The Warmth of Gratitude.
When we measure happiness based on material wealth, we miss the importance it plays in living a grateful life.
Today, Kathy and I discussed how the ordinary is in the extraordinary. It is there. When we pause, it reveals itself. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote about being present and mindful when drinking tea is an act of gratitude. We are grateful for the work that created the tea, the cup, the pot, the energy, etc.
Emmanuel Levinas proposed ethics as an event preceding and succeeding this particular time and place. In this sense, space knows no temporal and spatial boundaries. I am grateful for what preceded this moment in drinking tea, what succeeds this moment, and the gift sent from many places by others who are taking responsibility for my tea drinking without knowing me.
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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
Teacher as Transformer 
gratitude for reminding me
to remember 🙂
You are welcome.
Being present and mindful in everyday moments is something I’m learning more and more as each day in retirement passes by. Just sitting watching the breeze blow the rose bushes outside my balcony wall has to be one of my favourite times of day. There’s a gentleness and love in the way the wind caresses each branch and flower that most people would never even see as they rush from task to social outing to work to sport etc.
There REALLY is a truth in ‘taking the time to smell the roses’ that I really appreciate now.
Being able to appreciate the ordinary moments in our lives really becomes extraordinary when we’re forced to change our hectic lives down to the basic simple tasks of living mindfully.
I think a photographer’s eye would be so helpful in being present and mindful. I am always inspired when I see images that took patience to take just so.
Reblogged this on New Bloggy Cat and commented:
A purrrrrfect lesson on being in the moment! ツ
Thank you for the re-blog and comment.
It’s my pleasure, Ivon. (^◡^ )
Drinking tea this very moment; I should write “savouring” tea! Thanks for the reminder to slow down, stay in the moment, and recall and extend gratitude.
You are welcome.
I am learning this via drinking a cup of tea with Anthony every day at the nursing home. It has become 10 minutes of pure joy!
Time with someone close and a quiet activity can do that.
In the neuroscience lab minks meditating on loving kindness gratitude, purely altruistic without regard for reward light up the left prefrontal,cortex the brightest
Helping others makes us feel the best about ourselves.
Counterintuitive when we chase desires at all cost
It is, but it seems to be human nature to chase desires at all cost.
That is dilemma then, how do we take a step back?
Is it in being aware of our nature as best as we can?
Reblogged this on By the Mighty Mumford.