Wallace Stevens wrote this beautiful reminder that we each have work to do. I recall something Jon Kabat-Zinn said: “Find a Job with a capital J. Stop doing someone else’s work. Find work that makes you complete.” I paraphrase here. It is easier to be fully present as fulfilled persons.
Thomas Merton and Parker Palmer wrote about the common roots of voice and vocation. I find meaning and completion in the work I do. Somehow, I make the world a better place. As I find my voice, my being made whole and any holes in that being filled. I understand the meaning of my life’s song with perhaps no clear meaning to anyone else.
The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.
The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.
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
Teacher as Transformer 
Beautiful!
Thank you.
A perfectly lovely poem with such a good feeling to it, Ivan.
Remember the days when we always talked in terms of vocation and it was meaningful and we thought work would have meaning. Unfortunely the messages were also had “duty” in tow, we a matter of degree to make that either good or – so often – ill.
Good post. Thank you~
You are welcome Jamie. I think we still want meaning. Sadly, we are just not sure how to accomplish or achieve that.
And that indeed is the truth. I think it might help if we talked in terms of “vocation” rather than “career.” Different meanings and connotations, don’t you think?
Jamie that is so right. I looked up the etymology of career and its roots are in a course which suggests a planned route. It sounds so linear and antiseptic rather than simply being called to do something one loves.
Lovely!
Thank you DiAnne.
I fully agree with the notion that voice and vocation have common roots, that finding meaning in what we do helps us to use our voice fully in the present. Beautiful poem.
Thank you for the comment Tiny.
My voice and my vocation, I feel I have identified. Yet, I remain in an office. I feel I am doing a penance for some kind of reason….
Lovely words again, Ivan – worthwhile.
🙂
It is interesting Noeleen. I worked for almost 15 years in banking and left to become a teacher. The bureaucracy of teaching is as depressing of that of banking. The one redeeming quality of teaching is, if I work at it hard enough, I overcome the oppression that hangs over a bureaucracy.
I agree there are no easy solutions, but if the “job” hasn’t lulled you completely, I suggest creating opportunities for yourself and not wait. Do something you really love, if only to feed your soul. Keep your day job until you don’t need it anymore.
Best wishes on your journey my friends. ☼
Thank you very much, 1EartUnited. That actually has a lot of meaning to me at this point – it is placed well in my day today, fits well with what is happening.
I am glad it found a space in your day. You are most welcome.
Thank you for the kind words.