This was a busy day. We head out for the evening shortly to spend time with friends. We ran around to get ourselves organized a good part of the day.
Mark Nepo wrote this lovely poem which is a reminder of the need to slow down and find the silent space of sabbath. The lake offers me a place to light down similar to the heron and find the quiet needed to rejuvenate the spirit. This quiet finds its way into my life without a full awareness sometimes. It just appears and I embrace it as it helps me weave my life together.
My heart was beating like a heron awakened
in the woods, no room to move. Tangled
and surprised by the noise of my mind,
I fluttered without grace to the center
of the lake which humans call silence.
I guess, if you would ask, peace
is no more than the underside
of tired wings resting on the lake
while the heart in its feathers
pounds softer and softer.
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 
Lovely!
Thank you Joan.
Mark’s poem is just lovely – thanks for sharing.
You are welcome Vicki.
sweet! and I can imagine the grey herons encountered paddling down a river a couple days ago, accompanying the poetry.
That is a great visual. Thank you.
A message I find myself repeating far too often lately – slow down, calm down, take in the moment..
http://andreasch45.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/komm-deinemengelnicht-ins-gehege/
For you Sunday
Thank you Andrea.
Reblogged this on aksharaalu – Best Collections.
Thank you for the re-blog. It is appreciated.