Teacher as Transformer

A Time to Talk

Posted on January 14, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Robert Frost’s poem foreshadowed a need to make real human contact. There are times we need to move beyond the virtual realities, set the hoe down, and engage in those friendly visits. Human contact in the form of sound, touch, smell, and visuals is a human need that cannot be overlooked. It is a sensual place and space to be. It touches our spirit and makes us whole.

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

19 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged A Time to Talk, community, creativity, friendship, Mindful Practice, poetry, Robert Frost, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

le sens de la vie aura toujours été une énigme…

Posted on January 13, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Originally posted on my virtual playground:
… comme les superbes cascades islandaises…

Closed Path

Posted on January 11, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

At the end of the week, as I approach Sabbath, I think the voyage is perhaps at an end. But, it is not. The Sabbath serves a time of replenishment, a finding of new wonder in the days to come. I look in as suggested in this poem by Rabindranath Tagore. The path opens in front of me in way I am sure this is in my destiny.

I thought that my voyage had come to its end
at the last limit of my power,—that the path before me was closed,
that provisions were exhausted
and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.

But I find that thy will knows no end in me.
And when old words die out on the tongue,
new melodies break forth from the heart;
and where the old tracks are lost,
new country is revealed with its wonders.

11 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged Closed Path, creativity, Mindful Practice, Rabindranath Tagore, sabbath, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

A Good Friend – Haiku

Posted on January 11, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

We always need good friends who listen even when we are unable to speak the words. They have a sense that something is amiss.

Dom DiFrancesco

Sympathetic ear

Listening without a word

A very good friend

~~ D. R. DiFrancesco ~~

View original post

6 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Today

Posted on January 10, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

I looked randomly for a poem today and found this one by Frank O’Hara. It seemed to fit the idea of today and the randomness of it. Getting settled back into a routine of reading and writing is one that brings about a certain feeling of randomness and surprises. There is some beauty in those surprises, just like there is in a poem.

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
the stuff they’ve always talked about

still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks.

5 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, Frank O'Hara, Mindful Practice, poetry, teacher as transformer, Today. Bookmark the permalink.

Carpe Diem Haiga Festival

Posted on January 10, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

The picture is an amazing entrance and exit to the day. I am back in Spokane and there is much promise in the new days ahead. I was drawn to the haiku as I was not familiar with the word maunders. It is a human calling to be curious and learn anew each day.

Ese' s Voice

Carpe Diem Haiku host Chèvrefeuille wrote that haiga is a nice kind of art and poetry, it’s a photo, painting or other kind of image with a haiku, senryu, tanka or kyoka included. The picture and the poem are making eachother stronger or making eachother clearer. Since there is a new special feature called Carpe Diem Haiga Festival, I decided to give it a try…

View original post

2 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Culture and the Universe, poem by Simon J. Ortiz

Posted on January 9, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

This is a great poem to begin the day with. It is a gentle reminder that we are not alone. There is something bigger than us that we only need to be stop and be quiet and it will find us.

Silver Birch Press

CULTURE AND THE UNIVERSE
by Simon J. Ortiz

Two nights ago
in the canyon darkness,
only the half-moon and stars,
only mere men.
Prayer, faith, love,
existence.
We are measured
by vastness beyond ourselves.
Dark is light.
Stone is rising.

I don’t know
if humankind understands
culture: the act
of being human
is not easy knowledge.

With painted wooden sticks
and feathers, we journey
into the canyon toward stone,
a massive presence
in midwinter.

We stop.
Lean into me.
The universe
sings in quiet meditation.
We are wordless:
I am in you.
Without knowing why
culture needs our knowledge,
we are one self in the canyon.
And the stone wall
I lean upon spins me
wordless and silent
to the reach of stars
and to the heavens within.
It’s not humankind after all
nor is it culture
that limits us.
It is the vastness
we…

View original post 145 more words

4 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Winter Harvest

Posted on January 8, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

I am on the road and took a few minutes to check email. I found this beautiful poem about Sabbath rest and patience. It has such a Zen quality as we sow the seeds of virtue that we need to make the world a better place.

Meanwhile, Melody Muses...

Garden’s winter grave

Snowy soil on Sabbath rest

Patience being sown

View original post

2 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Life is about your soul

Posted on January 7, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

This is a beautiful question. When was the last time, I paid attention to my soul? It is the hardest thing to do as it requires quiet spaciousness that challenges me to find many days.

Dr Bill Wooten

“Life is about your soul, not about your body and not about your mind. Most people work hard to keep the body happy. Then they seek to stimulate their mind. Then… if there is time… they look after their soul. Yet the most beneficial priority has it just the other way around… When was the last time you paid attention to your soul?” ~ Neale Donald Walsch

View original post

12 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Limen

Posted on January 6, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Some days, I sit and watch, listen, and sense the wonders of the world around me. Within these wonders, things and people invite me to remember things embedded within nature and in my life. The extraordinary emerges from the ordinary. Often, I overlook what and who is important in my life, who give and gave me unconditional support.

Natasha Trethewey shared this wonderful poem about the unobserved industry that goes on around me. It is not just busy industry. I focus on a particular calling in life. I find my voice in the work. For humans, there is a multiplicity in the work and the way it shapes life. Similar to the woodpecker, it seems I look for the gifts I overlook. There is more embedded in life than just hanging laundry and other obvious tasks I undertake. When I attend and am present, the barely perceptible–the liminal– is visible, heard, and fully sensed.

All day I’ve listened to the industry

of a single woodpecker, worrying the catalpa tree

just outside my window. Hard at his task,

his body is a hinge, a door knocker

to the cluttered house of memory in which

I can almost see my mother’s face.

She is here, beyond the tree,

its slender pods and heart-shaped leaves,

hanging wet sheets on the line–each one

a thin white screen between between us. So insistent

is this woodpecker, I’m sure he must be

looking for something else–not simply