Tag Archives: spirituality

O Captain! My Captain!

Posted on August 14, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

The character John Keating, played by Robin Williams, used this Walt Whitman poem to set the stage for much of the movie, Dead Poet’s Society.

I do not dispute the original writing of the poem might literally be about the captain’s death and today it pays homage to Robin Williams. The movie did deal with the difficult issue of suicide. Having said this, I think it is important to consider a figurative meaning about teaching which was Keating’s profession in the movie so ably brought to life by Robin Williams.

I critiqued the movie from a teacher’s perspective while completing my Master’s degree. I spoke about the passion teaching brought into my life. I extend this to anything we choose to do. When we lose the spirit and voice that a vocation offers each of us, it is figuratively and literally a death, as well.

I recall using Parker Palmer’s quote about vocation and voice coming from the Latin vocere. Voice gives us life. Robin William’s portrayal of John Keating spoke deeply to me about holding true to the purposes we are called to in life.

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,

You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

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Posted in Community, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, Dead Poet's Society, education, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, O Captain My Captain, Parker Palmer, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, Walt Whitman. Bookmark the permalink.

O Slave, Liberate Yourself.

Posted on August 9, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

The second stanza drew me into Kabir‘s poem. We search for homes throughout life. It is right there embedded in each moment. When I am awake in each moment, the search is easier. I become aware and attentive sensing each moment’s transience.

When we let go and stop grasping, we are released from slavery and tyranny chasing tails and tales. When we fail and chase, the feeling enslaves us and it is worse than death. Living each moment is the antidote to this feeling and is liberating.

O Slave, liberate yourself.

Where are you, and where’s your home,
find it in your lifetime, man.

If you fail to wake up now,
you’ll be helpless when the end comes.

Says Kabir, listen, O wise one,
the siege of Death is hard to withstand.

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Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged creativity, Kabir, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, O Slave Liberate Yourself, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Voice of The Inanimate

Posted on August 8, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Voice of The Inanimate.

Last night, I pressed Our Grandmother from Eddie Two Hawks. In my comments, I mentioned Wendell Berry and the way I understand place in his writing. Wendell Berry’s work is used by the deep ecology movement which in many ways is not a movement. It is a way of life. For years, I critiqued the environmental movement as a corporate movement with many of the same characteristics of the business they criticized. Wendell Berry, similar to all good farmers, values the land. He speaks about as if it were living. It is not separate from us, but a part of us. When I think about this, it makes local and community environmental work incredibly important. It decries the corporate pillaging that goes on both sides of the equation.

Wendell Berry speaks of the land as a living and animate thing. This makes sense. The plants we grow happen in the healthy, which comes from the same root as whole, ecosystem. When we see ourselves embedded in this ecosystem and not overloads, it changes our relationship with nature. Alex commented the word nature comes from a word meaning birth. When certain parts of the ecosystem are damaged made, unwhole and unhealthy, the birth itself cannot be healthy.

Each contribution we make adds something to the world we live in. It is when we see ourselves as part of the world and nature that we make the greatest contributions to community. We are stewards, serving the world in loving ways. This is another analogy for the thinking of the world as grandmother. We treat our grandmothers with love.

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Posted in Community, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged community, creativity, Deep Ecology, Eddie Two Hawks, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, poetry, spirituality, stewardship, teacher as transformer, The Liberated Way, Wendell Berry. Bookmark the permalink.

Our Grandmother

Posted on August 7, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Our Grandmother.

This is a wonderful quote. When we think of our grandmothers, we think of someone we want to treat with respect, dignity, and integrity for their wisdom. Mother Earth is the same. She possesses so much wisdom that when we are open and see ourselves as being one with the world we receive that wisdom.

Today, Kathy and I talked about place the Wendell Berry speaks about it. When we feel we live in a place, it means something profound to us. We think of those places not as out there, but very much in us and us in that place. We find community in those places because we have much in common with the others who live, animate and inanimate.

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Posted in Community, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged community, creativity, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, spirituality, stewardship, teacher as transformer, Wendell Berry. Bookmark the permalink.

