Category Archives: Community

The Contract: A Word From the Led

Posted on December 21, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

We often think of leadership from the perspective of the person in charge. What about those who follow? What does it mean to be led by a particular person? I find, at times, that I get in a hurry to lead and forget to listen which is such an important part of leadership.

William Ayot provided this insightful poem which offers advice for the leader through the eyes of the follower. Leadership is about serving and mindfulness which intersect with integrity.

And in the end we follow them –

not because we are paid,

not because we might see some advantage,

not because of the things they have accomplished,

not even because of the dreams they dream

but simply because of who they are:

the man, the woman, the leader, the boss,

standing up there when the wave hits the rock,

passing out faith and confidence like life jackets,

knowing the currents, holding the doubts,

imagining the delights and terrors of every landfall;

captain, pirate, and parent by turns,

the bearer of our countless hopes and expectations,

We give them our trust. We give them our effort.

What we ask in return is that they stay true.

15 Comments

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Making Contact

Posted on October 3, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I spent most of the last two days working on a course paper about leadership and hospitality particularly as the latter may or may not occur in digital settings. It was interesting, but reciprocity and trust are critical in community building. They emerge out of hosting one another and making contact in some real way.

Virginia Satir, a psychologist and poet wrote this poem about the need to reach and touch one another in relationships. We create meaning through meaningful contact. It is easier to build community in face-to-face settings, but not impossible in virtual settings.

I believe

The greatest gift

I can conceive of having

from anyone

is

to be seen by them,

heard by them,

to be understood

and touched by them.

The greatest gift

I can give

is

to see, hear, understand

and to touch

another person.

When that is done

I feel

contact has been made.

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Vocation

Posted on September 18, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I re-read Parker Palmer‘s Let Your Life Speak. It is the one time of the day I don’t take notes I just read. Last night, I began Dietrich Bonhoeffer‘s Life Together.

Parker Palmer wrote about the shared etymological roots of vocation and voice. William Stafford expressed a similar message. We find our way through life as we make meaning out of life. It comes with the good and the not so good which sometimes, when we look back in the rear view mirror, we realize the reverse is true.

I am reading on my dissertation topic: curriculum and technology use. I chose a couple of books which say the same thing about schooling and it would be a radical departure. Education is about conversations, integrates roles of teacher, student, and subject. We find our stories, our voices, and our calling in life in and through circles of conversation. Here we let the silence speak as well. It is a mindful way to live and requires our full attention.

This dream the world is having about itself
includes a trace on the plains of the Oregon trail,
a groove in the grass my father showed us all
one day while meadowlarks were trying to tell
something better about to happen.

I dreamed the trace to the mountains, over the hills,
and there a girl who belonged wherever she was.
But then my mother called us back to the car:
she was afraid; she always blamed the place,
the time, anything my father planned.

Now both of my parents, the long line through the plain,
the meadowlarks, the sky, the world’s whole dream
remain, and I hear him say while I stand between the two,
helpless, both of them part of me:
“Your job is to find what the world is trying to be.”

6 Comments

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Turning Point

Posted on September 13, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

We tend to live isolated worlds and the boundaries are often rigid rather than permeable. We come in contact with many and absorb something from each. Life is a relational experience whether the relationship is with our self, another person, another being, the Cosmos. It begins inside and emerges. It is blending of all into one that makes us human and allows us to be a part of the macrocosm. We only need to turn to those relationships. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote this beautiful poem about turning points and the need to look inward.

For there is a boundary to looking.

And the world that is looked at so deeply

wants to flourish in love.

Work of the eyes is done, now

go and do the heart-work

on all the images imprisoned in you; for you

overpowered them: but even now you don’t know them.

Learn inner man, to look on your inner woman,

the one attained from a thousand

natures, the merely attained but

not yet beloved form.

5 Comments

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The Coffee Shop

Posted on August 31, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I spend time in the local coffee shops, read, and write. I did a lot of my blogging in that venue; however this summer I rearranged my schedule and blog at home. I notice a gentle energy in these settings and in a busy world it is a place to take time and just be.

The coffee shop;

Misnamed I think–

I sip tea

I try just be present.

We gather;

It is about talk–

A communal space,

Congregate and converse.

Companionship’s richness;

Found in quality

I cannot assign a number

It is a fool’s errand.

It is in laughter,

The reminiscing,

The sharing,

We find ourselves.

15 Comments

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Pure Relationships

Posted on August 17, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

Today, as I read, I came across this passage from the work of D. H. Lawrence. It is not a poem, but the words have a poetic quality to them and allow me to consider what life is all about. Life is relational and that is not limited to people. I live in relationship to everything I come in contact with. In the busyness of life, this is a gentle reminder to acknowledge the relationships consciously. I witness pure relationships in these acknowledgement, these accomplishments.

The passage has a Zen quality, but it reminded me that until about 300 years ago our souls were inseparable from our physical being even in western culture.

