Teacher as Transformer

Planting Chant

Posted on May 13, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Both sides of our family descend from farmers. Farmers and indigenous people have affection for the land and its properties. They share the land with their sentient and non-sentient neighbours and step gently leaving a footprint that can be wiped away.

The Osage celebrated planting crops with the following chant. As I read the chant, I understood that planting belongs in all seasons. When humans plant and harvest in sustainable ways, we prosper, laughter fills homes, and we leave a small footprint.

Thich Nhat Hanh proposed humans “walk in a way that we only print peace and serenity on the Earth. Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.” When we walk on the Earth in this way and leave an imprint as a kiss, we act as stewards for future generations. When we live in harmony with nature, we form a sacred covenant with nature and future geneations.

I made a footprint: it is sacred.
I made a footprint: small green specks push through it.
I made a footprint: new green blades push upward.
I made a footprint: above it, blades wave in the breeze.
I made a footprint: over it grow new stalks.
I made a footprint: above it the blossoms lie gray.
I made a footprint: smoke rises from my house.
I made a footprint: there is laughter in my house.
I made a footprint: my family lives in good health.

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Posted in Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged community, creativity, education, Mindful Practice, nature, Osage, Planting Chant, poetry, teacher as transformer, Thich Nhat Hanh. Bookmark the permalink.

Love’s Exquisite Freedom

Posted on May 12, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

When we love others, things, and places, there is freedom that comes with the constraints that love places on us. Maya Angelou provides a rich, poetic description of how love arrives and frees us.

Love arrives with histories and memories of pleasure and pain. Thomas Merton advised that we call it falling in love, because there are times it can hurt. Despite the possibility of pain, love calls us in ways that give us courage to overcome the risk and we are free to choose love. There is something in that person, that thing, and that place that call and hold us in that relationship.

Wendell Berry writes about affection for people, places, and living. It takes courage to step out and say, “I love this person, this place, and this way of living.” In saying that, what if the other rejects me or their love or that love is taken from me?

We, unaccustomed to courage

exiles from delight

live coiled in shells of loneliness

until love leaves its high holy temple

and comes into our sight

to liberate us into life.

Love arrives

and in its train come ecstasies

old memories of pleasure

ancient histories of pain.

Yet if we are bold,

love strikes away the chains of fear

from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity

In the flush of love’s light

we dare be brave

And suddenly we see

that love costs all we are

and will ever be.

Yet it is only love

which sets us free.

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This Is What Was Bequeathed Us

Posted on May 10, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

As I read this poem, I recalled: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” Embedded in the quote is: How do we care for shared places and its inhabitants so that others who follow us can enjoy Creation?

Stewardship, in all its forms, calls on us to act in ethical and considerate ways. This does not mean we cease harvesting, but we do in ways that do so in responsible ways. We return as much as we take and show our gratitude for the harvest.

Gregory Orr reminds us the Earth is a gift the beloved left. Someone left it to us and our response would be to give it to those who follow us as a sacred gift. Here, we find meaning, we live together, and we discover ways to sustain our living together. We do so when we are mindful and attentive towards others who are with us and follow. We do so when we are mindful and attentive to the Earth. A beloved bequeathed this to us and it is now our turn.

This is what was bequeathed us:

This earth the beloved left

And, leaving,

Left to us.

No other world

But this one:

Willows and the river

And the factory

With its black smokestacks.

No other shore, only this bank

On which the living gather.

No meaning but what we find here.

No purpose but what we make.

That, and the beloved’s clear instructions:

Turn me into song; sing me awake.

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From the Rivers to the Sea

Posted on May 10, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Sarah Tremlett provides a meditative quality in this poem. When I read the poem, it reminded me of Lao Tzu‘s quote that “all rivers flow to the sea, because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power.”

Poetry calls us to meditate, but not to know a single meaning. Instead, it calls us to explore transforming meaning, accepting humility and understanding that we cannot know something completely.

When rivers reach the sea, it adds depth to them and room to explore them more fully. Seas do not have fixed and rigid boundaries. The boundaries remain fluid and permeable. What can humans learn from this? Perhaps, it is that we are all one and the boundaries we think exist are fluid, allowing us to move more easily in the world with each other.

Time reveals that to

execute means to begin

and to terminate

So all the rivers

in each and every country

flow into one sea

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Traveling at Home

Posted on May 7, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Wendell Berry advises we do not experience the same route twice even in a country we know by heart. I wonder if we can know a country by heart? The chances change and make a new way.

We used to whitewater raft when the boys were younger. The mountain-fed river changed by the minute in June with the heat of the day and increased flow with melting snow. The rocks revealed themselves differently at various times of the day. In the morning, the river was lower and we could see the rocks, but with more water they became submerged. With time and experience, we could sense the differences in the river. Our vision was no longer the only way to know the river.

Heraclitus‘ quote about never stepping in the same river twice because it is changing complements the part about the person changing. We experience the world, its inhabitants, and ourselves as continuously changing. This calls us to be mindful and attentive to the living and the relationships we experience, seen and unseen.

Even in a country you know by heart
it’s hard to go the same way twice.
The life of the going changes.
The chances change and make a new way.
Any tree or stone or bird
can be the bud of a new direction. The
natural correction is to make intent
of accident. To get back before dark
is the art of going.

12 Comments

Posted in Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged community, creativity, Heraclitus, Mindful Practice, poetry, teacher as transformer, Traveling at Home, Wendell Berry. Bookmark the permalink.

