Tag Archives: spirituality

A Noiseless, Patient Spider

Posted on February 7, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

When I looked for a poem to post, I found this Walt Whitman verse. It reminded me of the writing of Mary Oliver, Parker Palmer, Thomas Merton, Thich Nhat Hanh, and others who write about the quietness needed for the soul to emerge. It is like to a wild animal, perhaps a spider, which is timid and reluctant to emerge as we crash around. As we sit quietly and listen, it emerges for us to see and listen more closely.

A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

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Posted in Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged A Noiseless Patient Spider, creativity, leadership, Mary Oliver, Mindful Practice, Parker Palmer, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Merton, Walt Whitman. Bookmark the permalink.

Learning is the Thing for You

Posted on February 6, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

I told students, when I learned something new, I was going home to tell my wife. I unsure they believed me, but, often, I would go home and tell Kathy what I had learned or a particular frustration from the day. Often, the latter led to learning.

T. H. White, in this excerpt from The Once and Future King, suggests learning is a universal solvent for what ails us at any given moment. It distracts us from worrisome, sad, and fearful things focuses on something right here in the present moment. It occupies our minds, fills our bodies, and feeds the soul of our being.

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn… “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss you only love, you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then–to learn. Learn why the world ways and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured, never fear or distrust, and never dream regretting. Learning is the thing for you.”

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Posted in 21st Century Education, Education, Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, education, leadership, Mindful Practice, school, spirituality, teacher as transformer, The Once and Future King. Bookmark the permalink.

The Journey

Posted on February 1, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Mary Oliver is one of my favourite poets. When I open a book, I am often drawn to her writing. There is something in the simplicity that is profound. She peels away layers in ways that help me see the world quite differently.

Father Richard Rohr comments that we live the first half of life in busyness and, if we are lucky, the second half is one where we slow the pace, contemplate, and find wisdom which helps us grow into the life we are.

Quite often, the voices which distract and the barriers on the road are ones I create. It takes time, patience, and support to find the light seeping through clouds. The stars’ make the journey hopeful, that I can go deeper into the life.

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice–

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations–

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice,

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world

determined to do

the only thing you could do–

determined to save

the only life you could save.

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Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged creativity, Mary Oliver, Mindful Practice, poetry, Richard Rohr, spirituality, teacher as transformer, The Journey. Bookmark the permalink.

The Bridge

Posted on January 31, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

As I write or is the verb dissertate, two early themes emerge: bridges and the ecological nature of classroom. In learning, there is an ongoing bridging from place to place, from time to time, from subject to subject, and from you me and back again.

A bridge we forget is one that takes inside our self. Learning is constant transforming. We are always changing yet we are rarely aware of change. It is like a fish in water, it just happens.

It is important to be mindful and present in learning. What are the changes? What does this bridge between you and me change in each of us? We never become one and it is in the in-between spaces on those bridges that we find the newness of our self when we linger.

Octavio Paz’s poem reminds me of bridges that fill learning spaces, an ecology of learning. There is a rainbow in, over, and between learning as I learn who I am, the world I live in, and the beings I share that world with.

Between now and now,
between I am and you are,
the word bridge.

Entering it
you enter yourself:
the world connects
and closes like a ring.

From one bank to another,
there is always
a body stretched:
a rainbow.
I’ll sleep beneath its arches.

2 Comments

Posted in Education, Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged community, creativity, education, leadership, Mindful Practice, Octavio Paz, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, The Bridge. Bookmark the permalink.

The Courage to Be New

Posted on January 30, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Robert Frost wrote this interesting poem. It is unclear what the underlying topic was, but it was possibly written after one of the World Wars.It seems with the passing of Pete Seeger thinking about violence and its meaning, if there is any, is appropriate. There isn’t reason, but it seems human nature to overlook the violence beginning in daily life.

The courage to be new is real in many settings. It is hard to change practices and become someone new, although what human being is about, always transforming. We become caught in a vice of busyness that doesn’t let us see past routines or see into them for that matter. Children likely see past much better and then, as they grow up, they are stymied. The courage to stop violence begins with the person, the self. When I look in, I find spaces where light shines in and helps me walk the path with a little more courage.

I hear the world reciting
The mistakes of ancient men,
The brutality and fighting
They will never have again.

Heartbroken and disabled
In body and in mind
They renew talk of the fabled
Federation of Mankind.

But they’re blessed with the acumen
To suspect the human trait
Was not the basest human
That made them militate.

They will tell you more as soon as
You tell them what to do
With their ever breaking newness
And their courage to be new.

8 Comments

Posted in Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Uncategorized and tagged creativity, education, leadership, Mindful Practice, Pete Seeger, poetry, Robert Frost, spirituality, teacher as transformer, The Courage to be New. Bookmark the permalink.

