Monthly Archives: June 2019

A Powerful Weapon

Posted on June 27, 2019 by ivonprefontaine

Eddie Two Hawks provides wonderful quotes from various sources. Today’s is one from Nelson Mandela who was a champion of freedom, compassion, and education. Education is leading others into the world they will inhabit and letting them learn about the world. It is a transformative and just process that continuously act on each person as they act on the world they inhabit.

With each new generation, hope springs anew. Education is not just school. It is as John Dewey suggested one’s whole life experience. Dewey suggested life is a person’s meta-vocation and other interests become vocations. Here, I follow Thomas Merton and Parker Palmer and understand vocation as a calling that most fully expresses who I am.

Teachers and elders play substantial roles in one’s education. Furthermore, education does not cease, meaning others play roles throughout our lives in our becoming educated. It is a life-long process, but not in a slick way summarized with glib cliche, life-long learning.

For me, education is best described in poetic terms such as Mary Oliver asking: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” It is a waterfall carving out new space, transforming itself and the landscape it passes through with each passing moment.

Posted in 21st Century Education, Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Photography, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Social Justice, teacher as transformer, Uncategorized, Writing and tagged 21st Century Education, blogging, Eddie Two Hawks, education, learning, Nelson Mandela, Parker Palmer, relationships, Thomas Merton, vocation, writing. Bookmark the permalink. 5 Comments

THERE IS FOREVER IN A FOREST

Posted on June 25, 2019 by ivonprefontaine

via THERE IS FOREVER IN A FOREST

Eric offers the reader a beautiful poem and image. The poem reminds me of how Wendell Berry might write about a forest. Nature, in each of its forms, is infinite, existing forever.

It is interesting how serdentipitous life can be. I read Wendell Berry this morning and emailed about him with a colleague yesterday, specifically his poem The Peace of Wild Things. It is a short poem I turn to when I struggle with things and the world. It reminds me there is beauty in the world that can be our salvation. Instead of being outside Nature, we grow to understand ourselves as embedded and part of Nature.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Posted in Blogging, Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Photography, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Social Justice, Synchronicity, teacher as transformer, Uncategorized, Writing and tagged blogging, community, creativity, environment, Eric M. Vogt, leadership, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, photography, poetry, stewardship, teacher as transformer, The Independent Poet, The Peace of Wild Things, Wendell Berry, writing. Bookmark the permalink. 13 Comments

SOLITUDE

Posted on June 20, 2019 by ivonprefontaine

via SOLITUDE

Lara provides wonderful images of her neighbourhood, gardens, and pets. This post is one with a single picture and a Khalil Gibran quote about solitude.

Solitude is not loneliness. Teaching can be a lonely profession often done in solitude, largely away from other adults. I was fortunate. For most of my career, I taught in proximity to other adults and this provided rich conversations and insights for reflection to improve my teaching.

Gibran wrote a poem about children, reminding me students I taught were not my children. My favourite line is “their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow.” As a teacher, I only promised I would do my best to prepare students for tomorrow.

In French, the word retirer means to draw back, like an archer. It is in healthy solitude I gather myself, draw back, and find stability in teaching the next generation.

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Where do we find solitude? I find it in Nature, in writing, in reading, in teaching, and in living. It is not a place. It is a relationship to life, others, and things.

Kathy took this picture in Jasper National Park. The roots of the trees form steps and a path up from the water falls we were visiting.

Posted in 21st Century Education, Community, Education, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Photography, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath, teacher as transformer, Uncategorized, Writing and tagged children, environment, health, Khalil Gibran, life, relationships, school, teacher as transformer, The Prophet, writing. Bookmark the permalink. 11 Comments

Where are you going?

Posted on June 18, 2019 by ivonprefontaine

via Where are you going?

Karen uses Alice’s conversation with the Cat from Alice in Wonderland to jump start this internal conversation with one’s self.

It reminded me of how Parker Palmer and Alan Watts describe faith. We are going somewhere, but there is always uncertainty in where we are going. Clinging to certainty adds anxiety as we move forward in life.

As I read this morning, I realized, and I cannot explain why it took so many years to arrive at this point, I often try to imagine the future in precise terms. What I should do is be less precise and imagine the quality of the world I want to inhabit e.g., compassionate, loving, caring, etc. I cannot guarantee it will be so, but I can add my actions in ways that enhance those qualities and the world.

I am re-reading Parker Palmer’s To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey. He reminds me to live in the world is to understand each person, creature, object, etc. contributes to the world in deep, meaningful ways.

Robson

Several years ago, I took an eco-ethics course and an author described how, as a geologist, he looked at a mountain’s striations and read the story they told. I cannot do that, but I I look at this picture of Mt. Robson and know the mountain is telling me its story.

Posted in Community, Education, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Photography, Reflective Moments, teacher as transformer, Uncategorized, Writing and tagged Alan Watts, Currere, Ethics, Living in the Moment, mindfulness, Mount Robson, nature, Nature's Secrets, Parker Palmer. Bookmark the permalink. 10 Comments

A Pearl from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Posted on June 7, 2019 by ivonprefontaine

via A Pearl from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

David Herbert posted this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in April. Bonhoeffer was executed hours before the end of World War II by the Nazis who held him as a prisoner for about 1.5 years. He is a modern day martyr and opposed the Nazis fromt the time they came to power.

David’s quote is a wonderful insight into how God is not driven by human views, opinions, and ideologies. We each have free choice and will to live in proper ways and to treat the world we live in (we are not separate) with reverence.

Nature, including humans, are gifts given to preserve and conserve in their purest forms.

Of all the pictures I post, this is my favourite. Kathy took the picture as she drove through Glacier National Park in Montana. With the flowers, grass, trees, lake, mountain, snow, clouds, and sky, there is so much of Nature’s in the picture.