Monthly Archives: March 2014

One For Old Snaggle-Tooth

Posted on March 31, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Quite often, I find that the difficult and trying times have proven more beneficial in my learning and forming as a human being. I think we pay more attention to what is happening when things are not going well. When we look back, we can see that it was for the better.

WordMusing

Charles Bukowski - Quotes - Goodness can be found sometimes in hell -001

I know a woman
who keeps buying puzzles
chinese
puzzles
blocks
wires
pieces that finally fit
into some order.
she works it out
mathematically
she solves all her
puzzles
lives down by the sea
puts sugar out for the ants
and believes
ultimately
in a better world.
her hair is white
she seldom combs it
her teeth are snaggled
and she wears loose shapeless
coveralls over a body most
women would wish they had.
for many years she irritated me
with what I considered her
eccentricities-
like soaking eggshells in water
(to feed the plants so that
they’d get calcium).
but finally when I think of her
life
and compare it to other lives
more dazzling, original
and beautiful
I realize that she has hurt fewer
people than anybody I know
(and by hurt I simply mean hurt).
and she has had some terrible times,
times when maybe I…

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Fire

Posted on March 29, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Judy Brown wrote this poem and it is a gentle reminder of spaces in our lives that softly breath passion back into living. In these spaces, we lightly lay com-passion, integrating it in life and rekindling passion.

Sabbath is an ongoing event. It is the daily pauses taken to be thankful and momentarily rest. It is meditation and prayer, listening not for certainty and answers, but more likely questions serving as life’s fuel. It is being in Nature and seeing ourselves as a small part of the larger whole.

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.

So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.

A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

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Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged creativity, Fire, Judy Brown, Mindful Practice, nature, poetry, sabbath, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Toss Punishment – Keep Discipline

Posted on March 29, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Although I am far from finished my first chapter in the dissertation, discipline, as a theme, is an overarching aspect that of good education. Both John Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead proposed that self-discipline in children and youth education. Teaching, as the last line in this post suggests, is vital to the forming process involved. Word and action is essential to teaching and learning.

Parent Rap

By Jackie Saulmon Ramirez | March 26, 2014

If a parent punishes a child, what does a child learn from that?

When we teach children properly they learn self-discipline and self-restraint.

‘Punishment’ is a very ugly word and I wish parents would take that word, write it down on a sheet of paper, then wad it up and throw it in the trash because that is where it belongs. The word itself feels heavy on the heart and begs to be spat out of the mouth. When a child hears the word they feel dread and become less than they were before. I want parents to stop using that horrible word. The word I want parents to use in place of that word is DISCIPLINE. Discipline is lyrical, strengthening, uplifting and educating word.

When most parents say punishment, what they really mean is discipline; discipline means ‘to teach…

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Stalled Eternity Nonet

Posted on March 28, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Today, as I walked back from my shopping trip. I noticed that trees were showing buds and, on my way to the library, the tulips are almost ready to blossom. We are on the threshold, at least in Spokane, of spring. It is snowy and cold in Edmonton. Winter is a guardian time when Nature revives itself through a dormant period. Spring is the threshold to Nature revealing itself through colour that emerges in Summer and departs in Autumn. Humans learn the importance of pacing themselves through Nature’s patterns.

Memoirs of a Dragon

Grassland sentinel through harvests past

slumbering guardian of Fall

echoing autumnal toil

timbers of the heartland

prairie legacy

ghost in the veldt

summer sun

silenced

soil

: Stalled Eternity

Photo from Eyes of a Dragon – Stalled Eternity

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The Low Road

Posted on March 27, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

I had to read this whole poem as the first stanza is scary, but Marge Piercy provides a message about the way we our Self. We are never alone in this work even when we are separate in time and space. Humans connect in ways that make the person stronger.

When we care and act, the world becomes a different place. It is one act, one word, one smile at a time. It is a moment of mindful gratitude at a time. It happens when we are attentive, mindful, and present in the world and not as detached observers.

What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can’t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.

But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.
Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again and they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know you who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.

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Posted in Community, Education, Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged community, creativity, education, Marge Piercy, Mindful Practice, poetry, servant-leadership, spirituality, stewardship, teacher as transformer, The Low Road. Bookmark the permalink.

Knowledge !

Posted on March 27, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

This is so true.

LAND OF FUN

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Walk Out of Your Dream

Posted on March 26, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Letting go is one of the hardest things to do. Each morning, as I meditate, I find the first thing I need to do is begin to let thoughts flow rather than dwell on and in them. It is a liberating process and leads to an invigorating day usually.

Wildflower Women

The Buddha was no different from you. No different. That is why he serves as a good model, because he was as you are now. So don’t worship the Buddha. Don’t put him on a pedestal. Don’t even look up to him. Become him. Have the same intentions, take the same stand. Be the Buddha now! Put an end to all delaying, to all excuses, to all bowing down to saintly figures of the past or present. Stand up!

You are the Buddha! You are freedom itself! Stop dreaming your dream! Stop pretending that you are in bondage – stop telling yourself that lie! Stop pretending to be someone, or something! You are no one, you are no-thing! You are not this body or this mind. This body and mind exist within who and what you are. You are pure consciousness, already free, awake, and liberated. Stand up and walk…

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A Ritual to Read to Each Other

Posted on March 25, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

People quite often have views of the world and people that are fixed. We become observers and outsiders separate from the life we live in a sense.

William Stafford‘s poem offers another approach. We read our lives as stories to each other and share in the living. This is important in leading, which we are all able to do. In a sense, reading life is leading, learning, and teaching in the world we co-inhabit.

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider–
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give–yes or no, or maybe–
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

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Posted in Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged A Ritual to Read to Each Other, creativity, leadership, Mindful Practice, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, William Stafford. Bookmark the permalink.

to be silly

Posted on March 25, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

The best memories are often associated with laughter, storytelling, and silliness, sometimes all wrapped into one. They give us permission to live fully and in the moment relish what we have and are.

Ethereal Heights

that
joy of
full liberty to
be as silly and
open you can ever be
jump, hoot, dance with joy and
no one will be angry, well almost!

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Mankind has reached a bridge that can only be crossed in unity.

Posted on March 24, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

This is a powerful message to share. We live in the world and in relationship with all its inhabitants and phenomena. When we put faces and names to them, we accept responsibility for the world.

A Small Act Of Kindness Can Bring Smile On Million Faces