Kathy and I drove to British Columbia today. It is about an eight-hour drive so lots of time for quiet and conversation. Driving through mountains there is a lot to behold in the pure silence married to nature’s stillness.
At one point, Kathy commented how at this time of year the mountains in the distant seem closer with snow coming down further. During the summer, the mountains are snow-free and do not stand out the same way. Today, it looked like there had been snow in the past couple of days contrasting the darkness.
Linda Gregg’s poem captures how human silence provides humans with opportunities to witness nature’s pure stillness. In moments of pure silence, we feel ourselves embedded in something larger containing us and everything else. There is a sense of smallness and, yet, a sense of largeness in this exquisite elegance. In these moments, we feel a deep sense of caring from the world and towards the world.
All that is uncared for.
Left alone in the stillness
in that pure silence married
to the stillness of nature.
A door off its hinges,
shade and shadows in an empty room.
Leaks for light. Raw where
the tin roof rusted through.
The rustle of weeds in their
different kinds of air in the mornings,
year after year.
A pecan tree, and the house
made out of mud bricks. Accurate
and unexpected beauty, rattling
and singing. If not to the sun,
then to nothing and to no one.
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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 and its anticipatory relationship with the future, and hope as an essential element in learning.
ivonprefontaine
Welcome to beautiful British Columbia! I hope you catch the sunshine before the rains start-
again!
It is trying this morning to be sunny, but it is not very successful.
Ivon, it is nature that brings to me this simultaneous sense of “smallness” and “largeness”, as you express so well in this post. Thanks for sharing the poem by Linda Gregg. It’s lovely.
You are welcome.
Hm, I never thought about the difference in the appearance closeness or distance in different seasons. You are right about silence. Something I’ve always found to be curious is a battery-powered clock that I made many years ago. Late at night when nothing is moving, no people are stirring and there are no televisions or electronics humming, I can hear the ticking of that clock so loudly that it catches my attention. During the day, standing in front of the clock, try as I might, I cannot hear any ticking.
That was a lovely poem. Thank you for that interesting preface.
Thank you for the lovely comment Jackie.
Ahhhh, going home (our home too). Love the poem Ivon.
Thank you David.
Reblogged this on The Mirror Obscura and commented:
Ms. Gregg wrote a wonderful poem. Thank you for sharing. >KB
Thank you for the re-blog.
You are welcomed. >KB