Over the last year, I have experienced a growing conviction that our Kung Fu journeys are more about the growth of a community, than about our own personal growth. We want the world to be a better place for our children - at Silent River Kung Fu, we learn how this can happen, first by pursuing our personal growth, then by watching, participating, learning, helping, contributing. As we evolve, so does the school; the ripple effect of our efforts reach out to a community, and continues on in ever widening circles.

So the evolution of the community relies on its individuals improving upon themselves. And we as individuals rely on the evolving community to continue in our own personal growth. This is our ecosystem. This is how the world can change so that the human race can survive. As Frances Moore Lappe, food activist and author of Diet for A Small Planet stated in her book, "The great environmental awakening is that the awareness of relationship is permeating our consciousness, and ever so subtely eroding the notion that we can stake out our own safety and happiness apart from the well being of the communities in which we live."

I am proud, that as a group of sihings, this years black belt candidates have exemplified this concept by the support we have given eachother and all other students in their quests for personal improvement. What each of us learned today was that we needed eachother, and that the only way we could help eachother, and thus help ourselves was to accept that we each were evolving and striving to become better. Knowing that, the weaknesses, flaws, bad moments, we observe in eachother are not seen as barriers to our inter-relationships and growth as a community, but as stepping stones in that individual's journey. Whether we pass or fail this test, this is the gift that we will take with us.