Category Archives: Reflective Moments

Whispers of Love

Posted on April 13, 2017 by ivonprefontaine

Rumi used paradoxical language in his poetry. Whenever I read his poetry, I find myself searching for the meaning of those words.

In this poem, I think he is suggesting that, when a person feels wanted and loved, there is a sense of belonging. A person can surrender to love, when they are cared for, belonging in a relationship.

The reciprocity of love makes one whole, healing them. The title proposes that love is quiet and a person has to listen closely, still themselves and their thoughts to hear the call addressing them. In this sense, love is a mindful and attentive way of living.

Love whispers in my ear,

“Better to be a prey than a hunter.

Make yourself My fool.

Stop trying to be the sun and become a speck!

Dwell at My door and be homeless.

Don’t pretend to be a candle, be a moth,

so you may taste the savor of Life

and know the power hidden in serving.”

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Posted in Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, teacher as transformer and tagged community, creativity, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, reflective practices, Rumi, teacher as transformer, Whispers of Love. Bookmark the permalink.

Welcoming Spring

Posted on April 12, 2017 by ivonprefontaine

On my walk today, I saw my first robin. It appeared perplexed and it might have good reason for feeling that way. It is supposed to get cool with snow, possibly accumulating over the next days.

I imagine food is at a premium for robins now, unlike the magpie I saw a few steps further along the path.

A sign of spring–

A robin walks someone’s fence,

Anxious and tentative.

It moves cautiously,

Not taking flight

Less concerned with me, than food.

Winter ground cold,

No food in the hardpan–

No earthworms tilling the soil.

Image from All About Birds © Christopher L. Wood

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Posted in Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments, teacher as transformer and tagged creativity, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, poetry, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Longing for the Mountains of Solitude

Posted on April 11, 2017 by ivonprefontaine

Kathy and I enjoy driving to and through the mountains. Where Kathy grew up, the Rockies are visible in the distance. We try to make a trip once a year, but have not this past year, with my finishing the dissertation. I say “a trip” as we have access to several routes.

Today, I came across this poem by Za Paltrül Rinpoche. I could not find a link to the poet, but the words spoke to me. Although I am terrified of heights, mountains invite me to find ways to safely explore them, finding peace and solitude in safe ways.

Kathy took this picture on the Going to the Sun Highway in Glacier National Park in Montana.

This is Mount Robson, BC. It is the highest point in the Canadian Rockies at almost 4, 000 metres (almost 13, 000). Due to its height, the top is not always visible. I took this picture on one of our many trips past Mount Robson. It is one of those views that never disappoints. One year we walked along Robson River for several kilometres.

Fooled in samsara town—

the endless cycle of countless chores,

preoccupations of a delusory world—

this boy’s mind longs for mountains of solitude.

Hassled by monastery life—

the hustle of duties and communal dues,

pursuits of pointless distraction—

This boy’s mind longs for mountains of solitude.

Whomever I look at, I see at death’s threshold;

whatever I think on, I sense denial of dying,

grasping at the deathless; in this courtyard of death,

this boy’s mind longs for mountains of solitude.

Whomever I meet with manifests clinging and repulsion;

whomever I talk to brings deception and lies;

faced by companions without virtuous conduct,

this boy’s mind longs for mountains of solitude.

Behold, beings in the three realms are fooled by afflictions;

the beings of the six realms are led astray;

delusion engenders the birth of suffering for all;

this boy’s mind longs for mountains of solitude.

By the blessings of the undeceiving guru and the [Three] Jewels,

may I attain and persevere in solitude;

by the force of a place of seclusion,

may I attain a mystic’s isolation

of body, speech, and mind.

May I be blessed by the mountains of solitude.

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Posted in Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Photography, Poetry, Reflective Moments, teacher as transformer and tagged Glacier National Park MT, Going to the Sun Road, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, Mount Robson, mount robson provincial park, nature, poetry, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Today

Posted on April 10, 2017 by ivonprefontaine

Today is a dreary, cold, and wet day. In contrast, we experienced warm, dry weather for most of the last week. It is spring in Alberta and the weather changes on a regular basis.

I tried my hand at writing a poem again and this was the result.

Today, spoke in dreary tones,

The cold a knife;

Snow and rain danced together,

The sun hid itself away.

The world soaked with dampness,

It spoke not inviting words;

There were no paths to walk,

Instead, it was a day of solitude.

My inner world lightened,

Where the sun found its way;

Words arose from that source,

They find their way to this page.

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Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, teacher as transformer, Uncategorized and tagged creativity, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, teacher as transformer, Today. Bookmark the permalink.

The Archer’s Need to Win

Posted on April 9, 2017 by ivonprefontaine

To just be in the moment and be present to what one is doing takes us beyond the need to win and not lose. In the last line of this poem, Chuang Tzu reminds us that the need to win or not to lose drains the archer of his power.

Several years ago, we visited our son and his family. At the time, our grandson was about 5 months old. We went for dinner our last evening and, after I finished eating, I took him. I was in front of a mirrored wall. When he noticed there was a little boy in the mirror, our grandson played with that little boy for about 5-10 minutes, until he became tired. He had no other goal than to play and just be in that moment.

