Quotes, poems & other forms of insight

Hi all!

Just received a posting from a facilitation group that included the “Actor’s Vow”, with the opening: “In my mind, one of the most powerful gifts a facilitator brings to a group is his/her willingness to be transparent about what they see and feel going on in their group. This, and a willingness to make mistakes with the good intention of helping everyone move forward together. In this spirit I offer you The Actors’ Vow, a short poem passed on to me by my friend and co-facilitator of the Facilitator's Studio, Rachael West. While this vow is meant for actors, it seems to me to be perfectly appropriate for facilitators, leaders, and well, just about anyone with the desire to live life to the fullest.”

Here it is:

The Actors’ Vow

I will take my rightful place on the stage
And I will be myself.

I am not a cosmic orphan
I have no reason to be timid.

I will respond as I feel; awkwardly, vulgarly,
But respond.

I will have my throat open.
I will have my heart open.
I will be vulnerable.

I may have anything or everything the world
Has to offer, but the thing
I need most, and want most, is to be myself.

I will admit rejection, admit pain, admit
Shame, admit outrage, admit anything and
Everything that happens to me.

The best and most human parts of me are
Those I have inhabited and hidden from
The world.

I will work on it.
I will raise my voice.
I will be heard.

Mary Alice

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Replies to This Conversation

Permalink Reply by Ria Baeck on January 9, 2012 at 5:08am

A nice poem on kindness, via Tenneson and Teresa.

From American / Palestinian poet Naomi Shihab Nye.

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes any sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and send you out in the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

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Permalink Reply by Mary Alice Arthur on October 12, 2012 at 4:19pm

Excerpt from: What I must tell myself

Watching the geese
Go south I find
That
Even in silence
And even in stillness
And even in my home
Alone
Without a thought
Or a movement
I am part
Of a great migration
That will take me to another place.

And though all the things I love
May pass away and
The great family of things and people
I have made around me
Will see me go,
I feel them living in me
Like a great gathering
Ready to reach a greater home.

When one thing dies all things
Die together, and must live again
In a different way,
When one thing
Is missing everything is missing,
And must be found again
In a new whole
And everything wants to go home
And the geese travelling south
Are like the shadow of my breath
Flying into the darkness
On great heart-beats
To an unknown land where I belong.

This morning they have
Found me,
Full of faith,
Like a blind child,
Nestled in their feathers,
Following the great coast of the wind
To a home I cannot see.

-- David Whyte

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Permalink Reply by Mary Alice Arthur on December 3, 2012 at 5:18pm

A harvesting of poems from the book "Teaching With Fire". Teachers select their favourite poems and tell why.

Attachments:

Teaching with Fire - poems.docx, 104 KB

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Permalink Reply by Ria Baeck on December 5, 2012 at 10:29am

...........

I'm preparing for a small convening this week and searching for a poem to use as a start-point. Sparked my curiosity - what are the favourite poems or quotes you use as start-points or after check-outs? Would love to discover them and add to the harvest on the ning (http://artofhosting.ning.com/forum/topics/great-and-inspiring-poems...)

With gratitude,

Amanda

--------------

There are tons of books, but this site has the classics…

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/Index.html

Chris

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Hi Amanda.

With awareness that the moment has passed for you, there are two books I use often.

Teaching with Fire

Leading from Within

Both are compilations that have the poem, and, the reason why the person who contributed it, did so.

Enjoy peeking around in these. Lots of favorites there for me.

Tenneson

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Permalink Reply by Amanda Fenton on March 15, 2013 at 1:44am

Another little poem shared on the web that I cam across today:

If a sadness 

Rises in front of you, 
Larger than any you have ever seen; 
If an anxiety, like light and cloud shadows, 
Moves over your hands and everything you do. 
You must realize that something is happening to you, 
That life has not forgotten you, 
That it holds you in his hand And will not let you fall. 
~ Rilke

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Permalink Reply by Amanda Fenton on March 21, 2013 at 10:56pm

Another lovely one:

Wild Geese

by Mary Oliver

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.