Tag Archives: environment

Your diet is not only what you eat.

Posted on October 8, 2019 by ivonprefontaine

Jonathan provided a beautiful image and a poem from Rumi.

What I enjoy most about Rumi’s poetry, is how over time the metaphors he used resonate, perhaps more than ever.

In today’s world, we need to feed our bodies in mindful ways, paying attention to what we watch, listen to, and the people we associate with. They feed the emotional, spiritual, and physical essence of our lives, which are inseparable.

In the modern, hectic days we live in sometimes we forget to nourish the soul and what inspirits us. For me, some of it is time with those close to me, my writing, and nature.

Rearguard Falls August 2019

In August, Kathy and I stopped at Rearguard Falls, located in the upper reaches of the Fraser River. As a result, I enjoyed three phenomena that inspirit me: time with Kathy, nature, and writing, although the last one was delayed.

Posted in Blogging, Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Photography, Poetry, teacher as transformer, Uncategorized, Writing and tagged blogging, environment, faith, family, health, life, poetry, Purple Rays, Rearguard Falls, relationships, Rumi, travel, writing. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments

“He who allows oppression shares the crime.” — Art of Quotation

Posted on August 8, 2019 by ivonprefontaine

via “He who allows oppression shares the crime.” — Art of Quotation

Gigi shared a wonderful quote from Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (known as Erasmus) who was a Catholic priest during the Reformation. He is a humanist and spent little time as a priest and is considered to be a reformer who remained in the church , questioning its abuses. In some ways, he was Thomas Merton (the link is to an article by James Martin, SJ) some 300 years in advance.

I had not read Erasmus before last fall. His works were part of my syllabus for an educational foundations class I taught. I have since purchased a book with his essays and find him refreshing in many ways in today’s context.

When we ignore things that are improper and inhumane, we become complicit. This includes my place in Nature. It is hard to speak in today’s world without fear of being attacked. How I undersgtand the world and my presence in it, is less in terms of polarities and in continous emergence. Even the past holds uncertainties. When I sit and reflect/meditate, I often find phenomena emerge I did not experience in previous moments of reflection/meditation.

It is the same in my reading. I am re-reading Wendell Berry and find so much about how he speaks about Nature can be applied to teaching. We are stewards in this world and this includes stewards for our children and grandchildren. We are not seperate from Nature, even in urban settings. How do we preserve and conserve Nature for our children and grandchildren? Economy comes from the Greek word oikos, meaning household. How do we keep our household in order?

Gulls at Neurotsis Inlet

I took this picture in the river valley here in Edmonton. It is a beautiful place to walk and a historic, cultural, and natural gathering place for people and animals as demonstrated by the terns. Not in the picture are the people who gather to walk and sit along the river.

Posted in Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Photography, Reflective Moments, Uncategorized, Writing and tagged blogging, environment, Erasmus, etymology, faith, family, nature, photography, politics, relationships, religion, Wendell Berry, writing. Bookmark the permalink. 28 Comments

Trees are Poems

Posted on August 2, 2019 by ivonprefontaine

via Trees are Poems

Eddie Two Hawks provides an inspiring Kahlil Gibran quote and a lovely picture completmenting it.

I go one one step further and think Nature as a poem, a song, and a masterpiece. I need Nature in all its beauty and radiance to complete who I am, otherwise I am empty as Gibran suggests.

Nature is not something out there. It is in each of us to discover. I took this picture about 2 years ago. As we came out of the church, the deer was laying in the shade of a neighbour’s house. In what is a small urban setting, this picture to reminds me Nature is with me all the time. I need to recognize and revere its presence.

Deer Resting

Posted in Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Photography, Poetry, Reflective Moments, teacher as transformer, Uncategorized, Writing and tagged blogging, Eddie Two Hawks, environment, Khalil Gibran, nature, photography, poetry, relationships, teacher as trasnformer, writing. Bookmark the permalink. 21 Comments

Returning

Posted on July 19, 2019 by ivonprefontaine

via Returning

Bela takes wonderful photos in this post and writes a heart-felt poem about returning to special places where we belong.

