Tag Archives: David Whyte

The Opening of Eyes

Posted on May 2, 2017 by ivonprefontaine

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better” — Einstein

Several years ago, Kathy and I were in Jasper National Park. We had gone for a drive and stopped at an overview of a valley. The rest area was quite large and we walked around it trying to get different views of the valley.

We noticed something at the far end of the area just on the other side of the low stone wall. We moved quietly towards it and realized it was a young elk, probably a cow. She sat almost perfectly still, posing for the camera.

David Whyte wrote this lovely poem about the opening of eyes. That evening, if our eyes had not been open, we would not have seen the elk quietly laying there with only her head showing above the wall. It begs the question: How much do I miss even with my eyes open? What solid ground do I miss as a I move through life with closed eyes?

The elk would have known we were there, but we took precautions to be still and quiet so to not stress her. The attention to quiet in a quiet place by a wild animal reminded me of opening my eyes to experience the world more fully.

That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.

It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.

12 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Photography, Poetry, Reflective Moments, teacher as transformer and tagged Albert Einstein, creativity, David Whyte, elk, eloquent questions, Jasper National Park, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, poetry, teacher as transformer, The Opening of Eyes. Bookmark the permalink.

Today

Posted on September 14, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Sabbath is here. Hafiz, the Sufi poet, wrote this wonderful poem which helps me understand Sabbath more fully. The third stanza speaks to the need to be present in the world. It is each Now that we can testify to the truth. Yet, this truth is always transient, because I recall it later incompletely.

I do not want to step so quickly
over the beautiful line on God’s palm
As I move through earth’s
Marketplace
Today

I do not want to touch any object in this world
Without my eyes testifying to the truth
That everything is
My Beloved

Something has happened
to my understanding of existence
That now always makes my heart full of wonder
and Kindness.

I do not
Want
To step so quickly
Over the sacred place on God’s body
That is right beneath
your own foot

As I dance with
Precious life
Today.

6 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, David Whyte, eloquent questions, Hafiz, Mindful Practice, poetry, spirituality, Sufi, teacher as transformer, Today. Bookmark the permalink.

The Opening of Eyes

Posted on November 12, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I spent a great two weeks at home. I concluded my time away with a wonderful weekend in Seattle where I attended a poetry weekend, along with about 150 others, facilitated by David Whyte. A major theme was asking beautiful questions: questions we need to ask that show stories in our lives that are possibly outdated. We open our eyes for what appears to be the first time and there is a renewal.

An important part of beautiful questions is they guide us towards new horizons. We feel grounded by home’s foundations and drawn forward from that stable place in imaginative ways. There is something spiritual and biblical about this feeling as we find the courage in our hearts to let go in ways we had never imagined possible.

That day I saw beneath dark clouds

the passing light over the water

and I heard the voice of the world speak out,

I knew then, as I had before,

life is no passing memory of what has been

nor the remaining pages of a great book

waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.

It is the vision of far off things

seen for the silence they hold.

It is the heart after years

of secret conversing

speaking out loud in the clear air.

It is Moses in the desert

fallen to his knees before the lit bush.

It is the man throwing away his shoes

as if to enter heaven

and finding himself astonished,

opened at last,

fallen in love with solid ground.

29 Comments

Posted in Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged beautiful questions, creativity, David Whyte, eloquent questions, Mindful Practice, Moses, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, The Opening of Eyes. Bookmark the permalink.

Tilicho Lake

Posted on September 30, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I used to ice fish. I went with others and would catch a few, usually more than others. Once I caught my fill, I lay on the ice and with my head covered watch fish swim past. Different fish move at different paces. Northern pike ease past the hole and whitefish move much quickly. There was never certainty. I did not know if I was going to catch fish and see fish. Some lakes were too deep, but occasionally a fish would come up the hole and catch a breath of air.

I used to feel like I could leave everything behind and just be. It is much like when Kathy and I hike in the mountains. There is a being that does not count on any certainty. It just is. David Whyte wrote this poem. I think the prayer of rough love is just being there, in the moment, and ready for what comes. There is a beauty in that and I think a fearlessness I need to cultivate.

In this high place

it is as simple as this,

Leave everything you know behind.

Step toward the cold surface,

say the old prayer of rough love

and open both arms.

Those who come with empty hands

will stare into the lake astonished,

there, in the cold light

reflecting pure snow,

the true shape of your own face.

16 Comments

Posted in Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, David Whyte, leadership, Mindful Practice, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, Tilicho Lake. Bookmark the permalink.

Sometimes

Posted on August 13, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I registered to attend David Whyte’s retreat called Poetry in the Woods in November. His poetry speaks to my heart and the retreat is about being in touch with the heart.

I spent considerable time today talking about what I love: teaching and learning. I know I will miss each of them and want them in my life in some form. What I do not want is to be involved in teaching and learning focused on rules and not children. It is important for me as I enter this phase not to assume answers, but to be open to questions, particularly prickly ones. They are the ones I sometimes turn away from. I need to turn to them, receive them, and hold them gently.