HIROSHIMA, JAPAN IMAGES: THE SIMPLEST THINGS IN LIFE

Posted on August 5, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

HIROSHIMA, JAPAN IMAGES: THE SIMPLEST THINGS IN LIFE.

I mention my favourite poets regularly i.e. Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry and want to mention my favourite prose writer Paulo Coehlo. This post begins with a quote from Manuscript Found in Accra asking we let the simplest things reveal there extraordinary nature. The photography underscores this point.

It is in the ordinary the extraordinary is revealed is one of my favourite quotes from Thich Nhat Hanh. When I am mindful, present, and attentive, I sense the extraordinary I rush past in my haste to get to the next moment.

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Posted in Mindful Life, Photography, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, Manuscript Found in Accra, Mary Oliver, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, Paulo Coehlo, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, Thich Nhat Hanh, writing. Bookmark the permalink.

Walking Meditation

Posted on August 3, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

We attended a wedding yesterday and it was late when I got home. I prepared this post in advance and took a few minutes today to post it. After this, I begin or re-begin sabbath, which was largely a Saturday and Sunday event this week.

When the boys were young, we would get up on weekends and go for a walk. The boys wanted to hold our hands. One son always checked my hands out. He often started with my left hand and I felt his fingers checking my palm. Not finding what he wanted he moved to the right side and completed the search. My right hand is scarred from various events and scar tissue built up leaving a bump. As we walked, our son would hold that hand and now and again rubbed the scar and bump. I don’t know if it was that reassured him, he was reassuring me, a combination of those things, or none of the above. In those moments, it was easy to sense being, linked together and holding hands.

In today’s world, we hurry to get somewhere. It is not clear where somewhere is and we are victims to trying to get out of this moment. Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us we should walk peacefully, not thinking of arriving anywhere but here. When we do this, we walk in peace and walking is peace. In holding hands, we touch each moment and kiss Earth with our feet. We feel Earth through and in our feet, its scars and make it safer for us and Earth.

We see commercials with people holding hands singing about making the world a better place. In hand-holding, we are linked physically and united. It is not an abstraction as we feel other people and Earth in linking and walking.

Take my hand.
We will walk.
We will only walk.
We will enjoy our walk
without thinking of arriving anywhere.
Walk peacefully.
Walk happily.
Our walk is a peace walk.
Our walk is a happiness walk.

Then we learn
that there is no peace walk;
that peace is the walk;
that there is no happiness walk;
that happiness is the walk.
We walk for ourselves.
We walk for everyone
always hand in hand.

Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom under our feet.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Print on Earth your love and happiness.

Earth will be safe
when we feel in us enough safety.

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Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged community, conversational journey, creativity, leadership, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, Thich Nhat Hanh, Walking Meditation. Bookmark the permalink.

Heaven

Posted on August 1, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

We think the sound ends when no we longer hear it. All senses leave traces and vibrations remembered at some later moment. We hear sounds recalling them in stories about that moment. It is not as clearly recalled, but it does remain equally vivid as we recall the moment when the sprinkler made its sounds and the water touched us as we ran through the water on a hot summer day years ago. It is the moment relived. The trailing feather of mist touches us. We feel the coolness touching overheated bodies that long ago day.

David Baker called this human ability, and it is a human ability, heaven. We hear the music after it ends. It reminded me of the Leonard Cohen line about dancing to the end of love. It is not the end of love, but a part of love we feel in that dance called life. Although the line is melancholic, the love is felt in daily activities bringing joy and sadness. It is in sharing of the joy and sadness we find love and heaven.

All afternoon the sprinkler ticks and sprays,

ticks and sprays in lazy rounds, trailing

a feather of mist. When I turn it off,

the cicadas keep up their own dry rain,

passing on high from limb to limb.

I don’t know what has shocked me more,

that you are gone, that I am still here,

that there is music after the end.

