A values-based life is one that has touchstones along the path. We know who we are and where we are headed even though the next step is unclear. Know my values.
This Jon Stewart quote reminded me of another by Chekhov:
“There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and simplicity in our interactions. Be rude when you’re angry, laugh when something is funny, and answer when you’re asked.”
– Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Source: themetapicture.com
When I am at Gonzaga, I attend what we call Journal Club once a week. We read, analyze, and share articles, book chapters, or books we have read recently. Once we have shared, we spend time in an open forum discussion based on the presentations. Today, one of the participants brought up this poem by John Keats to help describe the difference between rational thought and faith-based thought. Some things cannot be explained. Words fail me at those times to describe something like love, a piece of art, and any other form of beauty in life. Another person pointed out, when words fail, we are left with the mystery of some thing or concept. I am left with the mystery that certain questions offer.
Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
This was an easy choice. Last summer, I took an ethics course. What made it different was the professor choice to focus on the good life and happiness. Very early in the readings, we were introduced to the science of happiness which confirms that the smile is a universal aspect of human beings. We all do it. Smile. It makes me human.
I opened a poetry anthology to the index and this title jumped off the page. It has been an eventful week. I settled into Spokane including a place to lay my head this fall. When I come here, I find I feel I am in community. It was word-of-mouth that led me to the apartment I will have. One person told me to check with another who referred me to another and eventually the circle was complete.
When I am here, I drop some screen time with no television. I turn my computer on and listen to CKUA the greatest little radio station in the world.
I need to settle into a regime now to tackle the reading, writing, and research that is around the corner. Gonzaga has excellent to a beautiful river walk to the Spokane Falls and Riverfront Park which I visited in its heyday. Spokane hosted the World’s Fair in 1974 and I was in Nelson BC then and came down with friends.
The river walk is a great place to let my brain relax, my mind to expand, and physically be invigorated. Last summer, as I walked, I found my poet’s voice and I am counting on that happening again over the next couple of weeks. I regain my soul in nature as William Stafford so eloquently puts it. When we got to Waterton, it was dragonflies over Red Rock Canyon that were my white butterflies.
Come down Canyon Creek trail on a summer afternoon
that one place where the valley floor opens out. You will see
the white butterflies. Because of the way shadows
come off those vertical rocks in the west, there are
shafts of sunlight hitting the river and
a deep long purple gorge straight ahead. Put down your pack.
Above, air sighs the pines. It was this way
when Rome was clanging, when Troy was being built,
when campfires lighted caves. The white butterflies dance
by the thousands in the still sunshine. Suddenly, anything
could happen to you. Your soul pulls toward the canyon
and then shines back through the white wings to be you again.
I learned something. A re-blog of a re-blog does not bring up the actual post. As well, I came to another wonderful blog to follow.
What a beautiful sentiment and picture. Nature is music and children hear it and sing along. Join in.
There are many small ways I can reach out and help people. Do I notice them? What holds me back?
A lot of people praying for miracle to be happened to them?
Have you ever think that you yourself also can bring miracle to other’s life?
The story go like…
An elderly man with broken clothes, carried a basket of unhealthy vegetables with dying leaves to approach a young man to buy…
Without any hesitation, the young man bought the vegetables from the elderly man.
His friend was so surprised & asked him: “ Why you bought the vegetables? You can’t cook it.. It’ s spoiled and the only way is to be compost.”
The young man answered:” You are right! If I am not buying from the elderly man, he can’t get any money to buy food. Let’s stretched our helping hand whenever we can…”
After listened to the young man explanation, His friends rushed to the elderly man and bought some vegetables.
How nice if we can offer…
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I am a little late with my re-blog today and I guess synchronicity played a role. I was frustrated earlier with computer glitches and some issues surrounding my dissertation topic. I went for a tea and on the way back I was nicely surprised by what I was looking for in my dissertation process; some clarity of purpose statement. Sometimes, if I just wait long enough what I want arrives. I read Meg Wheatley’s work extensively and had an opportunity to see some of the Dharma Comics work earlier this year on a trip to San Francisco. Enjoy.
Very little about the emerging nature of life supports who we have tried to be. Life invites us to play along, discovering as we go. Life wants to work with us in surprising ways. We could make our lives so much more interesting, and develop so many new capacities, if we sought to work with the unknowns of emergence, rather than try and plan surprise out of our lives.
What do we do with surprise? What do we do with a world which cannot be known until it is in the process of discovering itself? It requires constant awareness, being present, being vigilant for the newly visible. We need to notice things we weren’t looking for, things we didn’t know would be important, influence we hadn’t thought of, behaviors we couldn’t predict.
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Last night, I read, more like re-read, the first two chapters of Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer. I find it so interesting to read something for a second, third, or fourth time. I always discover something new in the process. It might only be a word, a sentence, a turn of phrase, but it provides new insight. As I read last night, it was no different. Parker included this poem by William Stafford. I had to read several times, because the words are not in perfect order, but life is not either.
Parker Palmer is on Facebook and I follow him. Today, he posted a July 4th tribute with Leonard Cohen performing Democracy on Youtube. The link is Parker Palmer for those interested.
I am in Spokane and somewhat settled in. As I struggle a bit with making sense of my dissertation topic, this poem makes perfect sense. It is precise and piercing in its questions and somewhat disquieting. In those moments of perturbation, life makes more sense and I learn.
Sometimes when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
If this don’t get your mojo going in the morning, nothing will. What an interesting and awakening image.
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 