William Stafford wrote this beautiful poem about letting life emerge. There is something that guides each of us. We can call it wisdom, intuition, tradition, or common sense. It is at one level indefinable and, yet very real. Life unfolds for us despite our best plans. Retrospectively, I see the path I walked is different than the one I might have envisioned in my plans. Something helped with each step; that indefinable thread. I am grateful for many of the things I received which I did not plan for.
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread
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 
To say that life is a creative process.
It is certainly creative and surprisingly so when I look at it in retrospect.
A beautiful and profound poem, Ivon… Yes, each to his own thread…..
I have a ‘tag’ for you… Come see..
http://abcofspiritalk.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/thank-you-xoxoxo/
Welcome back Carolyn. I was thinking I had not heard from you recently and suddenly you popped back into the reader yesterday. Thank you.
Life definitely unfree differently for me as well, and I thank her everyday now that I have stopped fighting her and started simply following. Thanks Ivon for sharing the Thead Poem. Sheri
Unfolded not unfree ^
You are welcome Sheri. Thank you for both comments.
Nice sharing, thank you, Ivon, I agree with the point, Paulo Coelho calls it ‘Personal Legend’, I call it ‘the language of the stars and the wink of the moon’
Beautiful analogies Subhan.
This life thread reminds me, the Brahma Sutra (Cosmic Thread) which is vibrating in the every being of the universe. 🙂
It is there and it is real.
Absolutely! 🙂
Very lovely. I love this one!
It is a lovely poem that describes the unplannability of our lives.