Tag Archives: teacher as transformer

You Are the Only Student You Have

Posted on April 18, 2015 by ivonprefontaine

Rumi wrote poetry that resonates over centuries. When we take time to be thankful and silent, we are one with the universe. We sense the right time to speak.

When we become our student, it is important to be silent and patient with the student. Without patience and compassion, the student does not learn. The teacher cannot teach and wisdom cannot be received.

When we receive ourselves as both teacher and student, questions open up not to be answered as inviting spaces. We move beyond change and transform who we are.

You are the only faithful student you have.
All the others leave eventually.

Have you been making yourself shallow
with making others eminent?

Just remember, when you’re in union,
you don’t have to fear
that you’ll be drained.

The command comes to speak,
and you feel the ocean
moving through you.
Then comes, Be silent,
as when the rain stops,
and the trees in the orchard
begin to draw moisture
up into themselves.

23 Comments

Posted in Education, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged conversational journey, creativity, education, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, Rumi, teacher as transformer, You Are the Only Student You Have. Bookmark the permalink.

The Thread

Posted on April 11, 2015 by ivonprefontaine

Denise Levertov wrote this lovely poem that reminds me that there is something invisible that keeps us on track. I cannot see it, but I feel the thread and, when I listen quietly, I hear the call. The thread is part of who I am and is not some thing that catches me, but is some thing I become aware of over time.

I explore the world as I hold that invisible thread, hear it, and feel it. It is my pathway into the world that reminds me legacies are not created, but recalled by others.

I cannot plan this path. I walk it, sometimes alone and at other times fully in the company of others. Even when I am alone, am I? Are there those who I cannot see that walk with me with their hands gently placed on my shoulders guiding my journey.

Something is very gently,
invisibly, silently,
pulling at me—a thread
or net of threads
finer than cobweb and as
elastic. I haven’t tried
the strength of it. No barbed hook
pierced and tore me. Was it
not long ago this thread
began to draw me? Or
way back? Was I
born with its knot about my
neck, a bridle? Not fear
but a stirring
of wonder makes me
catch my breath when I feel
the tug of it when I thought
it had loosened itself and gone.

16 Comments

Posted in Community, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged community, creativity, Denise Levertov, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, The Thread. Bookmark the permalink.

Harmony

Posted on April 5, 2015 by ivonprefontaine

My mother is from a family of farmers so digging in the brown earth is symbolic for me today. She had a garden and flower beds until she sold the house and moved into an apartment, but, even there, she kept house plants.

Last night, I chatted with cousins on Facebook. My mother is the last of her generation on both sides of my family. When she gathered with her siblings, there was always tea, chatting (it was never called gossip) and laughter in the house. I think the laughter created the harmony Colleen Lineberry speaks about in her poem.

Thomas Merton wrote that life is about finding our voice through our calling in life, our vocation. My mom raised seven children and babysat many others. Her calling was to be a parent.

Memories and laughter remind us how good the day is.

One morning when I dig
brown earth with bare fingers and
listen to the light wind
shuffle through oak and elm,
I hear the silver of chimes
dangle from a thin wire,
the cadence of children
laugh themselves dizzy
like swirls of bubbles at play.

A choir of robins
trills gossip and questions,
a thicket of poems in the understory.
Each voice
from each perch
sings
through a window of sky.

I remember
to remember
how good this day is:
to slow through creation
along with the breeze
as it gentles and
praises the trees.

35 Comments

Posted in Community, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged Colleen Lineberry, community, creativity, Harmony, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, Thomas Merton. Bookmark the permalink.

Today’s Quote

Posted on April 2, 2015 by ivonprefontaine

Today’s Quote.

I love Rumi quotes and poetry. It remains timely even hundreds of years later.

You will have to visit the site to see which quote it is.

14 Comments

Posted in Community, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, love, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, poetry, Rumi, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Prayer for a Field Mouse

Posted on March 29, 2015 by ivonprefontaine

Pat Riviere-Seel’s poem has a Mary Oliver feel where she honours a small animal that we might even notice in our daily walks. It is a blessing and prayer to have all that Nature offers us.

We soak in the world and find extraordinary in the ordinary.

Bless the gray mouse

that found her way
into the recycle bin.
Bless her tiny body,
no bigger than my thumb,
huddled and numb
against the hard side.
Bless her bright eye,
a frightened gleaming
that opened to me
and the nest she made
from shredded paper,
all I could offer.
Bless her last hours
alone under the lamp
with food and water near.
Bless this brief life
I might have ended
had she stayed hidden
inside the insulation.
Bless her body returned
to earth, no more
or less than any creature.

