Mahatma Gandhi | Teacher as Transformer

The Ordinary in the Extraordinary

Posted on August 24, 2023 by ivonprefontaine

Musings at sundown!

It has been awhile since I lasted posted. This wonderful post by Purple Rays came through my feed and it was an opportunity to share it and get re-started.

Although the quote is one from Mahatma Gandhi, it reminds me of many by Thich Nhat Hanh. Sometimes, I get busy and forget to pause and take in the world as it is in all its radiant beauty. Or, I forget to be grateful for what I have in life. To be mindful and aware of what brings me gratitude is important. It includes a long-term marriage, children who grew up and found their way, completing a PhD, publishing peer-reviewed articles and poetry, etc. Or, it is as simple as the small, perhaps tiny is a better word, garden in the backyard. It is not there to save money. I planted it to provide fresh tomatoes, basil, and strawberries, along with Kathy’s heritage rhubarb plant. Most mornings, I get check to see what is ripe and ready, I water, and notice the flowers that bring pollinators to the yard. It is less about the big accomplishments and more about the small things that go unnoticed in the shadows of those supposedly bigger and better accomplishments. Thich Nhat Hanh has a lovely quote reminding me to stay in the present , to be mindful of and appreciate everything I do or touch as a miracle.

For those who follow my blog, you may know I love Mary Oliver and her poetry. There is a mystical quality to it. Mystical is taking in the world and life in a subjective way, as a living subject. Rather than as objects to be probed, measured, and analyzed, we explore them and we use poetic terms to describe. Mary Oliver does this in The Summer Day, where she describes how a grasshopper captures her attention. She attends to it and minds its actions and ways of just being in the world–just being a grasshopper. I love the questions Mary Oliver asks in her poetry.

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

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 down

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 one wild and precious life?

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Ongoing Quest

Posted on September 25, 2020 by ivonprefontaine

I wrote this during my last year teaching. It had been a particularly challenging day in the classroom and beyond. The students were full of energy and it was not always healthy. I grew frustrated and visibly annoyed part way through the afternoon. Part of it was a lack of a healthy relationship with the administration, which seeped into my teaching at times. It was challenging to set those frustrations aside, particularly with little support and how it impacted my teaching.

Having said thi, I chose to teach anothere year and wanted to teach those particular students. On myway home, I realized I need to establish a different, encouraging tone. In a sense, my ability to influence is my ability to recognize my reality and walk into the fire, the crucible, so to speak.In his teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh reminds me even weeds of a tough day serve a purpose. They fertilize and increase the yield of a crop: children’s learning and this could be lost on on me. For the remainder of the school year, some 7-8 months, I used this as my touchstone.

Sometimes, I allow myself to assume what is out there makes me who I am. If I let it, I succumb to those forces. On the other hand and stepping back from the brink, I reclaim my view and my callings in life. I do not let others and circumstances dictate who I am. I can choose how to respond. This is no mean feat as, in the heat of the battle, it is hard to not be reactionary. The best I can do is be the best I can be in a moment, reflect later, and grow anew with fertilizer provided by tough moments.

transforming–

ongoing quest,

seeking vision,

unearthing a better, truer self–

digging deep,

resting in my heart.

transforming–

polishing the gems of self,

righting speech! righting action!

influencing others properly–

reclaiming my voice,

bringing forth my best.

Much to my mother’s chagrin, I got The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan when I was in high school. I still have it and still spin the vinyl after all these years. Although it is now almost 60 years old, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall still rings true for me today. Dylan wrote this in the midst of the Cold War with nuclear threats all around. Today, we are in the midst of multiple crises: health, wealth distribution, inequities, etc. The question I should ask in difficult times, small and large, is how can I be the difference I want to see in the world to paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi? Even if it is difficult, it is noble, virtuous, and hopeful, in the face of great obstacles, to speak truth to power, (re)calling I can only make the difference I can make.