I need to let questions find a space to emerge. which suggests less trampling through the forest and more quiet approaches. It is where the wisdom appears from, those questions which need my silence to be heard.

Sometimes

if you move carefully

through the forest,

breathing

like the ones

in the old stories,

who could cross

a shimmering bed of leaves

without a sound,

you come

to a place

whose only task

is to trouble you

with tiny

but frightening requests,

conceived out of nowhere

but in this place

beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what

you are doing right now.

and

to stop what you

are becoming

while you do it,

questions

that can make

or unmake

a life,

questions

that have patiently

waited for you,

questions

that have no right

to go away.

28 Comments

Posted in Education, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, David Whyte, education, eloquent questions, Mindful Practice, Sometimes, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

The Opening of Eyes

Posted on May 31, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

David Whyte wrote this wonderful poem and it resonated with me today. We hold considerable wisdom collectively and individually. We each need to open all our senses and be receptive to what we hold. It is in the silence that we learn so much.

Today, only a few students attended. I decided some time ago that our Fridays would be art day due to the low attendance. Students focused on activities and silence reigned. I heard in the silence they want to finish the year positively.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.

13 Comments

Posted in Community, Education, Lesson Plans, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged Art, community, creativity, David Whyte, education, Mindful Practice, poetry, teacher as transformer, The Opening of Eyes. Bookmark the permalink.

The Opening of Eyes

Posted on March 16, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I arrive at the end of another week. It was a quiet week in many ways. Next week includes parent-teacher interviews and will be more hectic. When I reflected, I thought of the Marcel Proust quote: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” I need the quiet and the solitude which allows me to achieve one glimpse at a time.

I found my way to this David Whyte poem which proposed a similar message. The poet echoed Proust in the second stanza. As I open my eyes, my heart and mind open in astonishment as the wonder of silence finds a new world that was always there, a paradox.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.

21 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged creativity, David Whyte, Marcel Proust, Mindful Practice, paradox, poetry, teacher as transformer, The Opening of Eyes. Bookmark the permalink.

Working Together

Posted on February 2, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I read and heard about innovation several times over the the past few days. I was professionally developed yesterday and it came up again. The person indicated innovation is half-formed ideas bumping up against each other as we share them. I wondered about that, because it suggests we work together, collaborate, and recognize the interdependent nature of humans and the world they live in together. I rarely see this and I doubt a bureaucratic mindset is one that embraces those features of innovation. I read recently, and I apologize about a lack of reference, that it is not enough to show up. We need to do something when we get there. David Whyte summarized this beautifully in the following poem.

We shape our self
to fit this world

and by the world
are shaped again.

The visible
and the invisible

working together
in common cause,

to produce
the miraculous.

I am thinking of the way
the intangible air

passed at speed
round a shaped wing

easily
holds our weight.

So may we, in this life
trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine,
and look for the true

shape of our own self
by forming it well

to the great
intangibles about us.

25 Comments

Posted in Community, Education, Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged community, creativity, David Whyte, education, innovation, leadership, Mindful Practice, poetry, school, teacher as transformer, Working Together. Bookmark the permalink.

What to Remember When Wakening

Posted on November 13, 2012 by ivonprefontaine

It was a long day. I was up at 5:45 AM, on a flight at 11:30 AM, and just wrapping up my day in a different time zone than the one I began the day in. Again, I had a great day and will find time to speak about it as the days move on. I am doing an Art of Hosting workshop and the first day was pretty incredible. It speaks to the David Whyte poem about thing coming to life even when unplanned and only need nourishment and nurturing to come to life.

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

27 Comments

Posted in Community, Leadership, Learning Organizations, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, World Cafe Events and tagged community, conversational journey, David Whyte, eloquent questions, leadership, Mindful Practice, poetry, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Abundant Community

Posted on April 21, 2012 by ivonprefontaine

We talked about community today. Community is organic. Through and in it, we tell stories revealing relationships. It grows around what is held in common. We communicate what is held in common, valued, and shared. Community is breaking bread and being true companions with those who join us. We hold and share vision denoting our shared nature within community and exist in paradox. It is what is today, the present, and what was, a historical memorial.

The poet David Whyte wrote “What we hold in community is loved, because it is offered from the heart; a place of love.” Because it is a place of love, it is a place of abundance. Even in crisis, members of a community find ways to heal and regain wholeness through resiliency. Its members know there are others to turn to and seek help from. We do not have to ask; it is given instinctively and intuitively. It is the right thing to do and not the easy or expedient thing to do.

Community is a place we identify with and it signals we are entitled to membership. It is a safe place to be and someone wants us there. It is a sacred place; hallowed ground. We share and expose personal vulnerabilities, because those around us love us unconditionally. Community is a place of discovery. We are nourished and nurtured and grow. It is a place of invitation and opportunity due to its abundance. A wonderful metaphor emerged. A community is a garden. You plant a seed and it prospers in the abundance of the place we name home and community.