Monthly Archives: July 2014

Can one really teach what one does not know?

Posted on July 16, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

I feel humbled in comparison. The idea of walking in another’s shoes comes to life in this story. It is more than a story. It is what Levinas called substitution for the Other, the ultimate taking responsibility and empathy.

Shechaim's News of the Day

Local teacher living homeless for month talks to WFTV

Can one really teach what one does not know?

If you have really been reading my postings about my people you know the answer.

http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/local-teacher-living-homeless-month-talks-wftv/nggKf/

Did this moving story give you any ideas?

Leave it to a teacher to put a little sanity into a politically corrupt state.

Before you read this, think about a law stating that any government official or one thinking of becoming a government official spend a minimum of 3 days in this teachers shoes!

“What’s it like? It is horrible,” Rebman said.

It’s been just 11 days since the Orange County teacher started his homelessness project.

“Here we are 11 days in and I have less than $2 in my pocket. I really don’t know how my days are going to go. I thought it wouldn’t be this difficult as it’s been,” Redman said.

“People demean…

View original post 99 more words

12 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Love After Love

Posted on July 16, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Derek Walcott wrote this wonderful poem about celebrating life. He suggested we greet ourselves offering hospitality as we realize that we let other things take the place of getting to know the person who was us.

The poem describes a wonderful (wonder filled) companionship in the second stanza. Companionship is sharing meals as we sojourn. Journey is the daily, perhaps moment-to-moment work we do while sojourning. Jacques Derrida drew on an Algerian-French-Jewish background in writing about greeting the stranger, but I don’t know if he meant ourselves.

I considered this today as I prepared a presentation. The world speaks to us and we speak to it, but are we listening as the conversation unfolds? It is in listening to our self that we make sense of the world and it in turn makes sense of us.

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

14 Comments

Posted in Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged community, creativity, Derek Walcott, eloquent questions, hospitality, Jacques Derrida, Love After Love, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Write On The Walls!

Posted on July 15, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Walls are spaces where we can live, as well. Usually, they are treated as boundaries between places, that separate us. Here, we see that the walls become spaces where life is reflected and spoken.

Sirena Tales

As you may know, we have scrawled favorite quotes all over the walls of our bathroom. The “Walls of Inspiration,” as they are affectionately known.

It started a couple of decades ago when I was home full time with my young children and came across an article in a house decorating magazine about having a few quotations written meticulously in calligraphy on walls painted in beautiful ribbons of color. Such beauty and inspiration–I loved the idea.

But we had neither the money to hire someone nor the skill to achieve “the look” ourselves. Every time I saw our bathroom’s dreary, worn wallpaper after viewing that lovely magazine image and realizing how many wondrous quotes I had with which to surround us, my soul drooped.

My answer? Tear down the paper and write quotes in the kids’ abundance of magic markers. Yes! Write on the walls (these walls, anyway). Gotta…

View original post 185 more words

6 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Posted on July 14, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

One aspect of Dr. King’s writing that is often overlooked was his concern for the pace of scientific and technological advances. It takes caring and compassionate people, and I think most scientists are just that, to guide the world in humane ways. This does not mean living outside our relationships with the world, but to live in them, encountering them in vulnerable and unexpected ways.

A Small Act Of Kindness Can Bring Smile On Million Faces

View original post

6 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

The Guest House

Posted on July 12, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Rumi wrote this beautiful poem 800 years ago. The message rings true today although we might resist it at times. Perhaps, in busyness and haste, we avoid the messages received in the guest house that our being and becoming entails. When we slow down encountering each guest as a transient event moving on, we learn lessons learned readily and easily.

In sabbath moments, whether a few minutes, hours, or days, we welcome these unexpected visitors. We recognize they will leave and, in treating them honourably, they may move along quickly allowing delight to return.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

26 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged creativity, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, Rumi, sabbath, spirituality, teacher as transformer, The Guest House. Bookmark the permalink.

Buoyant

Posted on July 12, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Living is an ebb and flow of tides which exist as ecotones where change is always happening. One’s identity and subjectivity is never static, but always in flux as we encounter the world. When we wake up, let go and float we embrace the world and our self as one and not separate.

Cast Light

“Recognize the possibility of the divine in any given moment.” – Dani Shapiro

“I awoke only to see the rest of the world was still asleep.” – Leonardo da Vinci

A sunset breaking through the paint brushed clouds and resting on the sleeping water show us how to return to our true north, our center. The sun rises and sets. The water ebbs and flows. Lighting and reflecting all of the beauty that surrounds it. In tune with its nature, rising above the fray. Buoyant, strong, at ease and steady.

We may get pulled under the water now and then, but we are built to be buoyant, returning to the surface. We need only to let go of the anchors that keep pull us under. Wake up, let go and float.

View original post

4 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Imagine…

Posted on July 11, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

This is an interesting way to present John Lennon’s song Imagine. Both the presentation and the song resonate with what we need in the world today.

7 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

This Is the Dream

Posted on July 11, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

One morning we will quietly drift into a harbor we did not know was there. Olav Haugue’s closing line is brilliant. We find the dream and its source in quietness. Without patience and a willingness to endure the difficulties which ultimately arise, the dream cannot be revealed.

I think the dream is not something we know in advance. When the dream appears, we know intuitively this is what we were waiting for and it speaks to us. The questions we carry open up the time, the heart, and the doors.

It’s the dream we carry

that something wondrous will happen

that it must happen

time will open

hearts will open

doors will open

spring will gush forth from the ground–

that the dream itself will open

that one morning we’ll quietly drift

into a harbor we didn’t know was there.

26 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, eloquent questions, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, Olav Haugue, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, This is the Dream. Bookmark the permalink.

A Secret to Grasp

Posted on July 10, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Rumi and other Sufi poets provide practical wisdom after 800 years. Viktor Frankl wrote that we do not find meaning in life. Life finds meaning in us. Patience and quietness are important in the listening we undertake to let that meaning reveal itself and speak to us.

Misifusa's Blog

When I run after what I think I want,
my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety;
if I sit in my own place of patience,
what I need flows to me, and without pain.
From this I understand that what I want also wants me,
is looking for me and attracting me.
There is a great secret here for anyone who can grasp it.
~Rumi

So, with that information, my plan this week is to ‘sit in my own place of patience’ and allow the flow of goodness to come to me, be attracted to me and to envelope me with its stillness and wisdom. Opportunities flow for us all. Let us…

Shine On!

View original post

9 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Beauty in your eyes…

Posted on July 9, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

When we sense the world fully, we come to understand its beauty not as an outsider looking in, but as someone who lives and is in full relationship with the world and all its inhabitants.

Otrazhenie