Tag Archives: teacher as transformer

My November Guest

Winter approaches. Today, was a dreary day and the trees are becoming littered on the ground as their leaves fall. Yet, as Robert Frost pointed out, there is something lovely in the barrenness of November days. This reminds me that, as fall turns to winter, of a need for the seasonal shifts that bring new life into the world. It is part of the healing process nature provides.

My Sorrow, when she’s there with me,

Thinks these dark days of autumn rain

Are beautiful as days can be;

She loves the bare, the withered tree;

She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay,

She talks and I am fain to list;

She’s glad the birds have gone way.

She’s glad her simple worsted gray

Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,

The faded earth, the heavy sky,

The beauties she so truly sees,

She thinks I have no eye for these,

And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday, I learned to know

The love of bare November days

Before the coming of the snow,

But it were vain to tell her so,

And they are better for her praise.

Love After Love

I have thought about this poem a lot lately. It just keeps popping into my head during quiet times. It is a beautiful poem by Derek Walcott. Whenever I read it, it reminds each moment is a fresh beginning and it passes with its own truth contained within it.

As I mature, I get a sense of both getting to know me better and, at the same, realizing how little I know about myself. These feelings would feel counter-intuitive if they did not feel so right.

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 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 own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

The Opening of Eyes

I spent a great two weeks at home. I concluded my time away with a wonderful weekend in Seattle where I attended a poetry weekend, along with about 150 others, facilitated by David Whyte. A major theme was asking beautiful questions: questions we need to ask that show stories in our lives that are possibly outdated. We open our eyes for what appears to be the first time and there is a renewal.

An important part of beautiful questions is they guide us towards new horizons. We feel grounded by home’s foundations and  drawn forward from that stable place in imaginative ways. There is something spiritual and biblical about this feeling as we find the courage in our hearts to let go in ways we had never imagined possible.

That day I saw beneath dark clouds

the passing light over the water

and I heard the voice of the world speak out,

I knew then, as I had before,

life is no passing memory of what has been

nor the remaining pages of a great book

waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.

It is the vision of far off things

seen for the silence they hold.

It is the heart after years

of secret conversing

speaking out loud in the clear air.

It is Moses in the desert

fallen to his knees before the lit bush.

It is the man throwing away his shoes

as if to enter heaven

and finding himself astonished,

opened at last,

fallen in love with solid ground.

Shepherd

I have a three-week break and will head home for a couple of weeks on Monday, so will be offline for a couple of days. It is a longer sabbath than normal, but it will be a long day on Monday. The wanderer is going from thought country and will find his way home as William Stafford suggested in this poem. We are each shepherded home in some fashion, at some time.

According to the silence, winter has arrived—

a special kind of winter. I, its inventor,

watch it freeze in calendars and stare

out of clocks. I do not feel its cold.

Across a certain farm evening crows go flying,

intervals of the sky that I have seen before,

the bearing of a river. I advance, a wanderer

out of thought country, that serious quiet place,

Till according to the silence all the light is gone

and according to the dark all wanderers are home.

I Go Among Trees

I begin with an apology to followers. The email feed of those who I follow has not worked the last two days. This is the second this has happened in the last couple of months. I am not sure what has caused the malfunction at the junction, but I will look into it this weekend after my classes wrap up for the week.

Wendell Berry wrote this poem about taking time and waiting for the right time to do the work. It has been busy and I will have time with a three-week break from classes to sit among the trees hopefully literally and figuratively

I go among the trees and sit still

All my stirring becomes quiet

around me like circles on water.

My tasks lie in their places

Where I left them, asleep like cattle…

Then what is afraid of me comes

and lives a while in my sight.

What it fears in me leaves me,

and the fear of me leaves it.

It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.

I live for a while in its sight.

What I fear in it leaves it,

And the fear of it leaves me.

It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,

mute in my consternations,

I hear my song at last,

and I sing it. As we sing,

the day turns, the trees move.

Natural Selection

The last couple of classes we talked about the way things seem to run below the surface. Life is full and richer due to paradox. What happens below the surface goes unnoticed. It is interesting to examine events that seem chance and realize they emerged out of necessity. Frequently, we acknowledge in the retrospective rear-view mirror.

Alan Shapiro wrote this poem which has multiple meanings, but I found it speaks to life lived.

proceeds by chance

and necessity

becomes nonrandom

through randomness

builds complexity

from simplicity

nurtures consciousness

unconsciously

evolves purposely

creatures who demand

purpose

and discover

natural selection

The Need to Win

Yesterday, I was writing and getting ready for class this morning. I pulled The Promise of Paradox by Parker Palmer off the shelf and looked for a reference. When I opened the book, it was to the page with this poem on it. When I focus on the need to win, as Chuang Tzu suggested, I am drained of power and divided against myself. The way to victory is to let go of the chase for victory and the avoidance of defeat.

We talked about the binary world we live in. Winning and losing are part of this binary. They sit at extremes and point in opposite directions. When I let go of and let myself enter the between space, I find my way better.

Take care and enjoy Sabbath.

When an archer is shooting for nothing

He has all the skill.

If he shoots for a brass buckle

He is already nervous.

If he shoots for a prize of gold

He goes blind

Or sees two targets—

He is out of his mind!

His skill has not changed. But the prize

Divides him. He cares.

He thinks more of winning

Than of shooting—

And the need to win

Drains him of power.

The Rest

I struggled for sometime with the concept of being retired, so to speak. I reflected on the concept. The etymological roots of retire come through the French–retirer–which connects with the idea of shoot, throw, and draw. It means to re-shoot or start over again which has a much different meaning than I had applied before. I am starting over, but with much support and it is a good place to be. It is good to begin this part of the journey without reservation which is the way I am fashioning retire today.

Lawrence Rabb wrote of waiting because we are too young and not doing because we are too old. My current concept of retire looks at the possibility that lies ahead.

You’ve tried the rest,

You’ve waited long enough.

Everything catches up with you.

And you’re too old,

or too young.

Or you don’t have the money

or you don’t have the time.

Maybe you’re shy, and maybe

you’re just afraid.

How often have you heard it,

have you promised

yourself you’d try

something really different

if you had a chance?

Though you can’t help but wonder

if all those people

know what they’re doing, now

you’re saying it with them:

Eventually everything

catches up with us,

and it starts to show.

We’ve waited all our lives, or as long

as we can remember, whichever

is long enough.

The Sunset

There is an interdependence I often lose track of in life when I get busy. It was nice to get away from the reading and writing for a few days. Black Elk, a holy man of the Oglala Lakota, said these words many years ago and they resonate with me today.

I recognize that interconnectedness when I allow myself to find a higher vantage point. My daily life, surrounded with by busyness, focuses me on the particulars. The spiritual vantage point, which elevates me, allows me to see sometimes the fuller circle.

Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all,

And round beneath me was the whole hoop of the world

And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell

And I understood more than I saw

For I was seeing in the sacred manner the shape of all things of the spirit!

And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that make one circle, wide as daylight and starlight,

And in the center grew one mighty flowering tree.

The Blessing

I begin an extended Sabbath tomorrow morning with a three-day retreat. It has been a productive week and it feels good to take a break from the reading and writing.

I came across this poem by James Wright yesterday. It speaks about the gifts and blessings I miss when I are not attentive. Part of the progress has been a result of good conversations which, at every turn, seem to add something new to the thinking needed to move forward. By looking at what is there, I find what I search for and blossom.

Just off the highway to Rochester Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken within kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tuffs of spring in the darkness.

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me

And nuzzled my left hand.

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is as delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.