Weekly Wide-Awake #50

[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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What if? Singing. The Good. Roots.

Living the Comma #22

Dear Writer Friends,

Our minister recently asked the question, “What if?” To provide a little context, she asked it of our church responding to the questions of our times. Her message made me think of a few questions myself. What if curiosity is a superpower? What if our life is one big, huge, beautiful prayer? What if, as Maxine Greene suggests, imagination makes empathy possible? What if we have the power we seek? What if falling apart is a new beginning — a falling together, a resurrection? What if we are built for this exact time? If all that is true. Deep Breath. Now what? What then? What’s next?

She suggested that question — “What if?” — fundamentally asks us to reflect on how we are living the comma. Let me explain my take on living the comma. Our VHC Writing Group decided to name itself Living the Comma when we began in August of 2025. Living the Comma is a nod to the United Church of Christ, Virginia Highland Church’s denomination’s phrase, “Never place a period where God has placed a comma.” Within that, God is still speaking. The idea, as I have come to understand it, is that a spiritual path is quiet and loud and imperfect and wise and inclusive and holy and constant and unfolding and blessed with questions not answers and revealed in pauses not periods.

Then what is the work of our Living the Comma Writing Group? What if the work is to see one another? What if the work is to find and strengthen our voice? What if the work is to develop our craft? What if the work is to share our stories? What if the work is to build community? What if the work is a little of all that, connected by commas?

Read entire post here.

MONDAYS ARE FREE EXERCISES 201-205

EXERCISE 204: WRITE TO SOMEONE PATERNAL

your father or a father figure

Write a letter to your father or a father figure.

When You Teach Someone To Sing

When you teach someone to sing — learning notes and songs— you form a forever bond. When you teach someone to sing — celebrating harmony and dissonance — you hear beauty in complexity. When you teach someone to sing — in choirs, with bands, and solo — you build joy. When you teach someone to sing — strengthening the muscles in our throats — you create a song. When you teach someone to sing — crossing language’s boundaries — you help them explore. When you teach someone to sing — about places they may not visit and in languages they may not speak — you foster understanding. When you teach someone to sing — and play instruments — you build experimentation’s connective tissue. When you teach someone to sing — hymns, anthems, and lullabies — you model oneness and belonging. When you teach someone to sing — around bon fires, in churches, and in living rooms — you change the world.

Read the entire post here.

Spit and Spaghetti #14

Common Good

What Good Is Gratitude?

As an applied researcher focused on arts-based learning for a long time, I have followed our understanding of the neuroscientific implications of creativity. From increasing brain neuroplasticity, to developing positive personality traits, to improving cognition, studying creativity has been an important throughline of my work. My research has connected creativity and gratitude. Over the last decade, I have conducted “gratitude conversations” with more than 20 people — including Best-selling Authors, Pulitzer Prize Winners, Professors, Researchers, Yogis, Military, Business Leaders, and others.

The working thesis for this piece is that the distance between revenge, forgiveness, creativity, and gratitude is not long. Gratitude as fruit of the spirit. Gratitude as informal virtue. The piece will incorporate interviews, source work, philosophy, and “hard science” to explore gratitude’s depth and contours. The piece fits into Common Good’s pages as it will explore research about the mental and emotional benefits of gratitude, investigate the way in which brain science interacts with gratitude, and make the case for everyday gratitude.

Read entire post here.

Taking A Walk #4

“To be grounded in who we are today, we must first remember our roots”

“To be grounded in who we are today, we must first remember our roots.” Lisette Correa, Arrrtaddict

I have lived all over the Unites States. Big and small cities. College towns. North, south, east, and west. I have found pockets of cool in each place. Moving has strengthened my love for my roots. Just as e.e. cummings celebrates both the root and the bud, my roots connect my past, present, and future. Just as plants and trees survive by the strength of their roots, so do people. Our roots are our story. Our stories connect. In this way, remembering is celebration. In this way, we are grounded. In this way, we thrive.

Arrtaddict makes sense. Sense in the way it all comes back to our roots. Let me explain. I believe we are the sum of our experiences. All of them. Our understanding of home. Our appreciation of culture. Our ability to create. Our connection with one another and our world. Our capacity to serve. That deep in our bones knowing that allows stillness and gratitude. I could go on and on about why our roots matter.

This mural makes me want to ask questions. It makes me wish I had talked with my grandparents more about their roots. It makes me understand the value of spending real time together — learning card games, making recipes from the church cook book, watching home movies, having my hair permed, working in the garden, going to the Derby, memorizing prayers in German. It makes me wish I could hunt down the polaroid pictures I took at every turn for many years. It makes me wish I had kept a journal throughout it all. I am only as grounded as I am in touch with all that.

Read entire post here.

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