This book is a collection of philosophical, poetic and practical essays that question the dominant image of education we have all inherited, and provides encouragement, commiserations and examples of a more ecologically sound understanding of the living disciplines of knowledge entrusted to teachers and students in school.

Introduction: "Why Study for a Future we Won’t Have?" – "Sacrificing Their Futures to Protect Ours" – Meanwhile Saints Graze on the Begonias – A Fragment from 2009, Just Before I’d First Read Fredrick Winslow Taylor – Sometimes It Takes, Sometimes It Doesn’t – An Upwell Near Father’s Day – To Know the World, We Have to Love It – "High Stakes": On the Trail of a Red Herring – A Pedagogical Journal Entry from 2010 on a Persistent Analogy – "Owning Up to Being an Animal": On the Ecological Virtues of Composure – The More Intense the Practice, the More Intense the Demons – Thoughts on The Return of Yesterday’s War – I Hear Tell It’s Happening Again, December 2023 and March 2022 – "A Hubris Hiding from its Nemesis": Why Does the Affirmation of Diversity Tend Toward the Proliferation of Multiple Identities, and to What Consequence? – "Please Spare Me" – Really Clear Politics: The Algorithms of Self-Reflection – "Poisoning the Blood of Our Country" – Meeting an Old Acquaintance – Beet Juice – I Am Not a Buddhist – Cautionary yet Hopeful Thoughts on "Mindfulness Practices" in Schools – On Bob Dylan’s Murder and How Interpretation Takes Time – "We Arrive, As It Were, Too Late" – How to Love Black Snow – "It Will Startle You": Thoughts on a Pedagogical Conspiracy of Birds – "Come Fluttering off the Spine" – "Engage-Abandon" – What Should I Tell Them? – "The … Readiness … To Be ‘All Ears’ " – It Might Just be Ravens Writing in Mid-Air – I’m Gonna Shine Out in the Wild Kindness – "Asleep in My Sunshine Chair" – Quickening, Patience, Suffering – "Tears Run Down Heaven’s Gaunt Face" – Baby’s Blue. See Through – An Obituary at the Very Last Minute – Two Arced Fishes and a Raven’s Eye: Thoughts on Selfies, Pandemics, and a Door, Ajar – Being at the Trembling – Sunflowers, Coyote, and Five Red Hens – "Things Reveal Themselves Passing Away" – Early Morning Blues – The Unfinished Work of "Getting Back to Normal" – To be Dying under Their Wings Is a Weird Miracle – You are Walking Near Your True Home – "A Dark Saying": On Temporarily Regaining a Measure of Well-Being – An Ode to 215 Babies Tossed Away Unmarked – An Early Childhood Education – How Shall You Be Called? – On Teaching Punctuation – "To Lend Ourselves to Its Life": On Early Childhood Literacy and Other Early Matters – "We Do Know What to Do" – From a Town by the Spring – "Nobody Understood Why I Should be Grieving" – As the Warming Chills – It’s February. It Won’t Last – Falling Silent –Curls and Tucks – "A Joyous and Frightening Shock" – "Grief is Not a Permanent State": The Last Six Chapters of Speaking with a Boneless Tongue (1992) – References.