Weekly Wide-Awake #63

[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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Weekly Wide-Awake #63

Grasshoppers. Projects. Inaugural Poetry. Col. Liesl Carter.

Who made the world?/ Who made the swan, and the black bear?/ Who made the grasshopper?/ This grasshopper, I mean—/ the one who has flung herself out of the grass,/ the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,/ who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-/ who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes./ Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face./ Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away./ I don’t know exactly what a prayer is./ I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down/ into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,/ how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,/ which is what I have been doing all day./ Tell me, what else should I have done/ Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?/ Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life? — Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”

Summer is a time to make and fling and eat and move and gaze and lift and snap and open and float and fall and kneel and wash and bless and stroll and idle. Summer is swans and black bears and grasshoppers.

Summer is about prayer. I guess every season is about prayer, like every season is about paying attention and telling and planning. If our lives are prayers, then paying attention and telling and planning are prayers.

“Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?” That makes it all wild and precious. That makes it all wide and open. That makes it all thirsty and hungry. There is beauty in finitude. The breath’s bow. The awesome exhale. The sacred blink. The holy noticing.

“VLADIMIR: It’s the start that’s difficult. ESTRAGON: You can start from anything. VLADIMIR: Yes, but you have to decide. ESTRAGON: True.” ― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Dear Writer Friends,

This week, I am thinking about reasons not to start a project. Any project. A big project. A medium project. A small project. A project riddled in conflict and weight that I jump and swerve to avoid. A light and fluffy project that is perpetually bottom listed. An overwhelming project that has been comfortably fermenting like fine wine. A wake-you-up-in-the middle-of-the-night project that makes my palms sweat, but not sweat enough to simply just do it. This is not about procrastination or fear or failure or pain or inertia. This is about putting on the shoes and taking the first step. This is about sitting down and circular breathing — in through the nose and out through the mouth — and quieting the monkey mind. This is about the beauty of the wait and the decision and the action.

What decisions are you waiting to make, to create, to build, to tend, to cherish? What decisions rise to the level of mostly ignoring, burying in the sand, looking away, pinning on a cloud of impossibility? What decisions weigh, tire, break, and churn? What would it look to lift the pen — and/or fingers — and write? What would it feel like to head toward figuring it out? What would it look like to leave life’s park bench and stoke the fire of imagination and decide and move?

Read entire post here.

Poetry Might Save Us Now

Considering Inaugural Poetry

Presidential Inaugural Poetry is a balm in times of pain, a meditation on our best selves, and a vision toward truth and beauty. It reminds us that our words elevate hearts and minds and actions. It reminds us that our collective wounds can be beautifully healed. It reminds us of inspiration and imagination and interdependence. I hunger for moral leadership. I thirst for the more perfect union aspired to and written about for more than two centuries. I crave what I feel when I read Inaugural Poems — the thought that we might not only survive, but thrive.

Read Inaugural Poetry here.

Loves Opens Up

A Gratitude Conversation with Col. Liesl Carter

I have known Col. Liesl Carter my entire life. Her family is my family. She has always been a guiding light since we played in her backyard as children. Following the decorated path of her grandfather and father, she wanted to serve. She wanted to be a pilot and became one, earning her pilots license as a teenager. Just flying planes was not enough. She graduated from the United States Air Force Academy. While being a mother, wife, and leader she rose to the level of Colonel in the United States Airforce. Read more about Liesl’s professional profile here.

I celebrate Liesl. Her service and friendship. Her leadership and example. Her heart and humor. It has been too long since we sat together and shared a meal. (Our mothers, of course, still connect regularly.) Right now, when the role of women in the military (and society) is being attacked — their contribution being minimalized — I want to tell her story. I want to remind us all. I am grateful.

Read entire conversation here.

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