Living the Comma #9

[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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Love. Magic. The Winter Solstice.

Dear Writer Friends,

“For now just remember how you felt the day you were born: desperate for magic, ready to love.” — Kate Baer, from What Kind of Woman

The Holiday Season is fundamentally about magic and love. I am desperate for magic and ready for love. I am comforted knowing this has been the primordial case — something my soul has been working on in this body and before. Something that I will be working on in the beyond, too. Magic and love, both. Desperate and ready, both. Paying attention to it all to searching for magic and love. Holding the gem up to the light to see the shine. Jumping into the fast river to get carried by the current. Laying next to my someone to feel him breathe. Playing in imagination. Connecting with oneness.

I think about what it means to be born. What if small births happen throughout this life. Birth, not in the sense of being “born again,” but in the sense of new life. New like morning. New like creativity or discovery. New like beginner’s mind. Birth, thought about like this, becomes something we can experience every day. Every day we find magic. Every day we can choose love.

“This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath, the door of a vanished house left ajar.” — Margaret Atwood

I celebrate the Winter Solstice — the moment in the year when the sun slowly emerges. I think about possibility, surrender, and balance. I think about forgiveness, vulnerability, and heart. I think about way, path, and opening. There is something incredibly hopeful about the Winter Solstice. I embrace it as an invitation to the I am, the as if, and the not yet.

There is a deep connection between the Winter solstice and the Holidays of this time of year. Celebrations of birth and peace. Celebrations of connection and kindness. Celebrations of light and miracles. That all seems solsticey in the way they speak of our better angels. Of angels that rest, comfort, and sing. Of angels that understand grace, hope, and awe. Of angels woven in the fabric of our natural impulse to love and be loved.

Our next face-to-face writing session will be Sunday, January 4th. To virtually connect with the group, use this link — https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85095318186.

Let’s consider poet and spoken word artist Andrea Gibson’s “A List of Things I Love” as we write our own lists of things we love as a prompt this week. Read Building a Community of Love , bell hooks writing about a conversation she had with Thich That Hanh. For a writing boost, check out Annie Dillard’s “Write Till You Drop”.

Sending love and peace this holiday season from the heart of the comma,

Katie

Thank you for Living the Comma with me. This community is truly love and light. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project and share your light. It has never been more important.