The second stanza of this poem is a great message for the world today. When we hate, we take something out of the world. The world is a place in need of love, humility. wonder, and peace.
Diane Ackerman writes a wonderful poem that offers insight into the world and with. John Dewey suggested the world is not separated into objective or subjective worlds, but is a continuous forming and conversing between the two we each engage in moment-to-moment.
What would happen if this prayer and poem began each day for us and our children?
In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,
I swear I will not dishonor
and my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.
In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,
I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.
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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 
I agree with you on the second stanza, well in fact, with the piece in its entirety. Beautiful reminder of how to live.
It is a beautiful poem throughout, no question.
a compassionate aspiration
for children of all ages 🙂
It is, including us children who are a little older.
Is there such an abhorrence of the mention of a God or Divine being whatever or whoever you perceive it to be?
Leslie
There can be.
Lovely poem!
Such a wonderful idea that this prayer and poem should begin each day for us and our children. I can imagine the voices of children reciting it each morning…
One just has to close his or her eyes.
Love it! 🙂 ❤
beautiful poem resonates
It does.
A lovely poem and great way to live, but would children really understand the meaning of this poem? Would they be able to grasp what he is saying? Or would they learn to repeat it as a matter of requirement? It might still do some good even that way. I’ve heard that even a meaningful poem hung on the wall, where you pass frequently, resonates its message as you pass.
I am not sure about younger children, but junior high and upper elementary students can engage in some great conversations about what poetry can mean to them.
Reblogged this on By the Mighty Mumford and commented:
PREACH IT, BROTHER! :d
Thank you Jonathan.
A wonderful prayer, Ivon. Not easy to do, but worth the effort every day. The part about honouring all life reminds me of the philosophy that the nuns at my favorite convent practice in their monastic hospitality: to see God in the face of every human being. And of Mother Theresa’s rueful response to a miserable person: there goes God in another of his distressing disguises.
Cynthia, those are wonderful examples of what we can do to see God in our everday life.