Li Po wrote this short poem about companionship. To be a companion is to literally share one’s bread people journey together. In this case, it is water they are sharing, although it could be something stronger.
When we travel with each other, it is a time to share: converse, drink, food, and nourish each other. We see the other person as a person with flaws and beauty. It is in those moments we are mindful of the other and who they are as a person. Perhaps in their imperfections we discover perfection.
Kathy and I joke with each other as we eat. We offer each other extra napkins and say, “I’ve seen you eat before.”
Together, we drink: two mountain flowers,
opening.
A cup, a cup, and then, to begin again at the
beginning, another cup!
I’m drunk, would sleep . . . you’d better go.
Tomorrow, come again, with your lute, if you
will.
This was a path Kathy and I walked in
Glacier National Park. We took a boat down the lake, crossed into Montana, and, because we had our passports, hiked into a lake several miles from the boat launch.
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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 
Reblogged this on By the Mighty Mumford and commented:
I HAVE HEARD OF LI PO. EXCELLENT THOUGHT-PROVOKING WRITING!
Thank you Jonathan.
So beautiful!
Reblogged this on Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung – Aus und über Eslarn, sowie die bayerisch-tschechische Region!.
Thank you for the reblog Michael.
Always with a great pleasure! Thank you very much.;-) Michael
Companionship is a wonderful thing to embrace. Love the words, “we see the other person as a person with flaws and beauty” …'”perhaps in their imperfection we find perfection”. This is a true expression of “love”. ❤
It is. Thank you for the comment Olga.
This is lovely in its simplicity. It also is poignant, at least for me, in that men (in the US anyway) are not really allowed to relate to one another in this intimate way – speaking of need for one another. Good post, Ivon. Aloha.
Thank you Bela. I think you are right about men in North America not feeling comfortable to relate intimately with one another.