Kathy went shopping and bought a book. It sounds mundane, but, when she opened the book, she found a small piece of paper with this Yeats‘ poem written on it. We are headed home tomorrow. We will take a few days, travel into Montana, across Glacier National Park, and head north. We will see some of the wild on that trip. I doubt lions will appear but a mountain lion might show up and maybe an eagle on the wing. Certainly, we find better exercise in sunlight and wind.
On the back or it might be the front of the slip, someone wrote the Gandhi quote: “Be the change you wish to see in the world and PEACE”.
What if I bade you leave
The cavern of the mind?
There’s better exercise
In the sunlight and wind.
I never bade you go
To Moscow or Rome.
Renounce that drudgery,
Call the Muses home.
Seek those images
That constitute the wild.
The lion and the virgin,
The harlot and the child.
Find in middle air
An eagle on the wing.
Recognize the five
That make the Muses sing.
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 
So nice, quoting Yeats’ and Gandhi, too. I like the poem a lot! I also feel this was a message meant for you both. I liked the way you incorporated the words into your plans, too.
Thank you several times for a lovely set of comments.
What a great surprise!
It was.
Beautiful – clearly the book was meant to come home with Kathy.
It definitely was meant to find its way here.
Wow – what a nice find! I’m glad you shared it with us.
Nancy
Thank you Nancy. It was one of those serendipitous moments with a mix of Yeats and Gandhi. Yeats would have found it mystical.
Reblogged this on By the Mighty Mumford and commented:
FINDING YEATS WITH A GHANDI QUOTE? GOOD STUFF
Thank you for the re-blog Jonathan. It was good stuff.
that was a rare find indeed. lovely poem too.
It was serendipitous and, as you say, a beautiful poem.
Lovely lovely poem!
(And Gandhi is always my weak spot)
He had a way with words even when he did not use many. Thank you.
Great poem. Instead of a message in a bottle, she found a message in a book!
We only need to have our eyes open and we will find messages in many different places. Thank you for the comment Tony.
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Thank you for the wonderful comment.
I love this, and LOVE finding a slip of paper in a book. I once wrote in a book, ‘Hi, from Noeleen Ginnane – author in the making’. Crazy, huh.
That Ghandi quote is unbeatable.
That is a great little story. I will have to remember it for down the road.
Namaste ~ Thank you for visiting and following my blog 🙂 yours looks lovely ~ Lakshmi x
What a wonderful surprise. If you are a believer, which I think you are then the message from the poem will not only make you smile but have you searching for those 5 things.
I should always be searching for what makes life more worthwhile. It was a beautiful surprise. Afterwards, Kathy found a couple of more things tucked in the book from the previous reader.
Methinks Kathy has a gift … more than the poem and quote … I suspect you know it, too. —
Bear
She does.
Ah, how lovely–the many inspirations and the post that you created from them. Thank you.
Thank you and you are welcome.