Read and reflect on the provided poem: “Now I Become Myself” by May Sarton
Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun! (from http://www.breakoutofthebox.com/now.htm)

What connections can you make between identity, integrity, the undivided heart, and the message of the poem?


This was a pretty cool poem, I really liked it.  The message of the poem is the transformation we go through as we experience life.  The author talks about the changes she has undergone and how she wore many faces meaning it took her awhile to finally realize who she really was and what she really believed.  The other main part that I really enjoyed was how she wrote "in this single hour I live", which really made me reflect on what that actually means.  Anything in the past is gone, and the future is uncertain.  The only thing we can count on and control is the seconds that we live everyday.  


This poem relates to identity and integrity because the author is talking about growing as a person.  Finding your own identity and how this journey is one that is forged through the daily trials and experiences that we go through in our lives.  As we grow older and we hold true to our beliefs about life and the way we treat other people we begin to shape our identity and it is that integrity and the adhering to our ideals which gives us our integrity.  These are related to the undivided heart because our identity and integrity is what will hopefully eventually lead us to have an undivided heart as teachers.  We will devote our whole hearts to teaching and dedicate our lives to becoming the best possible teachers we can become.   The poem talks about finding our identity and developing our integrity but it also talks about living for today.  Living for the moment and not putting too much of your thinking into the future or the past.  It is encouraging us to live in the now and not be overly worried about the past, which can't be changed, and the future, which is not guaranteed to exist.  Since time is so precious whatever you do should be wholeheartedly, and not with a divided heart.