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Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, David Baker, Heaven, Leonard Cohen, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Alliance

Posted on July 29, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

We live in a world of strictly held ideologies. I know some might argue the ideologies are theologies, but I wonder about theologies allowing and promoting killing each other. Several years ago in a conversation, my mother questioned a point I made about a conflict. I responded I was not on anyone’s side, but I am opposed to war in general.

I oppose war and killing, but it does not mean life is easy. It is not an unreal ideal. It suggests I come to terms with a world fraught with failure and difference holding promises of alliances of hope and love. I think it is not so much coming to terms with, but coming to terms in the world. Coming to terms with proposes I live outside humane relationships. Living in the world is alliances and relationships forming beginning in me.

Maya Stein’s poem suggests these alliances require courage and used brave. Brave comes from a word meaning valiant, courageous, untamed. Courage comes from the same word as heart. In this heart and in this world, I search and research attempting beauty and hope. I wend my way in the moment-to-moment journey seeking answers to Mary Oliver’s question: “what is it you plan to do [in] your one wild and precious life?” This suggests a quality in life and alliances which is not tameable, but perhaps I do not want to tame it. It is in wildness it offers more,

“You have to make an alliance with your anguish,” he said,
“not wage war against it.” And I thought of all the fists
I had shaken at misfortune: games lost
because the shot clock ran out,
a good meal scorched in a forgotten oven,
money dropped on a dress worn only once,
the bully in 6th grade, the math test in 9th,
the wrong outfit at Halloween.
But of course, this isn’t what he meant.

If I were brave enough, I’d tell you how my heart
has raged for love, stretched thin as a high wire.
If I were brave enough, I’d tell you
how my body has been fighting to stay upright
on every precipitous downhill the city
throws at it. If I were brave enough,
I’d climb into your lap and weep with longing.
All I can say is that any attempt at beauty and hope
is land-mined with failure.
And so the perilous track-making begins.
Wending our way through,
there are possible clutches at sunlight, at windows, at yes.
We are each of us inches from death.
We are each of us inches from life.
We are each of us inches from one another.

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Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged Alliance, creativity, eloquent questions, Mary Oliver, Maya Stein, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

When I Am Wise

Posted on July 26, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

I am not sure which Mary Gray wrote this poem. I found it, enjoyed it, and wanted to share it with others.

The poem has a Mary Oliver quality to it. Something speaks to us when we give it time and space. When we listen carefully, the wind blows through the grass giving its a voice we hear when we slow down resting our head on the ground. Humbling ourselves, we are closer to the voices of small things, the dankness of humus (the root word for human and humility), and the friendliness of weeds in our life.

As children, we often forgot our names losing ourselves in precious moments in a world larger than we were. It enveloped us and everything it revealed was wondrous. We recall running with outreached hands into the world, its silence, its disarray, and the inviting of small things in the grass which were more at our level. I remember the ladybugs, spiders, ants, etc. which were smaller than I was, entranced by them and by all that was immense. It was in those moments I was wise as I listened in ways that sometimes escape me as an adult.

When I am wise in the speech of the grass,
I forget the sound of words
and walk into the bottomland
and lie with my head on the ground
and listen to what grass tells me
and small places for wind to sing,
about the labor of insects,
about shadows dank with spice,
and the friendliness of weeds.

When I am wise in the dance of grass,
I forget my name and run
into the rippling bottomland
and lean against the silence which flows
out of the crumpled mountains
and rises through slick blades, pods,
wheat stems, and curly shoots,
and is carried by wind for miles
from my outstretched hands.

17 Comments

Posted in Community, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged community, creativity, Mary Gray, Mary Oliver, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, When I Am Wise. Bookmark the permalink.

What Fills Your World?

Posted on July 19, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

What Fills Your World?.

There was no re-blog capacity on the site so I went with pressing it. The Inuit song/poem is a great piece and speaks to the smallness of our troubles and the awareness we need to recognize the small gifts we overlook which make life so extraordinary.

The Swedish proverb speaks to the song as in sharing we find more joy and less sorrow. Someone and something is always present with us even when they are not there physically.