I had a great day today. The beauty of mindfulness is I am learning that good and not so good pass and flow into another moment. I waited more than 1/2 of my life, I hope, to learn this lesson. The day was long, but sharing tea and conversation at the end completed it so fully.
Today, as I reflected on yesterday’s ‘trials’ I recalled Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem, The Panther. I felt like that yesterday. When I let go, I felt so much better; I no longer pacing behind bars.
From seeing the bars, his seeing is so exhausted
that it no longer holds anything anymore.
To him the world is bars, a hundred thousand
bars, and behind the bars, nothing.
The lithe swinging of that rhythmical easy stride
which circles down to the tiniest hub
is like a dance of energy around a point
in which a great will stands stunned and numb.
Only at times the curtains of the pupil rise
without a second … then a shape enters,
slips through the tightened silence of the shoulders,
reaches the heart, and dies.
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 
Very good. Thanks, Barbara
You are welcome Barbara.
Ivon, that is a very beautiful and deep piece you share. Awesome and thank you!
You are welcome
Love Rilke. I think you have an important contribution to make to our educational system. It needs your insight.
Thank you for the kind words Cindy.
This is a powerful piece that you shared here Ivon, really touching.
My pleasure Yaz.
hello , i have nominated you for the inspiring blogger award
Thank you Mary. I am grateful. I will work on this on the weekend.
Once in a great while we read something that bypasses the brain and goes straight to the heart. well narrated. Beautiful. Nice post.
I love that comment Ivsrao. It does go straight to the heart.
Beautiful from start to finish
Yes, Rilke was such an incredible and deep poet.
🙂
I loved it
I just love Rilke. Anywhere, anytime.
I do too. There is something deep and rich in his poetry
Rilke and Hafiz for me are simply magical in their understanding of human nature and its yearning for something beyond the mundane …
Hafiz is another of my favourites
“The beauty of mindfulness is I am learning that good and not so good pass and flow into another moment.” That is so beautiful and such a great place to be!
It is and it gets a little better each day or each moment, perhaps.