Taking A Walk #12

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

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Taking a walk with Ross Gay

Early this year, I took writing class with Jeannine Ouellette. We wrote a weekly short essay inspired by Ross Gay’s Book of Delights. We were encouraged to find and write about a delight every day, as Gay had done in writing his book.

I have learned a few things while finding and writing about delight. I am reminded of the time in my past when I have kept gratitude lists. I am grounded in the importance of breath and presence. My paying attention muscles, my hope bones, my vision horizon, my imagination machination all work together to make finding delight happen like breath.

The month of June I will walk through a few delights I have noticed and remembered this year.

Bird Smiles

Bird smiles are a delight. Something I have noticed is that birds always seem to be smiling. Whether hummingbirds enjoying a flower’s nectar, cardinals preening in the new-fallen snow, pelicans diving for dinner in crystal blue water, or geese flying south for the winter, they always seem to be smiling.

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Making Art with Friends

I am blessed to have a few long-term friends. (Not a lot, but a few. Another note might explore the hows and whys, the comings and goings, the slings and arrows of those friends who are not beside me today. Navigating intimacy is complex, and gently excavating its contours might help us grow and heal. But right now, I want to bask in delight’s sunlight.)

When I think about my long-term friendships, I think about creating art.

Several years ago, I sat with an artist friend to create two mixed-media collages. (Let me preface this story by saying I am not a visual artist, and the long-term friend who invited me to create together is a talented visual artist.) The collages were to be entered into a competition sponsored by a local gallery focused on collaborative art making. If I remember correctly, the pieces were supposed to focus on a central theme. We chose the theme of “heart,” I think. Sadly, the jurying never occurred.

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Shipwrecks and Coral Reefs

What you don’t know is that life can thrive in wreckage.

A few years ago, we lived in Miami. We had moved there from Cincinnati for my husband’s job. During the more than six years we lived there, we visited the Florida Keys — a twoish hour drive from Miami to Key Largo, the most northern stop — more than 50 times. A staple of our visits to the Keys was spending time on the Great Florida Reef, one of the world’s largest coral reef systems extending through the Straits of Florida. The Florida Current passes through the Straits and the Reef. As reported in that beacon of democratized knowledge, Wikipedia, because of the Current, “Ships began wrecking along the Florida Reef almost as soon as Europeans reached the New World [in the 1600s].”

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Care Packages

Care packages are a delight. On MLK Day in 2009, as part of celebrating Barrack Obama’s inauguration, I participated in a National Day of Service. I moved from DC to Indiana to volunteer in Barrack Obama’s 2008 campaign and was invitedto assemble care packages for service people at RFK Stadium. We assembled care packages at long tables that reminded me of the tables used in my Fellowship Hall during dinners at my childhood church. Hundreds of tables. Hundreds of volunteers. A morning of service. At one point, Michelle, Malia, and Sasha Obama arrived and began assembling care packages with us. They stayed a long time. The girls were young, and seeing them right there alongside their mother was beautiful. I was not close enough to interact with them, but I was close enough to be profoundly moved and inspired. I will never forget their presence and their example.

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