Category Archives: Nature in All Its Glory

Prayer to Mansur Al-Hallaj

Posted on February 24, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Prayer is about listening to the world and is part of an internal conversation. The Sufi prayer is about listening closely. Each stanza of the poem begins with a word that entreats God guide me in sensing the world more deeply, not as something I hear, but as something all my senses are able to engage with.

We think of leadership as action and speech, but it is about sensing the world in a sensitive and mindful manner. Leadership is about a conversation and the questions we ask. It opens up space where there are no preconceived answers and followers can be part of conversation and lead, as well. Leadership and its communication is about community, a gathering of people who do not always agree, but hold something in common.

12 Comments

Posted in Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Reflective Moments, Uncategorized and tagged conversational journey, eloquent questions, Mansur Al-Hallaj, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, poetry, prayer, spirituality, sufi poet, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

The Other Kingdoms

Posted on February 11, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Mary Oliver writes such wonderful poetry, even when it looks like prose. I find a depth in the words and spaces that calls me to reflect upon the cultural and personal constraints that surround me. Certainly, I need those constraints. They guide me through the moment-to-moment actions of my daily life. I need those words that help me make sense of the most immediate world that I often take-for-granted.

What if I lived in the north? I would need those many words and an awareness of what the snow told me to survive. I read today that mother orangutans spend 7-8 years with each offspring. During that time, the mothers appear to teach the ways of life necessary for the offspring’s survival. I say appear, because we cannot communicate with them well enough to know with certainty. There is something mystical about that existence that cannot be fully grasped. So even in the orangutan world, there is a culture and communication that helps them negotiate their terrain instinctively.

I love the line “Their infallible sense of what their lives are meant to be.” Just like the lilies of the field, those other kingdoms exist in ways that allow the world that includes us to grow sweetly wild, when we are attentive and mindful to the world.

Consider the other kingdoms. The
trees, for example, with their mellow-sounding
titles: oak, aspen, willow.
Or the snow, for which the peoples of the north
have dozens of words to describe its
different arrivals. Or the creatures, with their
thick fur, their shy and wordless gaze. Their
infallible sense of what their lives
are meant to be. Thus the world
grows rich, grows wild, and you too,
grow rich, grow sweetly wild, as you too
were born to be.

9 Comments

Posted in Community, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged community, creativity, Mary Oliver, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, The Other Kingdoms. Bookmark the permalink.

Sonnet XIV from The Sonnets To Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke

Posted on January 28, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Reblogged on WordPress.com

Source: Sonnet XIV from The Sonnets To Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke

The last two stanzas challenge us to think about whether our roles are submissive and passive affairs or ones where we have some mastery and active choice. My mother used to tell us that we had free choice and had to accept responsibility for the consequences of those choices. She told us we are not empty vessels created by God, whatever that belief is, but responsible people with free choice.

The liberty of others and their choices constrains our personal liberty. Without differences, life would be a boring space without room for creativity and growth, a moving to the surface that is fraught with potential challenges.

Similar to the plants in Rilke‘s poem, we face obstacles and constraints. We exist and flourish within those constraints when we find the proper paths to live lives fully. It is no easy task, but one that can bring great fulfillment. When care for and tend to those paths, our lives become filled with vigour, often flourishing because of the lessons learned from finding those paths.

5 Comments

Posted in Community, Education, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Uncategorized and tagged community, creativity, leadership, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, poetry, Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnet XIV, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

The Lessons of Water

Posted on January 26, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

David Wagoner wrote this wonderful poem that encourages us to watch nature and learn from it. Regardless of one’s faith, we receive gifts that act as teachers for our living.

When we watch water, we can see and hear its story and that can guide our behaviours. Nature is not separate from us, but a part of us that was shared with us so we might care for it and pass it on to the next generations.

The best way to conduct oneself may be observed in the behavior of water. —Tao te ching

When given a place to wait, it fills that place
By taking the shape of what contains it,
Its upper surface poised and level,
Absorbing, accepting what it can as lightly
Or heavily as it does itself. If pressed
Down, it will offer back in all directions
Everything it was given. If chilled, it will shatter
Daylight and whiten to stars, will harden and sharpen
And turn unforseeably dazzling. Neglected,
It will disappear, being transformed and lifted
Into thin air. Or thrown away, it will gather
With other water, which is all one water,
And rise and fall, regather and go on rising
And falling the more quickly its path descends
And the more slowly as it wears that path away,
To be left awhile, to stir for the moon, to wait
For the wind to begin again.

8 Comments

Posted in Community, Education, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Social Justice and tagged community, creativity, David Wagoner, education, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, poetry, spirituality, Tao Te Ching, teacher as transformer, The Lessons of Water. Bookmark the permalink.

School Prayer

Posted on January 23, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

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.

18 Comments

Posted in Education, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath, Social Justice and tagged community, creativity, Diane Ackerman, education, eloquent questions, John Dewey, leadership, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, poetry, School Prayer, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

ON HOW TO PICK AND EAT POEMS

Posted on January 15, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Phyllis Cole-Dai wrote this wonderful poem that offers so much advice about how to live life more fully. When I stand still and just am in the moment, it is there that I can live most fully. Poems grow there and, just like finding something wonderful in nature, we can bow to it as we read it and let it soak in.

Stop whatever it is you’re doing.
Come down from the attic.
Grab a bucket or a basket and head for light.
That’s where the best poems grow, and in the dappled dark.

