Tag Archives: nature

I Worried

Posted on May 6, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Life has aspects we cannot change about and worrying simply comes to nothing as Mary Oliver suggests. There are many things we do not control even when we think we can. It is important to let go and recognize these phenomena as part of the unfolding of life.

Although Mary Oliver includes phenomena outside our control, she includes advice on how to deal with the lack of control. We can go out and sing or act in ways that are creative and life-giving. We can accept the world as it is and not try to correct it. Nature will do what she naturally learns to do. Our role is to be in the world, live in it lovingly, and attempt to do no harm in our living.

We control certain phenomena in the sense we can avoid what is destructive, but there are things that we learn and taught in living naturally.

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers

flow in the right direction, will the earth turn

as it was taught, and if not how shall

I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,

can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows

can do it and I am, well,

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,

am I going to get rheumatism,

lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.

And gave it up. And took my old body

and went out into the morning,

and sang.

25 Comments

Posted in Community, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged community, creativity, I Worried, Mary Oliver, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, poetry, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Elegance

Posted on May 3, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Kathy and I drove to British Columbia today. It is about an eight-hour drive so lots of time for quiet and conversation. Driving through mountains there is a lot to behold in the pure silence married to nature’s stillness.

At one point, Kathy commented how at this time of year the mountains in the distant seem closer with snow coming down further. During the summer, the mountains are snow-free and do not stand out the same way. Today, it looked like there had been snow in the past couple of days contrasting the darkness.

Linda Gregg’s poem captures how human silence provides humans with opportunities to witness nature’s pure stillness. In moments of pure silence, we feel ourselves embedded in something larger containing us and everything else. There is a sense of smallness and, yet, a sense of largeness in this exquisite elegance. In these moments, we feel a deep sense of caring from the world and towards the world.

All that is uncared for.

Left alone in the stillness

in that pure silence married

to the stillness of nature.

A door off its hinges,

shade and shadows in an empty room.

Leaks for light. Raw where

the tin roof rusted through.

The rustle of weeds in their

different kinds of air in the mornings,

year after year.

A pecan tree, and the house

made out of mud bricks. Accurate

and unexpected beauty, rattling

and singing. If not to the sun,

then to nothing and to no one.

11 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, Elegance, Linda Gregg, Mindful Practice, nature, poetry, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Afternoon on a Hill

Posted on May 1, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote this beautiful poem which reminded me about how the greatest things are sometimes about those things which touch us, but we do not necessarily touch them. The world greets us in the form of the sun, flowers, its geology, sky, etc. We sense these things in the fullest way. They reach into us and touch us deeply in a spiritual way.

When we are present in the world, it makes the world come alive, we only need to sit, and it makes us feel fully we are part of it and not outside it.

I will be the gladdest thing

Under the sun!

I will touch a hundred flowers

And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds

With quiet eyes,

Watch the wind bow down the grass,

And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show

Up from the town,

I will mark which must be mine,

And then start down!

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What Was Told, That

Posted on April 30, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Rumi wrote poetry 900 years ago and it still resonates in the 21st Century. We see the world change and live in its busyness trying to keep pace with the change. It is hard to turn inwards, see the beauty that exists within, and acknowledging its importance in helping us keep pace.

Regardless of faith and even when we do not have it, there still exists a source deep within each of us that when we touch it and let it speak to us is able to guide us in wonderful and amazing ways. I found the peaceful drive today in the lee of the Rocky Mountains inspirational and something that I share with the world and with each person in the world.

What was said to the rose that made it open was said

to me here in my chest.

What was told the cypress that made it strong

and straight, what was

whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made

sugarcane sweet, whatever

was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in

Turkestan that makes them

so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush

like a human face, that is

being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in

language, that’s happening here.

The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,

chewing a piece of sugarcane,

in love with the one to whom every that belongs!

10 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, poetry, Rumi, teacher as transformer, What Was Told That. Bookmark the permalink.

Tewksbury Road

Posted on April 6, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

There is something about walking in nature that stimulates all the senses. I come alive in those walks and feel energized. We walked the North Saskatchewan River Valley two years ago during Autumn. The leaves turned colour. Over time, I smelled rich decay as Nature continued in her life-cycle.

Nature celebrates her Sabbath. It is a time of renewal emerging from what was alive. She never wastes.

John Masefield described a pastoral scene I imagined in a multi-sensory way. There is a universality in these scenes that touches the spirit.

It is good to be out on the road, and going one knows not where,

Going through meadow and village, one knows not whither or why;

Through the grey light drift of the dust, in the keen cool rush of the air,

Under the flying white clouds, and the broad blue lift of the sky.

And to halt at the chattering brook, in a tall green fern at the brink

Where the harebell grows, and the gorse, and the foxgloves purple and white;

Where the shifty-eyed delicate deer troop down to the brook to drink

When the stars are mellow and large at the coming on of the night.

O, to feel the beat of the rain, and the homely smell of the earth,

Is a tune for the blood to jig to, and joy past power of words;

And the blessed green comely meadows are all a-ripple with mirth

At the noise of the lambs at play and the dear wild cry of the birds.

