I spent a good part of the afternoon writing based on a book by Ralph Siu, The Tao of Science. I wrote and broadened the scope to include the Tao of Technology and the Tao of Learning or Education. I grabbed a couple of other books because words like communion and humility came up in relationship to leadership. I refer to Educating for Humanity a lot. and it is one of my most well-used books. An article had this beautiful poem about life`s abundance by Miguel de Unamuno. The way (the Tao) I look at life and my perception is one which is life-giving or not. I think this holds in terms of my interactions with other beings. Life is not separated into fragments but lived wholly and fully with reverence.
Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.
Now your are only giving food to that final pain
which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,
but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts
is work; start again to turn to the work.
Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,
don`t turn your face that would be turn to it to death,
and do not let the past weight upon your motion.
Leave what`s alive in the furrow, what`s dead in yourself,
for life does not move in the same as a group of clouds;
from your work you will be able to gather yourself.
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 
I love the combination of “Shake off your sadness” and “recover your spirit”, alluding to the fact that when we wallow in sadness we have lost something true. Nice post! Thank you! Appreciate insights about the Tao!
Thank you and you are welcome Joan.
Excellent article!
All the best.
Shane
Thank you Shane.
I read your post three times, and each time it became more meaningful. I hope you don’t mind if I print, so I may keep as a reference.
Elisa
You are more than welcome to do that. Thank you for the gesture. It is appreciated.
Great Ivon!
Thank you David.
Thank you for the inspiring post, Ivon!
You are welcome Amy.
Self work is the most difficult but the most satisfying if one embraces it. Thank you.
I agree. It takes time and patience which many of us do seem to have. It also takes humility.
To look at our flaws and areas that need weeding and watering is no small task indeed. To see ourselves as a whole being, the good and the not so good takes great courage. But then to discover … Truly discover that we can have a change of mind for the better and consequently change everything we encounter as a result, that is powerful motivation to look at the ugly in oneself and strive to truly change it.
our own field- takes time to name & claim it. I think the seed of that willingness is in everyone, just waiting.
I think you are right. Parker Palmer and, before him, Thomas Merton, suggested that we need quiet to find that. It is so foreign to Western culture whereas Eastern culture has cultivated it.