Tag Archives: mindfulness

Kindness: The Time For It Is NOW

Posted on March 25, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”~Desmond Tutu Yesterday, as I was ordering a coffee, an older lady came into t…

Source: Kindness: The Time For It Is NOW

Sirena bracketed her post with a Desmond Tutu quote and one by Ralph Waldo Emerson reminding us kindness is a powerful antidote for many of the challenges we face in the world. A kind heart allows us to put the human face on others and see them as people.

Several years ago during a particularly cold winter, Kathy and I boosted people’s batteries several times. We did it because it was the right thing to do without consideration as to what we might receive back.

One day, on the way home from a hockey game in rural Alberta, I lost control of the car and we ended up stuck on the edge of the ditch. It was cold, we were on a narrow piece of road at the top of a hill, and there was truck traffic. The first vehicle by had a chain and two-way radio to let truckers know we were there and got us out.

As we drove on, we noted that the earlier acts of helping people with dead batteries had somehow come around and, in our moment of need, someone acted kindly towards us.

When we are mindful, we recall that others need our kindness and that the kind acts echo through time and space.

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Posted in Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Reflective Moments, Uncategorized and tagged community, Desmond Tutu, leadership, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sirena, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

A Light Breather

Posted on March 23, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Theodore Roethke wrote poems that attempted to connect the inner and outer worlds we inhabit simultaneously. While exploring the outer world, it is important we find quiet in the inner world. In those quiet moments, moving back and forth we find ourselves staying.

The metaphor comparing this movement to that of a snail challenges me to think deeply about what living and breathing mindfully is. What do I notice? And, who and what notices me? As I move, am I sensitive to the world that I move through? Or, do I walk heavily chasing those who which to join me away?

The spirit moves,
Yet stays:
Stirs as a blossom stirs,
Still wet from its bud-sheath,
Slowly unfolding,
Turning in the light with its tendrils;
Plays as a minnow plays,
Tethered to a limp weed, swinging,
Tail around, nosing in and out of the current,
Its shadows loose, a watery finger;
Moves, like the snail,
Still inward,
Taking and embracing its surroundings,
Never wishing itself away,
Unafraid of what it is,
A music in a hood,
A small thing,
Singing.

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Posted in Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged A Light Breather, community, creativity, eloquent questions, Leadership. Servant-Leadership, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, Theodore Roethke. Bookmark the permalink.

We dance for…

Posted on March 23, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Photo post by @jamesscarberry.

Source: We dance for…

Albert Einstein is one of my favorite sources for quotes. What do we dance for today? Dancing is a creative movement that signals powerful human emotions are at play in a particular event.

Natalie shared a quote that reminds us humans dance in sad moments, as well. On a day, when a few attacked, killed, and injured their fellow humans, our dance should dance away the fears and tears and create dreams filled with hope. It is important to remember hateful words and actions against others is wrong.

Dancing is an integral part of human life. Even Friedrich Nietzsche,who was not considered a happy person and religious person, reminded us that “we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.” In fact, he argued he “would only believe in a god who could dance.”

I believe that a God we all believe in is one who joins the human community in dance in moments such as today. Thich Nhat Hanh suggested “the pain of one part of humankind is the pain of the whole of humankind.”

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Posted in Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Social Justice, Uncategorized and tagged Albert Einstein, community, creativity, Dance, Friedrich Nietzsche, leadership, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, Sacred Touches, spirituality, teacher as transformer, Thich Nhat Hanh. Bookmark the permalink.

lunes – Good morning everyone!!!

Posted on March 20, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Are you ready for the start of another week? My wonderful friend Mollie ( co-minister at the Baptist church in a community near here), has been happily posting in a shared file we have .. IR…

Source: lunes – Good morning everyone!!!

This is a great link. I love the unique take on See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Speak No Evil. When we speak words of kindness and act in kind ways towards others, we accomplish so much more. It takes time, but it is worth the wait.

As a teacher, I love to hear from students. They surprise me sometimes, as I do not remember them. However, they take the time to come over in an airport, a crowded grocery store, and a parking lot in a distant town. It reminds me that it takes time for those words and actions to resonate across time.

When we speak and act kindly, those words and acts resonate beyond the immediate moment and place we co-inhabit. It is a reminder of the impression we leave on the world when we take care.

7 Comments

Posted in Community, Education, Leadership, Mindful Life, Reflective Moments, Sabbath, Uncategorized and tagged community, creativity, Dymoon Blog, leadership, Lunes, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

The Invitation

Posted on March 19, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

I am not familiar with Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s poetry, but, when I found this poem, it reached out and called me.

What questions do I ask myself, that I cannot answer. There is an eloquence in those questions that leads me to new questions, without knowing the answers. When I sense the world in one way or another, I am unable to sense it in any other way.

What if I live the wildness of life and I allow myself some abandon, not carelessness? I can dance with that wildness and not care about what others may think, hopefully making the world a better place.

When we open our hearts to the other, their standing in life is about who they are as a person rather than what identifies them: their job, their age, where they live, etc. When we open our hears to the other, it is an invitation to be human and humane with them.

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.

I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.

I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day.

And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon,

“Yes!”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

35 Comments

Posted in Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Social Justice and tagged community, conversational journey, creativity, eloquent questions, leadership, Leadership. Servant-Leadership, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, Oriah Mountain Dreamer, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, The Invitation. Bookmark the permalink.

