“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me a…
Source: The world offers itself to your imagination ~ Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver is one of my many favorite poets. The poem Wild Geese, which is the poem these lines are from, comes from Poetry Showcase.
In the poem, Mary Oliver reminds us that we are part of a larger family and are being called home. When we are mindful, we can hear who and what calls us and we can imagine what that means to each of us. Even in the busyness of our living, there is something calling us to awaken and listen more closely.
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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.
Teacher as Transformer 
“Even in the busyness of our living, there is something calling us to awaken and listen more closely.” This is the truth.
Thank you for the lovely comment.
Yes, thank you. Want you to know I will be in areas of poor to little internet for the next two weeks so you may not hear from me.
Enjoy and have fun.
I only recently discovered Mary Oliver through my online yoga teacher, Melissa West. She built an entire class around Wild Geese. I am definitely going to have to look into more of Mary Oliver’s poetry.
I can see yoga teachers using her poetry. It is deeply spiritual.
Never heard about her but wow.. have to locate a book by her now..
She is an inspirational writer and has a number of books out there.
I have to smile…yesterday I read this post and it led me to explore Mary Oliver for hours so I even forgot to come back and “like” the post. Now I am a happy owner of more of her books 🙂
She is such a wonderful writer and it is so easy to slip into the writing.
Oh it’s lovely. Her poem speaks to the feelings of belonging and has such a comfort about it xx
Her and Wendell Berry overlap in their writing about belonging. I think where they differ is that Mary Oliver’s poetry is about comfort and his poetry shakes me up at times.