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Dreampad

Inspirational Guide for a New Language:
Classroom Poetry Guide
About the Guide | Introduction by Terri Glass | Overview | Contents
Program Introduction | Excerpt from Lesson Plan One

Program Introduction

There is a sacredness in everyday language that has been diminished in our culture. What this sacredness represents is a feeling of connectedness to self and something larger than the self -- the whole of nature. Within the act of writing poetry lies an amazing gift -- it is the gift of metaphor and the gift of the image. These two incredibly important tools stretch our normal perceptions and allow us to see similarities rather than differences, unifying our experience of the world.

Children have an innate ability to feel this sense of connection. You see it in their overflowing energy at play, their love for animals, and their awe of the simplest rock or a star filled sky. The following ten-lesson guidebook gives a framework for children to express their highest truth with poetry, a language that embraces the sacredness of life -- a language of the awakened heart.

The following poem speaks about our need to connect in this larger way:

The Whole

A human being is part
of the Whole --
Called by us:
"The Universe" --
A part limited in time
space.

He experiences himself,
his thoughts and feelings,
As something separated

From the Rest --
A Kind of optical "delusion"

Of Consciousness.

This delusion is a prison

For us, restricting humans to
Personal desires and affection
for a few Persons nearest to us.

Our task
Must be to free ourselves
of the prison

By widening the circle of
compassion to embrace
All living creatures

And the whole of Nature
in all its beauty.

-- Albert Einstein

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