4 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged creativity, John Masefield, Mindful Practice, nature, poetry, spirituality, stewardship, teacher as transformer, Tewsksbury Road. Bookmark the permalink.

Talk About Walking

Posted on April 1, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

When we were in Waterton Lakes National Park two summers ago, we were able to go down the big lake into Montana’s Glacier National Park and hike. As we got off the boat, we asked one of the guides where a good place to go would be. He asked where we wanted to go and I answered, “Just for a walk and see where it takes us.”

It would be difficult to get off the ‘beaten path as it is pretty rugged country. Despite this, I think some days it is nice just to wander and wonder where the day takes us. Philip Booth does a wonderful job reminding us there is so much outside these walls we think of as our life.

Where am I going? I’m going
out, out for a walk. I don’t
know where except outside.
Outside argument, out beyond
wallpapered walls, outside
wherever it is where nobody
ever imagines. Beyond where
computers circumvent emotion,
where somebody shorted specs
for rivets for airframes on
today’s flights. I’m taking off
on my own two feet. I’m going
to clear my head, to watch
mares’-tails instead of TV,
to listen to trees and silence,
to see if I can still breathe.
I’m going to be alone with
myself, to feel how it feels
to embrace what my feet
tell my head, what wind says
in my good ear. I mean to let
myself be embraced, to let go
feeling so centripetally old.
Do I know where I’m going?
I don’t. How long or far
I have no idea. No map. I
said I was going to take
a walk. When I’ll be back
I’m not going to say.

13 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged conversational journey, creativity, Glacier National Park, mindfulness, nature, Philip Booth, poetry, Talk about Walking, teacher as transformer, waterton lakes national park. Bookmark the permalink.

Fire

Posted on March 29, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Judy Brown wrote this poem and it is a gentle reminder of spaces in our lives that softly breath passion back into living. In these spaces, we lightly lay com-passion, integrating it in life and rekindling passion.

Sabbath is an ongoing event. It is the daily pauses taken to be thankful and momentarily rest. It is meditation and prayer, listening not for certainty and answers, but more likely questions serving as life’s fuel. It is being in Nature and seeing ourselves as a small part of the larger whole.

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.

So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.

A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

3 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged creativity, Fire, Judy Brown, Mindful Practice, nature, poetry, sabbath, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Nature’s Secret

Posted on March 20, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Grace Holmes wrote this poem. I was unable to find a link to the poet, but wanted to share the poem. If someone has a link, I will edit and add it.

The poem reminded me of Alfred North Whitehead‘s thinking. He suggested we only need to look at nature and find general patterns for life. Nature reveals patterns when we take time and observe living in nature.

There’s a secret with these rugged hills, whose slender tops are gray;
There’s a secret with the wild flowers that bloom along the way;

There’s a secret with the roaming clouds that change the changeful sky
A secret have the busy winds, that chant and moan and sigh:

A secret has the moonlight, that touches land and sea,
A secret is between the stars that blink and you and me.

Ah the secrets! can you count them? so numerous are they!
Ah the secrets! can you find them out? can you find them out, I say?

I knew that some sweet secret ‘twixt my garden flowers grew.
But I said, I know, I feel, it is not for me, or you.

I felt there was a secret with the wondrous charming sea,
But again I shook my head and said, that secret’s not for me.

Yea, every where I turn my eyes on nature living show,
I feel there is a secret that ’tis not for me know.

7 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged Alfred North Whitehead, creativity, Grace Holmes, Mindful Practice, nature, Nature's Secrets, poetry, stewardship, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

i thank You God for this most amazing

Posted on March 14, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

e. e. cummings was a poet who loved playing with language and its rules. We see this where he makes up words and excludes capitalization except for two words.

Poetry allows me to explore the world in new ways such as watching for the leaping greenly of trees and all those things which are yes. It is in the cracks that appear in poetry that light shines through.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

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Posted in Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, e. e. cummings, i thank You God for this most amazing, Mindful Practice, nature, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Coyote

Posted on March 11, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

As I read this weekend, I found Peter Blue Cloud poem. Blue Cloud subtly describes an interconnectedness quite, often overlooked in daily life, that exists in the universe. When we step away from life’s busyness and impersonality and move slowly, gracefully and intimately we explore and connect in the world instead of being outside it.

Indigenous cultures, through tricksters, understand the world as a space humans live in. Coyote is a trickster in many North American aboriginal stories. Through coyote, Peter Blue Cloud reminded me I live in the world and not outside it or beside it. I made whole in this relationship.

Ecologically and ideally, classrooms, students, and teachers are nodes on vast interconnected webs across time and space. Seen this way, education is a reverent, holy space binding us together as it holds stories across cultures and generations. We hear the voices of all, particularly those who live on the margins.

by starlight hush of wind the owl’s voice,

the campfire embers glowing inner universe

by firelight smoke curls weaving faint the voices,

coyote voices faint the pain and smell the pitch,

fire, I sing you stars,

fire, I breath obsidian

& again the owl’s shadow voice leans back

into times past

slinging firs fire,

brittle spine bent bowed toward the fire,

voices low to murmur a child whimper,

deer fat sucked upon to gentle dreaming,