“If we think about it, we find that our life consists in this achieving of a pure relationship between ourselves and the living universe about us. This is how I ‘save my soul’ by accomplishing a pure relationship between me and another person, me and other people, me and a nation, me and a race of men, me and animals, me and the trees or flowers, me and the earth, me and the skies and the sun and stars, me and the moon: an infinity of pure relationships, big and little, like the stars of the sky: that makes our eternity, for each one of us, me and the timber I am sawing, the lines of force I follow; me and the dough I knead for bread, me and the very motion with which I write, me and the bit of gold I have got. This, if we knew it, is our life and our eternity: the subtle, perfected relation between me and my whole circumambient universe.”

16 Comments

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The Seven of Pentacles

Posted on August 3, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

Marge Piercy wrote of the time it takes to create what is good in life. In a fast-paced, hectic world, it is nice to view life as an ecosystem. Good things in life, those things I cherish, were nurtured and took time to appear. They depend upon many things to grow.

In the rich ecosystem, there is mystery and wonder. I ask, “What happened” and expect no definitive answers. I grow to accept it is good and healthy there are no answers and questions lead me forward, slowly and gently into the newness of each moment.

I took the picture at the farm earlier this spring. The tree in the centre is a woodpecker’s roost and, when I look, I see holes in the tree. A trail wanders through the underbrush. I ask who or what else uses the path? Who or what else lives close by? What are the connections? The lifeless tree sustains the ecosystem. Everything is important. I only have to let it be so. When I slow down, questions emerge and sometimes answers, but only occasionally.

Under a sky the color of pea soup

she is looking at her work growing away there

actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans

as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.

If you tend to them properly, if you mulch, if you water,

if you provide birds that eat the insects a home and winter food,

if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,

if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and bees,

then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly. sometimes they grow underground.

You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.

More than a half a tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.

Penetrate quietly as the earthworms that blows no trumpet.

Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.

Spread like squash plant that overruns the garden.

Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.

Live a life you can endure: make love that is loving.

Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,

a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us

interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:

reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.

This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,

for every gardener knows that after the digging, after

the planting,

after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

Summer 2013

14 Comments

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The Niagra River

Posted on July 23, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

Gary sent me to this poem after I posted Test by Kay Ryan. I seek meaning in my life for those things around me. Other times I don’t pay enough attention, take things for granted, and do not realize the substance of what is there. Even something as large as the Niagara River can go unnoticed and blur into the background. When I pull it forward, its meaning is there, not explainable, but there. I am reminded that meaning exists even when I cannot explain it.

For those who have not visited Gary, you will enjoy his poetry. I do.

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As though

the river were

a floor, we position

our table and chairs

upon it, eat, and

have conversation.

As it moves along,

we notice—as

calmly as though

dining room paintings

were being replaced—

the changing scenes

along the shore. We

do know, we do

know this is the

Niagara River, but

it is hard to remember

what that means.

 

Test

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Mindful

Posted on July 10, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I struggled for a few days with the overwhelming job, or so it seemed, of beginning to craft a purpose statement for the dissertation topic. Thankfully, my advisor told me to read and read and read the classics in education and the not so classic. I immersed myself in John Dewey, who I have read before, Alfred North Whitehead, who I had not read, and Ivan Illich, who worked with Paulo Freire. I am going to re-read Freire.

Last night, I fell asleep thinking about these people and woke up still thinking about them. As I got mobile, it dawned on me what happened and I recalled Mary Oliver’s beautiful poem. I don’t hold answers. I hold questions. Their eloquence lead me into life daily and the answers are often in the things I take for granted. I posted a re-worked purpose statement, based on just letting things percolate and doing some free writing, and one of my colleagues commented back that it was making more sense. Be mindful scholar.

Every day

I see or I hear

something

that more or less

kills me

with delight

that leaves me

like a needle

in the haystack

of light.

It is what I was born for–

to look, to listen,

to lose myself

inside this soft world–

to instruct myself

over and over

in joy,

and acclamation.

Nor am I talking

about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful–

but of the ordinary,

the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.

Oh, good scholar,

I say to myself,

how can you help

but grow wise

with such teachings

as these–

the untrimmable light

of the world,

the ocean’s shine,

the prayers that are made

out of grass?

14 Comments

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Ode on a Grecian Urn

Posted on July 8, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

When I am at Gonzaga, I attend what we call Journal Club once a week. We read, analyze, and share articles, book chapters, or books we have read recently. Once we have shared, we spend time in an open forum discussion based on the presentations. Today, one of the participants brought up this poem by John Keats to help describe the difference between rational thought and faith-based thought. Some things cannot be explained. Words fail me at those times to describe something like love, a piece of art, and any other form of beauty in life. Another person pointed out, when words fail, we are left with the mystery of some thing or concept. I am left with the mystery that certain questions offer.

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

8 Comments

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