Monthly Archives: May 2014

Do you feel comfortable tooting your own horn?

This is something I have struggled with. I am not very good at saying I am good at this or that. Others tell my story better than I do in that sense. I never thought of it as humility, although I suspect it is part of it. A bigger part is that I was raised by a parent who insisted we not talk that way about our self. In many ways, I see it as a virtue.

Otrazhenie's avatarOtrazhenie

From http://theundercoverrecruiter.com

In our era of consumerism everything seems to be a matter of sale, including employment. Job hunters are often expected to “sell, sell and sell themselves” with self-confidence considered as one of the key selling points. 

As Broadside points out on her blog, you’ve got to have “the brass-knuckled self-confidence” or “fake successfully and project consistently… to meet the right people, say the right things, answer with the requisite ballsiness… Anyone modest or self-deprecating is quickly and easily trampled by the brazen, who will become your boss.” You are expected to be “chest-beating and telling everyone how amaaaaaaaaaazing you are.”

why do you fail at Job Interviews

 From http://www.webkhabhar.com

I thought about that while scanning environment for interesting opportunities. Would I feel comfortable tooting — or blaring — my own horn?

Well, if I was desperate for a job to feed my children and that was the only way of getting a job, then yes…

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kahlil Gibran on Children

This is a wonderful passage for each person who works with children. It is a reminder that children are the future and, in that sense, they are not our children. They belong to the world, the universe.

the alchemist's avatarGrit Flow

Kahlil gibran on children

The Prophet is a book of 26 prose poetry essays written in English by Kahlil Gibran. It was originally published in 1923. It is Gibran’s best known work. The Prophet has been translated into over forty different languages and has never been out of print. In this book a Prophet who is about to board a ship is stopped by a group of people, with whom he discusses topics such as life and the human condition.

This book has a way of speaking to people at different stages in their lives. It has a magical quality, the more you read it the more you come to understand the words and it’s not filled with any kind of dogma and is available to anyone.

Buy The Prophet

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from…

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Little Rooms

There are always special places in life. They are places where we can be. William Stafford called those places little rooms. Our little rooms provide views in the world revealing what and who is important. Time drifts and we reach out to what and who is important in life.

The little rooms are mindful places where life beckons coming alive in the each moment’s richness. We are more aware of each moment in encountering them fully.

I rock high in the oak–secure, big branches–
at home while darkness comes. It gets lonely up here
as lights needle forth below, through airy space.
Tinkling dish washing noises drift up, and a faint
smooth gush of air through leaves, cool evening
moving out over the earth. Our town leans farther
away, and I ride through the arch toward midnight,
holding on, listening, hearing deep roots grow.

There are rooms in a life, apart from others, rich
with whatever happens, a glimpse of moon, a breeze.
You who come years from now to this brief spell
of nothing that was mine: the open, slow passing
of time was a gift going by. I have put my hand out
on the mane of the wind, like this, to give it to you.

Each Tick Of The Clock (Tanka)

The message in this short poem is a challenging one. I often live in the fictional past and the fantastic future, but they are not as real as this moment which is ever evolving.

Dom DiFrancesco's avatarDom DiFrancesco

Each tick of the clock

Signifies a new “present”

No past, no future

There is only this moment

Why not make the most of it

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

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Witness

Our senses are the portals by which the universe speaks to us.

drbillwooten's avatarDr Bill Wooten

“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence..~- Alan Watts

Galaxy

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An Observation

We live in paradox in the world. Parker Palmer uses May Sarton‘s poetry in his writing to bring this point to life. It is hard to be sensitive and being gentle requires a certain toughness.

Since I arrived home, I have read more than I have written. In part, I am exploring the aesthetic qualities that life shares with us. There are qualities that allow us to live in the world in ways that we do not bruise or wound the hidden fruit. Yet, we are left with scars in that work  forever making us stronger when we are not wearing gloves. The paradox of life is gives us strength and sureness and, at the same, we are tender and vulnerable.

Teaching, and for that matter any pedagogic work, requires that sensitivity. It is always rough as there is no how-to-manual. We learn this work through the tact and sensitivity of the work itself, reflecting more on what goes well as opposed to what goes well in pedagogic forming. We come to be observant, patient, and see the particular of each situation revealed in the universal.

True gardeners cannot bear a glove
Between the sure touch and the tender root,
Must let their hands grow knotted as they move
With a rough sensitivity about
Under the earth, between the rock and shoot,
Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.
And so I watched my mother’s hands grow scarred,
She who could heal the wounded plant or friend
With the same vulnerable yet rigorous love;
I minded once to see her beauty gnarled,
But now her truth is given me to live,
As I learn for myself we must be hard
To move among the tender with an open hand,
And to stay sensitive up to the end
Pay with some toughness for a gentle world.

Un-learn and Re-learn

Kathy calls this uncommon common sense. Sometimes we get caught up the wrong thing and forget to pay attention to what is necessary. Letting go is a challenging process. Challenging is about questioning what we understand in the world and our life at any given time. It calls on us to let go of the presupposed notions we hold on to.

Psalm

While I was in Spokane, I created a prayer as part of Sabbath practice. It was not so much a new prayer, but an amalgam of existing prayers including lines from the 23rd Psalm, which I recall imperfectly. The prayer served as a great way to stop, slow down, and catch my breath.

Stuart Kestenbaum memorized the 23rd Psalm, but suggests recalling its exact order was challenging. He captured its essential message, one of goodness and mercy wherever we are in a particular day and life. Sabbath happens when we need it. It is that moment, regardless of beliefs, when we pause and catch our breath. It allows us to catch up to the our self, so to speak, even in simple tasks like opening  doors.

The only psalm I had memorized was the 23rd
and now I find myself searching for the order
of the phrases knowing it ends with surely
goodness and mercy will follow me
all the days of my life and I will dwell
in the house of the Lord forever only I remember
seeing a new translation from the original Hebrew
and forever wasn’t forever but a long time
which is different from forever although
even a long time today would be
good enough for me even a minute entering
the House would be good enough for me,
even a hand on the door or dropping today’s
newspaper on the stoop or looking in the windows
that are reflecting this morning’s clouds in first light.

 

For All Eternity

There are people that we become so close to that they become part of who we are. When we think of that person, we always think of the other as being inseparable. In those relationships, there is a quantum entanglement making two people and their events one over time.

The Way Sunshine Smells

We picked dandelions and put them on the kitchen table in a mason jar. My mom would take them and put them there not saying they were weeds. Members of Kathy’s family ate dandelion greens as a salad. As our boys grew up, they picked dandelions and we put them in vases for a few days as the dandelions gave up their prime moments and shared the way sunshine smells.

Tamara Madison wrote this poem about daffodils not dandelions. It reminds me of the wonder we live in. Nature is transient. It moves at its pace and sometimes we pay attention to it. In a world filled with busyness, it is hard to realize we have little control over what happens outside our self. We control our personal responses to the world and its phenomena, human and non-human. When I reflect on what is was like to be a child and the many things I did not take for granted, it points out the transience I live with and a way to approach it. Daffodils and dandelions are the way sunshine smells and honoring me with their presence, as I honor them.

Ten daffodils stand in a pasta sauce jar
giving up their moment of prime
to brighten this cluttered kitchen table.

Yellow lovelies, I am honored
to have you here. Outside you’d be
just another bit of the great flowering world,
but in my kitchen, among the papers,
the bottles, the bananas growing tired
in the bowl, you are amazement itself.

Outside amid the orange blossoms,
the roses, the sweet alyssum,
your light scent would be lost.
Here, you turn this morning kitchen
Into a festival of fragrance – you
are the way sunshine smells.