We lose that childlike way and those purely phenomenological moments of just being in the world. Remembering is being mindful and calling something to mind. When we do so, Parker Palmer wrote that to re-member is to make and keep one’s self whole.

When an archer is shooting for fun
He has all his skill.

If he shoots for a brass buckle
He is already nervous.

If he shoots for a prize of gold
He goes blind

Or sees two targets –
He is out of his mind.

His skill has not changed,
But the prize divides him.

He cares
He thinks more of winning
Than of shooting –
And the need to win
Drains him of power.

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Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath, teacher as transformer and tagged Chuang-Tzu, creativity, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, Parker Palmer, poetry, reflective practices, spirituality, teacher as transformer, The Way by Chuang Tzu. Bookmark the permalink.

A Gift

Posted on April 7, 2017 by ivonprefontaine

Hans-Georg Gadamer described eloquent questions, as questions that do not have pre-supposed answers. Eloquent questions become and bound dialogue.

I used eloquent questions in my dissertation to explore how teachers experience using curriculum. Instead of arriving as a prescribed text with fixed answers, curriculum transforms into questions. Each student’s and teacher’s lived-experiences transform into questions held gently so as not to injure. The word transform means to go beyond the existing form and through the gift of dialogue and eloquent questions we can.

Denise Levertov‘s poem is about holding other’s questions as if they are fragile and are the answers to one’s own questions. Questions are gifts. When we watch a child open a gift, the joy is in watching them turn the gift to explore it from different angles. After all, differences make a difference.

Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.

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Posted in Community, Education, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, teacher as transformer and tagged A Gift, community, conversational journey, creativity, Denise Levertov, dissertation, education, eloquent questions, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, reflective practices, servant-leadership, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Periphery

Posted on April 6, 2017 by ivonprefontaine

Last summer, I attended a retreat in Wisconsin. Each morning, I went for a walk on the wonderful paths they had at the retreat centre. One morning, I felt I was being watched. I tried to only use my peripheral vision and not change my pace and gait.

After the rabbit slipped into the underbrush, I wondered what else I might miss in the hubbub of daily living. When I returned to the retreat centre, I jotted thoughts down and this is the result, several months later.

On my morning walk,

A slight movement on my periphery

I am being watched.

I move my eyes;

I try keeping my pace

I don’t.

I see it,

A rabbit

I am not on its periphery.

As it slips away,

I wonder

What do I miss in what I call living?

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Posted in Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments, teacher as transformer and tagged creativity, eloquent questions, Mindful Practice, nature, poetry, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Haiku

Posted on April 5, 2017 by ivonprefontaine

Hanshan wrote this Haiku. I enjoy reading and writing Haiku. A poem’s meaning is usually shrouded in mystery, but Haiku even more so. There is so much left to the imagination.

I turn off the light —

my heart a precipice

before the moon

I have not written a Haiku for a while, but decided to take a run at it. Mine is less abstract.

Words separate spaces

overflowing and alluring

Flooding my senses

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Posted in Haiku, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, teacher as transformer and tagged creativity, haiku, Hanshan, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, teacher as transformer, writing a haiku, writing poetry. Bookmark the permalink.

Two Kinds of Intelligence

Posted on April 4, 2017 by ivonprefontaine

Rumi‘s words remind me, as a teacher, that my teaching is more than just providing information for students to learn in a rote way for recall on a test. If what children and adults learn does not have meaning to them, it becomes “yellow or stagnates.”

On the last day I taught, my students gave me a card and gift, but it was the words they offered that meant the most. They told me it was not learning from an official curriculum, but the “other things” that would mean the most to them in later years.

Curriculum comes from the Latin currere and means “running a course” and relates to living one’s life. In running the course and living one’s life, the other tablet comes to life. It is who and what that are close to our hearts that mean the most. As we live life, we discover what that means in sometimes surprising ways.

It is what we reflect upon and are mindful of, reflecting who we are, that brings the greatest joy to our running and recounting the course of our lives.

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.

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Posted in Community, Education, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, teacher as transformer and tagged community, creativity, education, Mindful Practice, poetry, Rumi, spirituality, teacher as transformer, Two Kinds of Knowledge. Bookmark the permalink.

I look into your eyes and see the universe not yet born.. &.. Gözlerinin içine bakıyorum ve henüz doğmamış kainatı görüyorum. – Rumi

Posted on April 3, 2017 by ivonprefontaine

Source: I look into your eyes and see the universe not yet born.. &.. Gözlerinin içine bakıyorum ve henüz doğmamış kainatı görüyorum. – Rumi

Rumi had a wonderful way with words that touched the soul. Semra Polat shared two quotes in this post. When I read them, I easily understand as speaking about another person who means the world to me. As well, Rumi might have spoken about God, as a divine entity I experience by looking into the majesty of what God created.

In each moment, I witness what was created. I come to imagine the universe not yet born as I look into God’s eyes. In those moment, I am mindful and attentive to who and what I encounter and experience.