29 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged creativity, Mary Oliver, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, Pat Riviere-Seel, poetry, Prayer for a Field Mouse, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Wild Geese

Posted on March 22, 2015 by ivonprefontaine

Mary Oliver wrote this beautiful poem about sensing and perceiving Nature through direct experiences. Maurice Merleau Ponty wrote about the phenomenology of perception which is the about the way body and its senses act as gateways in perceiving the world. Our body is not an only a thing, it is an object that researches the world.

When we “the soft animal of your body” experience and sense Nature, we are in Nature. We have images for our imagination that fill our hearts and souls so fully. We belong in ways that we cannot as an observer standing outside. We are part of a community that includes all of Nature.

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

30 Comments

Posted in Community, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged community, creativity, Mary Oliver, Maurice Merleau Ponty, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, spirituality, teacher as transformer, wild geese. Bookmark the permalink.

Happy Birthday, Albert! | Catherine M Johnson

Posted on March 15, 2015 by ivonprefontaine

Happy Birthday, Albert! | Catherine M Johnson.

I am a big Albert Einstein fan and it is his birthday today. I enjoy his eccentric behaviour and wild hair.

Several years ago, a student asked who the guy was in a poster in our classroom.

Without hesitating, I said, “My Dad!” A second student expressed skepticism, but I answered with “Look at him. He has wild hair, is eccentric, and tells great stories. Its my Dad!”.

A third student responded, “It’s Albert Einstein. His name is on the poster.”

For the rest of my teaching years, students, parents, and I were always careful when I began to say something about my Dad. I clarified whether it was my real dad or my figurative dad. The two had interesting quotes in common.

My real Dad would say, “When you stop beating your head against the wall it feels better.” I shared that with students when we talked about Einstein’s definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

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Posted in Education, Just Because Posts, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged Albert Einstein, community, creativity, education, family, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Friendship

Posted on March 8, 2015 by ivonprefontaine

Octavio Paz wrote this short poem which despite its length I read it in several ways. The poem raises more questions than it answers. Perhaps, he wrote about sleep, a lover, or night itself? Whatever it is, this friendship embraces without being named.

Maybe in sleep this friendship arrives only to be brushed aside as we awake in the morning. Or, is it the waiting for this friendship that makes it more worthwhile? When we are mindful and attentive in living, it pokes through and rewards us with momentary glimpses that are so rewarding.

It is the awaited hour
Over the table falls
Interminably
The lamp’s spread hair
Night turns the window to immensity
There is no one here
Presence without name surrounds me

19 Comments

Posted in Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged creativity, eloquent questions, friendship, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, Octavio Paz, poetry, sabbath, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Dialogue

Posted on March 4, 2015 by ivonprefontaine

Dialogue.

The linked poem uses the word nature in an ambiguous and lovely way. Perhaps, we want to know our nature? Or, is it that we wait for nature to reveal itself more fully to us?

When we wait quietly and listen deeply, we hear the questions which are essential to dialogue. It is in the quiet we hear.

8 Comments

Posted in Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged community, conversational journey, creativity, Dialogue, eloquent questions, Mindful Practice, mindfulness, nature, poetry, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Eliminating the Horizon

Posted on March 1, 2015 by ivonprefontaine

We need boundaries. They create structure in our lives. Having said this, I think Linda Nemec Foster asks a great question, “Who needs boundaries?” Can we close our eyes and imagine where the earth ends and the sky begins? Or, where the stream wanders it disappears from our sight?

Many years ago, Kathy and I camped with friends at Quesnel Lake, a beautiful and isolated glacially-fed lake, in central British Columbia.

There is a waterfall, named Niagara Falls, that flows into the east end of the lake.They are 30-40 metres high and narrow. As we approached the falls, we cut the boat motor and heard them thundering from about 1 km away.

We chatted and wondered about the waterfalls’ source. We arrived at a consensus is small lake at the base of a distant mountain fed Niagara Creek. I imagined what that looked like as we climbed to where the falls cascaded over the edge. There was a mountain in the distance which seemed to confirm our guess, but our view – our horizon – was obscured.

That evening, as we sat around the fire, we pulled maps out and found the river did not seem to be lake-fed, but just began at the base of a mountain. Today, I see different possibilities in my mind’s eye. It might be glacial fed, spring fed, or emerge from an unmarked, small lake.

When we close our eyes, we imagine what is beyond the boundaries and their limits. We move past horizons as our imaginations lead the way. There are no lines there.

Who needs boundaries?

If your eyes fail to imagine

where the earth ends and the sky

begins, think of a place bereft

of lines: the blue depths of a stream

flowing like hair that will never

be combed. Deep indigo of nothing

but fluid memory ebbing around

blossoms of white asters. “I remember

how flowers feel when you barely

touch them,” says the water. Like leaving

one world and embracing another: