Humans have a tendency to place themselves at the top of the natural pedestal. We fail to see ourselves as part of something and place outside nature and the world. The result is we end up outside relationships with each other. Ways of life as outlined in the wisdom ways such as the Tao, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and many others point us in the direction we need to go in. We need to let go and want less. When we live in community and share, there is always enough.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Geography Escapes
Message in a bottle has the sounds of a cast-away poem. We can only hope someone finds the message in their ocean.
Beside the temple pond
I love haiku. There is a presence in the words because they are so carefully chosen and mix so well with the silence in spaces between.
The summer day
I rarely re-blog twice in one day, but I cannot help myself. This could easily be my favourite poem. It fits right up there with a quote by Parker Palmer I carry close to my heart: “Who is the self that teaches [and lives this life].” The last line of the poem asks the same question: “What is it [I] plan to with with [my] one wild and precious life?” Take care on the day’s quest.
“Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean the one who is
eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth
instead of up and down –
who is gazing around with her
enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms
and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall into the grass,
how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed,
how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your…
View original post 8 more words
Can one really teach what one does not know?
I feel humbled in comparison. The idea of walking in another’s shoes comes to life in this story. It is more than a story. It is what Levinas called substitution for the Other, the ultimate taking responsibility and empathy.
Local teacher living homeless for month talks to WFTV
Can one really teach what one does not know?
If you have really been reading my postings about my people you know the answer.
http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/local-teacher-living-homeless-month-talks-wftv/nggKf/
Did this moving story give you any ideas?
Leave it to a teacher to put a little sanity into a politically corrupt state.
Before you read this, think about a law stating that any government official or one thinking of becoming a government official spend a minimum of 3 days in this teachers shoes!
“What’s it like? It is horrible,” Rebman said.
It’s been just 11 days since the Orange County teacher started his homelessness project.
“Here we are 11 days in and I have less than $2 in my pocket. I really don’t know how my days are going to go. I thought it wouldn’t be this difficult as it’s been,” Redman said.
“People demean…
View original post 99 more words
Write On The Walls!
Walls are spaces where we can live, as well. Usually, they are treated as boundaries between places, that separate us. Here, we see that the walls become spaces where life is reflected and spoken.
As you may know, we have scrawled favorite quotes all over the walls of our bathroom. The “Walls of Inspiration,” as they are affectionately known.
It started a couple of decades ago when I was home full time with my young children and came across an article in a house decorating magazine about having a few quotations written meticulously in calligraphy on walls painted in beautiful ribbons of color. Such beauty and inspiration–I loved the idea.
But we had neither the money to hire someone nor the skill to achieve “the look” ourselves. Every time I saw our bathroom’s dreary, worn wallpaper after viewing that lovely magazine image and realizing how many wondrous quotes I had with which to surround us, my soul drooped.
My answer? Tear down the paper and write quotes in the kids’ abundance of magic markers. Yes! Write on the walls (these walls, anyway). Gotta…
View original post 185 more words
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
One aspect of Dr. King’s writing that is often overlooked was his concern for the pace of scientific and technological advances. It takes caring and compassionate people, and I think most scientists are just that, to guide the world in humane ways. This does not mean living outside our relationships with the world, but to live in them, encountering them in vulnerable and unexpected ways.
Buoyant
Living is an ebb and flow of tides which exist as ecotones where change is always happening. One’s identity and subjectivity is never static, but always in flux as we encounter the world. When we wake up, let go and float we embrace the world and our self as one and not separate.
“Recognize the possibility of the divine in any given moment.” – Dani Shapiro
“I awoke only to see the rest of the world was still asleep.” – Leonardo da Vinci
A sunset breaking through the paint brushed clouds and resting on the sleeping water show us how to return to our true north, our center. The sun rises and sets. The water ebbs and flows. Lighting and reflecting all of the beauty that surrounds it. In tune with its nature, rising above the fray. Buoyant, strong, at ease and steady.
We may get pulled under the water now and then, but we are built to be buoyant, returning to the surface. We need only to let go of the anchors that keep pull us under. Wake up, let go and float.
Imagine…
This is an interesting way to present John Lennon’s song Imagine. Both the presentation and the song resonate with what we need in the world today.
A Secret to Grasp
Rumi and other Sufi poets provide practical wisdom after 800 years. Viktor Frankl wrote that we do not find meaning in life. Life finds meaning in us. Patience and quietness are important in the listening we undertake to let that meaning reveal itself and speak to us.
When I run after what I think I want,
my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety;
if I sit in my own place of patience,
what I need flows to me, and without pain.
From this I understand that what I want also wants me,
is looking for me and attracting me.
There is a great secret here for anyone who can grasp it.
~Rumi
So, with that information, my plan this week is to ‘sit in my own place of patience’ and allow the flow of goodness to come to me, be attracted to me and to envelope me with its stillness and wisdom. Opportunities flow for us all. Let us…
Shine On!
xo
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 