Kathy and I head home after a great month in Spokane and at Gonzaga. I enjoy my time here and find the “pause that refreshes.” Part of this is paying forward which happens and the flow of time within this relational space. I see paying forward as a circle. Yesterday, we said good-bye to a colleague on his way home. He reminded me I lent him one of my papers his first summer here and how much that meant to him at a time he was ready to pack it in. I told him my first experience here was similar and someone reached out to me. I find the same thing in virtual community. It is harder to carry on conversations and build relationships, but I find a qualities that are unmistakeably human: care, reciprocity, and trust. I am grateful for the daily support I receive in each form of relationship.
Hearts open in time
The reward is worth the wait
We listen deeply.
A place of comfort
The circle invites us in
Its safe reach shelters.
Community calls
Alchemy not formula
Companionship grows.
I found this quote at Circle Toward Wholeness and it speaks to the circular nature of life and how gifts are constantly received and returned. The quote can also be found at Unitarian Universalist and Circle Fellowship in a more linear form.
About ivonprefontaine
In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders.
I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs.
I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry.
I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry.
I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope, nonviolence and its anticipatory relationship with the future, as essential elements to teaching and learning.
Academic publications can be found at Ivon Gile Prefontaine on ResearchGate
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 
“Alchemy not formula”, Ivon – how perfect, how true. And in circles, yes – without beginning or end..
Mimijk, it is amazing how often things back on themselves and find ourselves meeting ourselves again.
Thank you for stopping by and sharing.
Ivon
Thanks for the circle inspiration. I love these words: “gifts are constantly received and returned.” I appreciate you stopping by My Journal of Praise and liking posts. God bless you in all that you do.