I re-read Parker Palmer‘s Let Your Life Speak. It is the one time of the day I don’t take notes I just read. Last night, I began Dietrich Bonhoeffer‘s Life Together.
Parker Palmer wrote about the shared etymological roots of vocation and voice. William Stafford expressed a similar message. We find our way through life as we make meaning out of life. It comes with the good and the not so good which sometimes, when we look back in the rear view mirror, we realize the reverse is true.
I am reading on my dissertation topic: curriculum and technology use. I chose a couple of books which say the same thing about schooling and it would be a radical departure. Education is about conversations, integrates roles of teacher, student, and subject. We find our stories, our voices, and our calling in life in and through circles of conversation. Here we let the silence speak as well. It is a mindful way to live and requires our full attention.
This dream the world is having about itself
includes a trace on the plains of the Oregon trail,
a groove in the grass my father showed us all
one day while meadowlarks were trying to tell
something better about to happen.
I dreamed the trace to the mountains, over the hills,
and there a girl who belonged wherever she was.
But then my mother called us back to the car:
she was afraid; she always blamed the place,
the time, anything my father planned.
Now both of my parents, the long line through the plain,
the meadowlarks, the sky, the world’s whole dream
remain, and I hear him say while I stand between the two,
helpless, both of them part of me:
“Your job is to find what the world is trying to be.”
Teacher as Transformer 
Thanks Ivon. Across the ocean I read this very same Wm Stafford poem earlier this afternoon – and return constantly to the wisdom of Parker Palmer – and of your good self, too 😉
You are welcome Simon and thank you. It is interesting how those things happen on currents of energy I suppose.
Thank you Ivon. The following quote spoke to me: “Education is about conversations, integrates roles of teacher, student, and subject.”
That is most accurate. You are welcome.
A favorite William Stafford poem of mine, and a beautifully succinct explanation of what the man was about. Wonderful.
Thank you David,