I Opened a Book

Posted on May 7, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Julia Donaldson reminds us that reading is potentially a mindful activity. We lose ourselves in the as we stride into the book, mixing magical elixirs, and making new friends with whom we share the journey.

For me, Paulo Coehlo is an author that I lose myself in his novels. There is something magical about them and his most famous book is aptly named The Alchemist. I recall the first time I read the book losing myself in it and not being able to put it down.

When we finish the book and we have been mindful in reading it, it stays with us and becomes part of us. I used quotes from The Alchemist in writing as it had left such an imprint on me.

I opened a book and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
My town and my world behind me.

I’m wearing the cloak, I’ve slipped on the ring,
I’ve swallowed the magic potion.
I’ve fought with a dragon, dined with a king
And dived in a bottomless ocean.

I opened a book and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
And followed their road with its bumps and bends
To the happily ever after.

I finished my book and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
But I have a book inside me.

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Posted in Education, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged conversational journey, creativity, Julia Donaldson, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, Paulo Coehlo, poetry, teacher as transformer, The Alchemist. Bookmark the permalink.

Be Still in Haste

Posted on May 6, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

When I read poetry, it gives me opportunities to consider the rich paradox that living brings with it. Wendell Berry proposes that in the title. How do I experience being still in haste?

David Bohm who was a theoretical physicist suggested that paradox dissolve unlike problems. Problems wait to be solved, but what if there are multiple ways to understand and solve the problem?

Bohm used the example of war and argued that people from all sides justified war citing problems with their enemies. Instead of asking about war, what if we asked about killing innocent children? Bohm suggested, for the most part, humans agreed that killing innocents was wrong. In that case, war is paradoxical and, when we begin with something we agree upon, we begin to dissolve the issue and see it through new eyes.

Time is similarly paradoxical. We act and speak as though we control, quantify, save, and manage it, but this moment is the only time we experience this moment. Time is fleeting and has qualities that resist us, dissolving in its fluidity becoming paradoxical. Time calls us to be present and mindful of the moment we live in, as it dissolves into the next never to be re-experienced.

How quietly I
begin again

from this moment
looking at the
clock, I start over

so much time has
passed, and is equaled
by whatever
split-second is present

from this
moment this moment
is the first.

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Posted in Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged Be Still in Haste, creativity, David Bohm, eloquent questions, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, teacher as transformer, Wendell Berry. Bookmark the permalink.

Still Point

Posted on May 5, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Max Reif describes the rush of life and the calling of nature somehow overriding that rush. The poem reminded me of biblical passage from Matthew 6:28 describing lilies as just being.

What is my hurry? What roots me in this place and time? I overlook the depth of those questions. I enjoy reading Wendell Berry‘s essays about farming. He reminds me that farming is a love of place and time. The small farm is home for people and nature. There is no separation.

My mother said farmers do not need Daily Savings Time. Depending on the time of the year, they understand their work based on the time and space they are in at that moment. When I think of the world as unpatterned, I sense its majestic wholeness and not compartments, rendering them virtual.

Leaving home
for work
each day

I hear the trees
say “What’s your hurry?”

Rooted, they
don’t understand

how in my world
we have to rush
to keep in step.

I haven’t even time
to stop and tell them
how on weekends, too,
schedules wait
like nets.

It’s only on a sick day
when I have to venture out
to pick up medicine

that I understand the trees,
there in all their fullness
in a world unpatterned

full of moments,
full of spaces,
every space
a choice.

This day
has not
been turned yet
on the lathe

this day
lies open, light
and shadow. Breath
fills the body easily.
I step

into a world
waiting like
a quiet lover.

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Walking in the Mountains in the Rain

Posted on May 4, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Similar to our emotions, the weather moves through quickly like a cloudburst. When we pay attention and grow mindful, we sense changes around us and ones further away.

I sense Wang Wei proposes a there are benefits that occur in occasional changes in our immediate surroundings. Those changes mute distant sounds and other stimuli that intrude. Whether it is outside or inside us, the impending storm signals we need to find shelter and take stock of what is happening.

Perhaps through our questions and wonder we awaken and become aware of the world. What happens further downstream from us? What is happening out at sea? What do our emotions mean to the immediate world and the larger world we experience and share? What does it mean to lead, teach, and learn in this world?

In this quick cloudburst
air thickens, the sky comes down

dark mountains
flashes of lightning

out at sea new clouds
have just started to form
and this small brook I straddle
is a river in flood somewhere

rags and blankets of mist
hang on these slopes and cliffs

then the clouds open and vanish
rain patters off
and moonlight silvers
that whole reach of river
foothills to ocean

and even from this black mountain
I can hear boatmen singing.

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Step Six and Step Seven

Posted on May 2, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Allowing the ordinary and overlooked things to be celebrated requires mindfulness to the world, our words, and actions.. Nura Yingling proposes that poems serve as cups of praying where we can hold the silence.

In the margins and spaces I do not visit often, I explore the silence that helps me overcome moments of fear. When I am attentive and mindful, living offers poetic spaces between the lines and stanzas of each moment.

My breath becomes those spaces where I forgive myself and overcome emotions that are as fleeting as each moment. Jacques Derrida proposed how we experience the world is not binary. In one emotion, such as sadness, I discover enfolded inside joy and happiness.

Let me be where I am.
Let this bread, this morning, be their own ceremony.
Let me pass the gilt mirrors without looking.

When the lead mouth of fear clamps onto mine
and blasts her wind of rope and iron filings into me,
let my breath be forgiveness returned for her black sadness.

Let poems be cups of praying
made for holding silence.