In poems about belonging and returning there are strains of deep feeling. Home is as much about those feelings as it is about geographic location.

After over 40 years in the same house, Kathy and I felt it was time to do something different. We mulled our options: sell and move, major renovations, and finally settled on tearing the house down and rebuilding where we have lived and raised a family. It will be different, but many of the feelings will still be there.

We have driven and cruised parts of the west coast and Bela’s pictures capture the magificent coastline, lush forests, rivers with mountains towering above, and the ocean.

100_4352

Another place that is home for us is the farm where Kathy grew up. This was a picture she took of a deer just as curious about her as she was of it.

Home is about relationships with people and things that evoke memories of belonging in a particular place and how, each time we return, those memories are vivid in our very being there..

Posted in Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Photography, Poetry, Reflective Moments, teacher as transformer, Uncategorized, Writing and tagged Bela's Bright Ideas, belonging, blogging, environment, family, Home, life, nature, relationships, writing. Bookmark the permalink. 24 Comments

Twin Falls At Rock Island State Park

Posted on July 16, 2019 by ivonprefontaine

via Twin Falls At Rock Island State Park

Phil offers various images for followers, including photography and graphic designs.

This images and video caught my eye, as I love waterfalls. I am in Spokane for a few days and only a few minutes walk from Spokane Falls. Below, I include videos (apologies for the grainy nature) I took of the falls on my walk the other day. I am struck by how nature surrounds and engulfs me.

Humans are part of nature. I experience this inness, if there is such a word, as rabbits, deer, coyotes, etc. inhabit the neighbourhood we live in. 20 years ago, I may have argued we were on the outskirts of Edmonton, but today that is not the case.

Despite the urban sprawl we experience, nature does not recognize boundaries the way we do. Boundaries exist in nature, but they are formed around natural structures e.g., mountain ranges, valleys, rivers, etc.

The second video is just above the first set of falls and shows part of the skyline and the site for Expo 74.

Posted in Blogging, Community, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Photography, Reflective Moments, teacher as transformer, Uncategorized, Writing and tagged blogging, environment, nature, Perkins Designs, relationships, Spokane, Spokane Falls, travel, waterfalls, writing. Bookmark the permalink. 7 Comments

Persistence

Posted on July 2, 2019 by ivonprefontaine

via Persistence

There is not much to add to Norma Bobb‘s post. She provides an inspiring text along with a beautiful picture and reminds me of my role in helping to protect the Earth for our children and grandchildren.

The post brought to mind the Indigenous quote: “Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.”
Our care for the Earth is based on being stewards and prophets who look forward without fulling grasping what they will discover. We deceive ourselves with false arguements about ecology and economy as separate. They are linked by their etymology coming from the Greek, oikos, meaning household. How we each care for our household speaks volumes about us.

As Norma Bobb proposes, we each have a duty to persist in caring for the Earth and being stewards in its care.

I want to share these remparts in Glacier National Park with my grandchildren.

Posted in Blogging, Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Photography, Reflective Moments, Social Justice, teacher as transformer, Uncategorized, Writing and tagged blogging, ecology, economy, environment, health, indigenous cultures, life, mountains, Norma Bobb Semple, normabobb.com. Bookmark the permalink. 7 Comments

THERE IS FOREVER IN A FOREST

Posted on June 25, 2019 by ivonprefontaine

via THERE IS FOREVER IN A FOREST

Eric offers the reader a beautiful poem and image. The poem reminds me of how Wendell Berry might write about a forest. Nature, in each of its forms, is infinite, existing forever.

