This is a post from Torbs Lindgren at Slappshot. We seem to share a love of hockey, ice hockey that is.
Torbs provided a great story about teacher who learned from her students and helped them find their way in life. Torbs also honoured me in the preface of the story.
I am reading Wayne Muller‘s Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest. He shared the following: “The word humility, like the word human, comes from humus, or earth. We are most human when we do no great things. … We are simply dust and spirit–at best loving midwives, participants in a process much larger than we. … We are granted the tremendous blessing of knowing that we do very little at all by ourselves” (p. 176).
He closed that chapter with a short, tongue-in-cheek poem by Robert Aitken Roshi who examined more closely humility and the role of soil in the human condition:
When people praise me for something
I vow with all being
to return to my vegetable garden
and give credit where credit is due.
One of my students took these pictures and allowed me the privilege of posting them along with a Haiku. She is using her new phone and this butterfly felt drawn to her finger and hand.
Rest on my finger
Unifying quietly
The peaceful soul rests.
stop on the way home
butterfly rests on human
pause on the journey.
I follow MesAyah – Life Through the Mic. This is his most recent song and he asked I pass it on to others. As my students are well aware, I have eclectic tastes in music from country to old rock to folk to contemporary sounds to jazz to gospel music to the blues (that is my favourite). MesAyah drew me to this song with the idea of not being a ‘paper chaser’ (the antithesis of being a bureaucrat) and the circle being broken. I think there is a gospel song in the last part. Please take 3 minutes and listen. It is pretty neat or cool or, as one student says, beasted.
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 