Even in the Dark

[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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To be broken is no reason to see all things as broken. – Mark Nepo

We are not yet.

Light when darkness comes. Hope when we are desperate. Faith when we are afraid. Wholeness when we are broken. This makes me think of the idea that we are not yet. It is possible to see light in dark, hope in desperation, faith in fear, wholeness in being broken because we are always becoming: we are not yet.

If we are always growing and becoming, then a current negative condition is always temporary.

We are always a change of mind, a deep breath, a shift of attention, a change of direction, or a simple decision away from holding our pain, our joy, and everything in between close and letting it go. Deeper then just getting over, putting the pieces back together, pushing the rock up the hill, diving in head first, or even bandaging our wounds, I am talking about radical healing that happens when we hold experience.

Deep in the weeds of existential phenomenology there is a concept called bracketing.

In bracketing, we strip away judgment, unpack meanings, define value, and peel back layers of experience. This is helpful for deeply understanding all experiences, both the “good” and the “bad.” This is the holding close and letting go. This is the inhale and the exhale. This is the framing and reframing. Bracketing is the heart of making peace with the fact that we are not yet. Bracketing is about what we learn when we imagine, create, share, invent, and build.

The not yet that embraces change, growth and evolution, is in a state of constant bracketing.

Bracketing is the not yet’s way of sense making. Bracketing weaves a fabric of experience. We are never stuck. We are never powerless. Concepts like truth, certainty and self live in a beautiful dance. In that dance, we are never truly in the dark.

https://kitt.global/march-24-even-in-the-dark-mark-nepo-the-book-of-awakening/