It is interesting how serdentipitous life can be. I read Wendell Berry this morning and emailed about him with a colleague yesterday, specifically his poem The Peace of Wild Things. It is a short poem I turn to when I struggle with things and the world. It reminds me there is beauty in the world that can be our salvation. Instead of being outside Nature, we grow to understand ourselves as embedded and part of Nature.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Posted in Blogging, Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Photography, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Social Justice, Synchronicity, teacher as transformer, Uncategorized, Writing and tagged blogging, community, creativity, environment, Eric M. Vogt, leadership, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, photography, poetry, stewardship, teacher as transformer, The Independent Poet, The Peace of Wild Things, Wendell Berry, writing. Bookmark the permalink. 13 Comments

SOLITUDE

Posted on June 20, 2019 by ivonprefontaine

via SOLITUDE

Lara provides wonderful images of her neighbourhood, gardens, and pets. This post is one with a single picture and a Khalil Gibran quote about solitude.

Solitude is not loneliness. Teaching can be a lonely profession often done in solitude, largely away from other adults. I was fortunate. For most of my career, I taught in proximity to other adults and this provided rich conversations and insights for reflection to improve my teaching.

Gibran wrote a poem about children, reminding me students I taught were not my children. My favourite line is “their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow.” As a teacher, I only promised I would do my best to prepare students for tomorrow.

In French, the word retirer means to draw back, like an archer. It is in healthy solitude I gather myself, draw back, and find stability in teaching the next generation.

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Where do we find solitude? I find it in Nature, in writing, in reading, in teaching, and in living. It is not a place. It is a relationship to life, others, and things.

Kathy took this picture in Jasper National Park. The roots of the trees form steps and a path up from the water falls we were visiting.

Posted in 21st Century Education, Community, Education, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Photography, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath, teacher as transformer, Uncategorized, Writing and tagged children, environment, health, Khalil Gibran, life, relationships, school, teacher as transformer, The Prophet, writing. Bookmark the permalink. 11 Comments

A Pearl from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Posted on June 7, 2019 by ivonprefontaine

via A Pearl from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

David Herbert posted this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in April. Bonhoeffer was executed hours before the end of World War II by the Nazis who held him as a prisoner for about 1.5 years. He is a modern day martyr and opposed the Nazis fromt the time they came to power.

David’s quote is a wonderful insight into how God is not driven by human views, opinions, and ideologies. We each have free choice and will to live in proper ways and to treat the world we live in (we are not separate) with reverence.

Nature, including humans, are gifts given to preserve and conserve in their purest forms.

Of all the pictures I post, this is my favourite. Kathy took the picture as she drove through Glacier National Park in Montana. With the flowers, grass, trees, lake, mountain, snow, clouds, and sky, there is so much of Nature’s in the picture.

Posted in Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Photography, Reflective Moments, teacher as transformer, Uncategorized, Writing and tagged Dietrich Bonhoeffer, environment, faith, family, Glacier National Park MT, life, nature, relationships, social justice, travel. Bookmark the permalink. 12 Comments

Thistle And Bee

Posted on May 31, 2019 by ivonprefontaine

via Thistle And Bee

Kenne is a wonderful photography and poet. In this post, he provides beautiful art along with a quote from Alan Watts.

Watts was an early interpreter of Eastern philosophies. In his book, The Wisdom of Insecurity, he distinguishes between faith and beliefs. To have faith, one accepts what comes. According to Watts, we reduce our anxiety. To believe, one fits the world to fit those beliefs. In this case, we create doctrine and dogma, religious and otherwise, to suit what our beliefs are. We become anxious in our defense of our beliefs.

When we have faith, we accept what comes and we are part of the larger whole. When we have a belief system, we defend it and treat people and things as if they are resources and disposable. Nature is something exploitable and not something to enjoy and protect.

When I look at the picture Kenne shared, I am reminded how each person, being, and thing is somehow intertwined with everything else. The bee depends on the flower and we depend on each of them in particular ways. We treat the thistle as a weed, rather than as a source of food for the bee and the bee’s honey a source of food for us. Without either of them the universe is diminished. As Watts suggested, we have to see and listen with the eyes and ears of the universe to appreciate the universe’s magnifence.

Yellowstone Elk

I took this picture several years ago in Yellowstone National Park. I was about 20 feet away from this elk with my camera and a few trees between him and me. He knew I was there. A moment before he looked at me, seemed to sense I was not a threat and went back to eating. I did not move suddenly and kept my eye on him each moment I was down there.