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.
Beside the temple pond
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…
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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…
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Love After Love
Derek Walcott wrote this wonderful poem about celebrating life. He suggested we greet ourselves offering hospitality as we realize that we let other things take the place of getting to know the person who was us.
The poem describes a wonderful (wonder filled) companionship in the second stanza. Companionship is sharing meals as we sojourn. Journey is the daily, perhaps moment-to-moment work we do while sojourning. Jacques Derrida drew on an Algerian-French-Jewish background in writing about greeting the stranger, but I don’t know if he meant ourselves.
I considered this today as I prepared a presentation. The world speaks to us and we speak to it, but are we listening as the conversation unfolds? It is in listening to our self that we make sense of the world and it in turn makes sense of us.
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
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…
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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.
The Guest House
Rumi wrote this beautiful poem 800 years ago. The message rings true today although we might resist it at times. Perhaps, in busyness and haste, we avoid the messages received in the guest house that our being and becoming entails. When we slow down encountering each guest as a transient event moving on, we learn lessons learned readily and easily.
In sabbath moments, whether a few minutes, hours, or days, we welcome these unexpected visitors. We recognize they will leave and, in treating them honourably, they may move along quickly allowing delight to return.
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
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.
This Is the Dream
One morning we will quietly drift into a harbor we did not know was there. Olav Haugue’s closing line is brilliant. We find the dream and its source in quietness. Without patience and a willingness to endure the difficulties which ultimately arise, the dream cannot be revealed.
I think the dream is not something we know in advance. When the dream appears, we know intuitively this is what we were waiting for and it speaks to us. The questions we carry open up the time, the heart, and the doors.
It’s the dream we carry
that something wondrous will happen
that it must happen
time will open
hearts will open
doors will open
spring will gush forth from the ground–
that the dream itself will open
that one morning we’ll quietly drift
into a harbor we didn’t know was there.
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 