Shaking the Tree

Posted on January 23, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

I wrote and scrambled a bit today. I was unsure of where I was with the dissertation process yesterday and then it seemed, as I set the books down and wrote, things fell into place more easily. I read material on complexity theory and its related sciences. The classroom, the school, and all their relationships are complex beyond even the simplest complex system the science can describe. Social systems are so complex we cannot to take them to scale. Basically, it boils down to what happens in one school, perhaps a classroom, is unique to that place and that time.

In the midst of all this complexity, I skimmed Facebook and found a poet, Jeanne Lohmann, I had not read before. She writes about the deep interconnectedness we share with each other, the world, the universe, and what exists beyond. And, everything depends on everything. When we shake that tree, something else, many other things, respond. In the holy things, we find wholeness.

Vine and branch we’re connected in this world

of sound and echo, figure and shadow, the leaves

contingent, roots pushing against earth. An apple

belongs to itself, to stem and tree, to air

that claims it, then ground. Connections

balance, each motion changes another. Precarious,

hanging together, we don’t know what our lives

support, and we touch in the least shift of breathing.

Each holy thing is borrowed. Everything depends.

12 Comments

Posted in Community, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged community, complexity, creativity, Jeanne Lohmann, leadership, Mindful Practice, poetry, Shaking the Tree, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

The Panther

Posted on January 15, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Rilke worked for the sculptor Rodin. Rumour has it Rilke could not write and grew frustrated. Rodin suggested he go to the zoo, observe and see one of the animals clearly, and write about those observations. The result was this poem which described the essence, from Rilke’s point of view, of this magnificent, trapped animal, a metaphor, in some ways for the sometimes trapped human essence and creative seat.

We, as humans, pace behind the bars that we construct for ourselves and have to look inside for power that allows escape. Our spirits reveal the power and beauty where ultimate personal and collective meaning are. In the quiet and stillness of being fully present to ourselves, much is revealed. Otherwise, the cages and bars of our own making capture us and refuse to let us go.

From seeing the bars, his seeing is so exhausted

that it no longer holds anything anymore.

To him the world is bars, a hundred thousand

bars, and behind the bars, nothing.

The lithe swinging of that rhythmical easy stride

which circles down to the tiniest hub

is like a dance of energy around a point

in which a great will stands stunned and numb.

Only at times the curtains of the pupil rise

without a sound … then a shape enters,

slips through the tightened silence of the shoulders,

reaches the heart, and dies.

16 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, Mindful Practice, poetry, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rodin, spirituality, teacher as transformer, The Panther. Bookmark the permalink.

A Time to Talk

Posted on January 14, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Robert Frost’s poem foreshadowed a need to make real human contact. There are times we need to move beyond the virtual realities, set the hoe down, and engage in those friendly visits. Human contact in the form of sound, touch, smell, and visuals is a human need that cannot be overlooked. It is a sensual place and space to be. It touches our spirit and makes us whole.

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

19 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged A Time to Talk, community, creativity, friendship, Mindful Practice, poetry, Robert Frost, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Closed Path

Posted on January 11, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

At the end of the week, as I approach Sabbath, I think the voyage is perhaps at an end. But, it is not. The Sabbath serves a time of replenishment, a finding of new wonder in the days to come. I look in as suggested in this poem by Rabindranath Tagore. The path opens in front of me in way I am sure this is in my destiny.

I thought that my voyage had come to its end
at the last limit of my power,—that the path before me was closed,
that provisions were exhausted
and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.

But I find that thy will knows no end in me.
And when old words die out on the tongue,
new melodies break forth from the heart;
and where the old tracks are lost,
new country is revealed with its wonders.

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Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged Closed Path, creativity, Mindful Practice, Rabindranath Tagore, sabbath, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Limen

Posted on January 6, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Some days, I sit and watch, listen, and sense the wonders of the world around me. Within these wonders, things and people invite me to remember things embedded within nature and in my life. The extraordinary emerges from the ordinary. Often, I overlook what and who is important in my life, who give and gave me unconditional support.

Natasha Trethewey shared this wonderful poem about the unobserved industry that goes on around me. It is not just busy industry. I focus on a particular calling in life. I find my voice in the work. For humans, there is a multiplicity in the work and the way it shapes life. Similar to the woodpecker, it seems I look for the gifts I overlook. There is more embedded in life than just hanging laundry and other obvious tasks I undertake. When I attend and am present, the barely perceptible–the liminal– is visible, heard, and fully sensed.

All day I’ve listened to the industry

of a single woodpecker, worrying the catalpa tree

just outside my window. Hard at his task,

his body is a hinge, a door knocker

to the cluttered house of memory in which

I can almost see my mother’s face.

She is here, beyond the tree,

its slender pods and heart-shaped leaves,

hanging wet sheets on the line–each one

a thin white screen between between us. So insistent

is this woodpecker, I’m sure he must be

looking for something else–not simply