There is an interdependence I often lose track of in life when I get busy. It was nice to get away from the reading and writing for a few days. Black Elk, a holy man of the Oglala Lakota, said these words many years ago and they resonate with me today.
I recognize that interconnectedness when I allow myself to find a higher vantage point. My daily life, surrounded with by busyness, focuses me on the particulars. The spiritual vantage point, which elevates me, allows me to see sometimes the fuller circle.
Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all,
And round beneath me was the whole hoop of the world
And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell
And I understood more than I saw
For I was seeing in the sacred manner the shape of all things of the spirit!
And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that make one circle, wide as daylight and starlight,
And in the center grew one mighty flowering tree.
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 
I really liked this quote. I like the way you apply it to your own life, too. We all get absorbed in the busyness of life, rising above it, that is the wonderful vantage point and seeing how it all fits together like a puzzle, that is amazing!
I find it is important to step back and spend some quiet time. From there, I sometimes gain a new view of life and find new paths that were hidden.
I think my post is in the same trend of thought (and heart) as this post today. This is beautiful.
I think so too. You did a great job of describing the sunset. It is all encompassing.
Great quote, thank you for sharing it.
You are welcome.
I have one book of Black Elk and he is a fascinating man.
He was and truly wise.
Very Nice post. Interesting. Inspiring too.
Thank you Lvsrao. I glad you enjoyed it.
Hadn’t heard of Black Elk. Will look out his books. 🙂
Most of his work is done posthumously and biographical. I am not sure if he wrote. He was interesting and wise.