It is not that I don’t have a Valentine. I do. It is that we are separated by about a 12 hour road trip. Despite that, I told Kathy I would post something today that would melt the miles. I told her that during our over hour telephone conversation last night. Paul Simon wrote about 50 ways to leave your lover. Here, are 50 ways to say I love you.
This is a great post with a beautiful quote. I am reading Wendell Berry right now and essentially he says love begins at home and moves outward. When we take care of the home and those close to us, that process takes care of the world. It seemingly cannot help but do that.
We meet, we smile, we share and we fall. As we fall, we gaze at each other’s cuts and bruises, scars and walls and groom each other through them. For every wound we share, we bond. We feel we understand we can speak the same language,and that we can support each other better. We compare size and depth, dark and light, and we feel intimacy. And further we fall. We connect over stories – so we share stories and drama, we share in empathy and sympathy. There is a comfort in the shadows and the embracing of what has past. And we become integral to each other’s next chapters, supporting actors in the next evolution of the tale.
Some people live by their stories. They are a sum total of everything that has ever happened to them. But as people grow, stories shift. People who want to make progress will…
View original post 311 more words
The great Sufi poet Hafiz wrote this several centuries ago, but I think it applies today as much as ever. We find each other when we find community and common purpose which is part of human being. We find strength in difficult times and that is found in the richness of holding hands and not letting go.
Out
Of a great need
We are all holding hands
And climbing.
Not loving is a letting go.
Listen,
The terrain around here
Is
Far too
Dangerous
For
That.
This is, as Buddhists might say, the Right Attitude. What does the world have in store for me each day? And, what do I have in store for the world?
This post about truth points out that truth is relational. The word truth comes from the Old German trothe which is connected to troth and betrothed which suggest being in relationship. Truth is not “relativism gone wild” as the final line suggests. We speak it with compassion, but also recognize that some ‘truths’ are problematic. Those we speak out against when they arise and we remain in relationship with the world, a better world.
As Mary Oliver aptly suggests it we each have a role in building our small corner of the universe. Certainly, in each of our minds, it is not so small. It is rather grand in its own small way.
It is that small way that speaks to the humbleness we each undertake in being builders of something worthwhile and worth whiling over. It is in the natural world, the world we do not construct we find the great builders like the cricket. We can learn so much from their efforts and their places as we think and are thankful for what we receive each day.
On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God –
a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside
this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope
it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.
This is a wonderful reminder that those closest to us have our best interests at heart. I am reading Wendell Berry right now and he tells me, when we take care of the local, we cannot help but love the world.
From RoarLocal
If you want to get a favor done
by some obliging friend,
And want a promise, safe and sure,
on which you may depend,
Don’t go to him who always has
much leisure time to plan,
If you want your favor done,
just ask the busy man
The man with leisure never has
a moment he can spare,
He’s always “putting off” until
his friends are in despair
But he whose every waking hour
is crowded full of work
Forgets the art of wasting time,
he cannot stop to shirk
So when you want a favor done,
and want it right away,
Go to the man who constantly
works twenty hours a day
He’ll find a moment somewhere,
that has no other use
And help you, while the idle man
is framing an excuse.
(From Ellen Bailey Poems)
From Pinterest
With thanks to my…
View original post 7 more words
Until yesterday, I had not heard of Gunilla Norris and her poetry. Parker Palmer sent a Facebook message with this beautiful poem embedded. It is a long poem, but is worth whiling and lingering over. Parker Palmer writes about the need for silence in life. This allows us turn inward and listen as our soul speaks to us.
As I move forward in the dissertation process, several things stood out in this poem. Sharing silence as a political act reminded me of how the polis consists of persons where exchanging anything suggests we act politically. In the early writing stages, I argue that teaching is a series of ongoing political actions as we choose the way we teach and what we teach.
Thich Nhat Hanh suggested we find the extraordinary in the ordinary. It is in the lives of each person that the extraordinary potentially emerges. It is in a thoughtful pedagogy that this can emerge in our self, our children, and their children. It is Sabbath’s silence we find space.
Within each of us there is a silence
–a silence as vast as a universe.
We are afraid of it…and we long for it.
When we experience that silence, we remember
who we are: creatures of the stars, created
from the cooling of this plant, created
from dust and gas, created
from the elements, created
from time and space…created
from silence.
The experience of silence is now so rare
that we must cultivate it and treasure it.
That is especially true for shared silence.
Sharing silence is, in fact, a political act.
When we can stand aside from the usual and
perceive the fundamental, change begins to happen.
Our lives align with deeper values
and the lives of others are touched and influenced.
Silence brings us to back to basics, to our senses,
to our selves. It locates us. Without that return
we can go so far away from our true natures
that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves.
We live blindly and act thoughtlessly.
We endanger the delicate balance which sustains
our lives, our communities, and our planet.
Each of can make a difference.
Politicians and visionaries will not return us
to the sacredness of life.
That will be done by ordinary men and women
who together or alone can say,
“Remember to breathe, remember to feel,
remember to care,
let us do this for our children and ourselves
and our children’s children.
Let us practice for life’s sake.”
A year ago I heard Jon Kabat-Zinn present and he echoed this thought. He said. “Get a Job with a capital J and stop doing someone else’s work.” When you leave at the end of the day, it is nice to look forward to coming back the next day. For a couple of years, I lost the passion to be in the classroom with the children. I let others take that away from me. When I took back during my last year, I felt good and whole again. I enjoyed being in the classroom learning alongside and with the students.
Stuart Young has written a new book titled Do You Hate Your Job? The link will take you directly to his blog with information about his new book and how you can get it at a price that is to good to be true… Free!
I just received my copy and am looking forward to reading it. I read Stu’s first book “How To Change Your Life One Day At a Time” which I feel is a must read. Each day you are prompted to really think about how your life is, and what you want to do with the time you have here.
Have a great Thursday everyone!
When I looked for a poem to post, I found this Walt Whitman verse. It reminded me of the writing of Mary Oliver, Parker Palmer, Thomas Merton, Thich Nhat Hanh, and others who write about the quietness needed for the soul to emerge. It is like to a wild animal, perhaps a spider, which is timid and reluctant to emerge as we crash around. As we sit quietly and listen, it emerges for us to see and listen more closely.
A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 