he is somewhere there, deep down. Here, among the children attending the Nowy Sącz Festival, it is much easier to meet the children we once were, and whom we have never ceased to be.
Kamil Cyganik