Weekly Wide-Awake #28

[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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Elements. Songs. Surrender.

Dear Friends,

Writing Weekly Wide-Awake is thinking out loud.

As an exercise in examination, reflection, and (hopefully) growth, writing it is my attempt to join with others and model curiosity, generosity, and love through thought, words, and action. Thinking is not a destination. Planning does not accomplish much. Action can feel like running in place. Growth — the product of the thinking, planning, and action — is the sweetness of it all. Writing is absolute sweetness and survival. I pay attention to my journey. I hold it all. I live somewhere between burning it all down and not giving up. Not forgetting to celebrate inches and small bites and every damn time I show up. That is growth. The thinking out loud part is sharing it with others.

Thank you for being here with me.

Love,

Katie

MONDAYS ARE FREE EXERCISES 101—105

Fire. Rain. Earth. Air.

EXERCISE 105: THE BEST WRITING IS REWRITING

toward strangeness

Revise your favorite opening paragraph toward strangeness. Or, choose any piece of writing you’ve composed recently and work up a radical revision. More on that below.

RAIN

Sitting with rain means sitting with clouds. The Cloud Appreciation Society manifesto explains: “We believe that clouds are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul.” In that way, rain and clouds benefit the soul. Rain is cloud song. Rain is mind juice. Rain is earth blood. Rain is liquid promise. Rain is stone caress.

Clouds form, sky opens, rain falls, oceans breathe, rivers rise, lakes fill, puddles pool, children dance, soil thrives, flowers bloom, world turns green, poets poet, singers sing, scientists science, writers write, stone wears, mountains move, glaciers freeze, polar bears swim: the story of rain is the story of birth and rebirth, the earth taking a drink, creation and growth, collective connection and circles, where green meets blue meets yellow: songs and poems celebrate rain as life giving proof of the as if, the not yet, the I am: “Purple Rain”, “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”, “Blame It On The Rain”, “Rainy Days and Sundays Always Get Me Down”.

Read entire post here.

The Song That Wasn’t Just a Song

On Barges and Miracles

The Remembered Sound

I grew up on the Ohio River at Louisville, Kentucky. The River is a mile wide there. There are River sounds. Waterfalls flowing over fossil beds. Riverboat calliopes bouncing tunes like clouds and ice cream. Frogs singing love songs that even I recognize. Children swinging from ropes. There are more River sounds that remind and locate and calm than I can describe. A particular remembered sound is the sound of a barge at night. Our house, where my parents lived for almost 40 years, was close enough to the riverbank to hear barges as they worked their way down stream. The slow churn of presence and motion. The powerful proclamation that some things never change. The familiar hum that immediately meant I was home. Part whale. Part foghorn. Part gear shift. Part torch song.

Read entire post here.

Taking A Walk #30

Taking A Walk with Brené Brown

It’s the part where surrender is the only path to triumph. — Brené Brown

Brené Brown, once again, knocked me off my feet. She published an essay, “Hard Season and Wild Hearts”.

I wade through the weight of possibility and fear, I consider Brown’s words. They introduce me to the idea that I live in Act II — “the long, messy part of all stories where we watch the protagonist try to solve problems without being vulnerable and asking for help. It’s the part where surrender is the only path to triumph.” I am deep in Act II and not sure when it started and when it will end. Vulnerability feels like pouring peroxide on a wound. Surrender was my Word of the Year a few years ago. I still feel queasy thinking about it. I have too much ego not to see it as giving in or giving up. I am in the part where I have to remember to breathe and show up. At church, we started practicing embodied prayer — repeated deep cleansing breaths focused on releasing what separates us from feeling absolutely loved. It is important to feel absolutely loved. Perhaps surrender means believing deep in our bones that we are absolutely loved. As Act II continues, I will keep being present and breathing and reminding myself that I am absolutely loved.

Read entire post here.

Gratitude Conversations #5

Janice Nolen. Roxanne Schroeder-Arce. Lara MacGregor.

Why Gratitude?

In 2017, heartbroken and eyeballs deep in despair, I started searching for things for which to be grateful. I asked myself the question asked by poet Katie Farris

“Why write love poetry in a burning world? To train myself, in the midst of a burning world, to offer poems of love to a burning world.”

I reached out to people who — in the way in which they live — write love poems to our burning world. I cast my net far and wide amongst my heroes — those I knew personally and those who teach us all by their example. I invited artists, philosophers, psychologists, politicians, professors, yogis, writers, clergy, and others into a dialogue about gratitude. I am deeply grateful to those who said yes. Read more about my gratitude project methodology here.

Read entire post here.