Love After Love

Posted on March 18, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Derek Walcott wrote this poem that describes how, when mindful, we experience the fullness and richness of life. Perhaps it is only, when we older, that we have wisdom to sit, take it all in, and just be good with what life is.

Who is the person, the self, that looks back from the mirror? Or, greets me at the door? The answers are only questions in a new form, as the answers cannot be fully formed.

When we engage in conversation with ourself, we must be present to the person we speak and listen to. When we ask eloquent questions that cannot be answered, we allow those questions to remain unanswered and guide the conversation.

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 image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

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Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged conversational journey, creativity, Derek Walcott, eloquent questions, leadership, Love After Love, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Lingering in Happiness

Posted on March 15, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Mary Oliver writes mystical and magical poetry. The words, the silences, and the images invoke and evoke something deep within my spirit. The etymologies of invoke and evoke, along with vocation, is “to call” in a ministering sense.

For me, teaching was/is a calling. I am still becoming a teacher. I reflect on what I experienced and arrive at new understandings about what those experience means. Emmanuel Levinas described an event as something that transcends time and place.

In that sense, becoming a teacher is an event as it continues to happen in many ways. Not only am I making sense of what that means and who I am, others do, as well. Even who I am becoming is an intersubjective event that shared with others.

Similar to the rain drops that slowly fall and nourish the oak, becoming some one is something that takes time. The drops and memories may disappear, but not vanish. They leave traces in the tree that grows and the person who is always becoming.

After rain after many days without rain,
it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees,
and the dampness there, married now to gravity,
falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground
where it will disappear – but not, of course, vanish
except to our eyes. The roots of the oaks will have their share,
and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushion of moss;
a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole’s tunnel;
and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years,
will feel themselves being touched.

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Posted in Community, Education, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged community, creativity, education, Emmanuel Levinas, Lingering in Happiness, Mary Oliver, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Angels In Your Head

Posted on March 14, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

“You wouldn’t believe what once or twice I have seen. I’ll just tell you this: only if there are angels in your head will you ever, possibly, see one.” – Mary Oliver I consider eagles…

Source: Angels In Your Head

Mimi writes about eagles being a spirit animal and her good fortune in having 46 of them guide her on her walks. We live in Alberta where bald eagles fly over the east slopes of the Rocky Mountains as they migrate from their winter and summer nesting areas. When we visit the farm, we see the Rockies from the highway and a pair nested there each spring and fall. For us, it was a rare sighting.

Last weekend, we drove home from a birthday party west of Edmonton. As we drove, there was a bald eagle in the ditch. I think it is unusual to see them this far east of the Rockies and it might be that spring is arriving a bit early.

Mary Oliver’s quote at the top calls us to be mindful and attentive. Every now and then, we see the unexpected, as if we had angels in our heads. In those moments, we sense that something is different, and not just see, and turn in the right direction.

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The Open Door

Posted on March 13, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Danna Faulds wrote this lovely poem in the form of prose and tells a story with poetic language. When the door opens, something calls and we intuitively follow that call as we be/become. Something pulls us and allows us to be alive when we are fully aware, without “adverbs, descriptors, or qualities”. We hear the call in moments when we are present to the universe’s vastness and the spirit that calls us, animates us, and provides us with voice.

What calls to each of us is unique, but somehow shared through our humanity, our humanness, and humaneness. Rooted in antiquity, the call speaks to us in the present tense and we are unable to make full sense of it. Due to its vastness, there is always mystery in that which calls each of us.

“A door opens. Maybe I’ve been standing here shuffling my weight from foot to foot for decades, or maybe I only knocked once. In truth, it doesn’t matter. A door opens and I walk through without a backward glance. This is it, then, one moment of truth in a lifetime of truth; a choice made, a path taken, the gravitational pull of Spirit too compelling to ignore any longer. I am received by something far too vast to see. It has roots in antiquity but speaks clearly in the present tense. “Be,” the vastness says. “Be without adverbs, descriptors, or qualities. Be so alive that awareness bares itself uncloaked and unadorned. Then go forth to give what you alone can give, awake to love and suffering, unburdened by the weight of expectations. Go forth to see and be seen, blossoming, always blossoming into your magnificence.”

PS I could not find a link for Danna Faulds, but her poetry is too lovely not to share.

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Posted in Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged community, creativity, Danna Faulds, leadership, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, teacher as transformer, The Open Door. Bookmark the permalink.

Thought for Today

Posted on March 12, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.” –Thich Nhat Hanh

Source: Thought for Today

Genie shared this quote from Thich Nhat Hanh about what our mindfulness means for others. When we do not offer our undivided attention to other, it diminishes who they are.

However, a risk is we diminish mindfulness and it becomes a clichéd word that loses its full meaning. Occasionally, I read articles that suggest mindfulness is a “business tool” that we turn off and on as a calculated choice. When someone is truly mindful, they attempt to be present in every moment, realizing that is not humanly possible.

When I am present to the other, it means I give my attention as an unconditional gift with no advance calculation. Mindfulness is not a business calculation. When we are mindful, we attend to each word, not seeking to answer, but to hear what the other says to us.