Go slow. Watch out for thorns and bears.
When you find a good bush, bow to it, or take off your shoes.
Then pluck. This poem. That poem. Any poem.
It should come off the stem easy, just a little tickle.
No need to sniff first, judge the color, test the firmness.
You’ll only know it’s ripe if you taste.

So put a poem upon your lips. Chew its pulp.
Let its juice spill over your tongue.
Let your reading of it teach you
what sort of creature you are
and the nature of the ground you walk upon.
Bring your whole life out loud to this one poem.
Eating one poem can save you, if you’re hungry enough.

When birds and deer beat you to your favorite patch,
smile at their familiar appetite, and ramble on.
Somewhere another crop waits for harvest.
And if your eye should ever light upon a cluster of poems
hanging on a single stem, cup your hand around them
and pull, without greed or clinging.
Some will slip off in your palm.
None will go to waste.

Take those you adore poem-picking when you can,
even to the wild and hidden places.
Reach into brambles for their sake,
stain your skin some shade of red or blue,
mash words against your teeth, for love.
And always leave some poems within easy reach
for the next picker, in kinship with the unknown.

If you ever carry away more than you need,
go on home to your kitchen, and make good jam.
No need to rush, the poems will keep.
Some will even taste better with age,
a rich batch of preserves.

Store up jars and jars of jam. Plenty for friends.
Plenty for the long, howling winter. Plenty for strangers.
Plenty for all the bread in this broken world.

18 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Community, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged blogging, community, creativity, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, On How to PIck and Eat Poems, Phyllis Cole-Dai, poetry, spirituality. Bookmark the permalink.

An Appalachian Wedding

Posted on January 13, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

This is my first post since getting back at it. It has been a great few months. I did not go far from my computer, but my efforts focused on dissertation writing. That is off the table for about a month as the committee members read and offer feedback. When that is done, I hope to be into research.

Thomas Berry was a Catholic priest and environmentalist who wrote the book The Dream of the Earth. He approached his environmentalism in a very holistic manner, incorporating a variety of traditions: Judeo-Christian, Eastern philosophies, and Indigenous people.

I feel that many people have moved away from the holistic relationship they subjectively and objectively engage in the world/ universe. We are not separate but part of a complex dynamic that is always incomplete and unpredictable.

Look up at the sky
the heavens so blue
the sun so radiant
the clouds so playful
the soaring raptors
woodland creatures
meadows in bloom
rivers singing their
way to the sea
wolfsong on the land
whalesong in the sea
celebration everywhere
wild, riotous
immense as a monsoon
lifting an ocean of joy
then spilling it down over
the Appalachian landscape
drenching us all
in a deluge of delight
as we open our arms and
rush toward each other
all of us moved by that vast
compassionate curve
that brings all things together
in intimate celebration
celebration that is
the universe itself.

26 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Community, Education, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath, Uncategorized and tagged blogging, community, creativity, leadership, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, Thomas Berry. Bookmark the permalink.

Song for Nobody

Posted on May 17, 2015 by ivonprefontaine

Thomas Merton was a Trappist Monk and prolific spiritual writer of the mid-20th Century with many works published posthumously. He passed away in an accident at a relative young age so it is hard to say how much more writing he had in him. He is best known for his essays, journals, and letters, but wrote poetry and was an artist as well.

He included as one of his key themes the key concept of activism as a form of violence on one’s self. He drew on Eastern philosophies and mindfulness in describing contemplation as a human necessity in the 20th Century with its busyness and distractions. One can only imagine what he would think today.

I thought of the biblical passages about how lilies grow and just do what comes naturally. The flowers sing their songs without words by themselves without spin and toil. We find their music in their simplicity.

A yellow flower
(Light and spirit)
Sings by itself
For nobody.

A golden spirit
(Light and emptiness)
Sings without a word
By itself.

Let no one touch this gentle sun
In whose dark eye
Someone is awake.

(No light, no gold, no name, no color
And no thought:
O, wide awake!)
A golden heaven
Sings by itself
A song to nobody.

6 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged Bible, Consider How the Lilies Grow, Mindful, mindfulness, nature, Song for Nobody, spirituality, teacher as transformer, Thomas Merton. Bookmark the permalink.

Prayer for a Field Mouse

Posted on March 29, 2015 by ivonprefontaine

Pat Riviere-Seel’s poem has a Mary Oliver feel where she honours a small animal that we might even notice in our daily walks. It is a blessing and prayer to have all that Nature offers us.

We soak in the world and find extraordinary in the ordinary.

Bless the gray mouse

that found her way
into the recycle bin.
Bless her tiny body,
no bigger than my thumb,
huddled and numb
against the hard side.
Bless her bright eye,
a frightened gleaming
that opened to me
and the nest she made
from shredded paper,
all I could offer.
Bless her last hours
alone under the lamp
with food and water near.
Bless this brief life
I might have ended
had she stayed hidden
inside the insulation.
Bless her body returned
to earth, no more
or less than any creature.

29 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged creativity, Mary Oliver, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, Pat Riviere-Seel, poetry, Prayer for a Field Mouse, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Wild Geese

Posted on March 22, 2015 by ivonprefontaine

Mary Oliver wrote this beautiful poem about sensing and perceiving Nature through direct experiences. Maurice Merleau Ponty wrote about the phenomenology of perception which is the about the way body and its senses act as gateways in perceiving the world. Our body is not an only a thing, it is an object that researches the world.

When we “the soft animal of your body” experience and sense Nature, we are in Nature. We have images for our imagination that fill our hearts and souls so fully. We belong in ways that we cannot as an observer standing outside. We are part of a community that includes all of Nature.

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 about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,