Children of Light

I’m back!!

So why, one might ask, am I starting my very first—ever!—blog post with such a statement? Well, I am writing from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I know, it’s a tough gig—85degrees and sunny with lovely beaches and scantily clad beautiful women everywhere—but it’s not all fun and games for me--really! This is my second visit to Rio. I was here last year and volunteered at a local school called “Solar Meninos de Luz”. The literal English translation of this name (“sun’s children of light”) forecast my experience of the children who attend this school. Their radiant smiles and light-hearted playfulness dissipated many of the gray clouds of gloominess then swirling around my heart and soul. Think Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh and you’d be in the ballpark (or 100-Acre Woods) for how I often went around in the world. But my return to Rio is part of my metamorphosis into my preferred Pooh character—which is Tigger, of course! Lucky for you this isn’t a podcast or you’d be listening to me singing my favorite Tigger song right about now!

A quote from Mohandas Ghandi states:

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

I have found this to be blessedly true.


Being with these children of light is also a passionate outlet for the compassion I feel for all of the children born and raised in dire poverty. Their challenging circumstances are not of their making and yet they live so openly and love so readily, and so well. For the three weeks that I am in Rio, I will spend my weekday afternoons with these young people. I will help the older children with their English lessons and talk to them about life in the US; I will sing songs (they actually like when I sing my Tigger song!) and play with the younger children—many of whom do not have any positive, strong male role models in their lives. I will bounce these young boys and girls on my lap and lift them over my head as they smile and giggle and call me Tio (pronounced “chee-oh” and means uncle in Portuguese). I think my smiles might even be wider than those on the children. I’m smiling as I write these words, knowing that I will be hanging out with the children again this afternoon.

Thanks for reading my first blog post. I’ll leave you with another insightful quote from the man who, in my humble estimation, fully embodied compassion with passion—Mohandas Ghandi:

“Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.”