Weekly Wide-Awake: Learning 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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Weekly Wide-Awake: Learning in the Dark

I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.
Barbara Brown Taylor

Needing darkness as much as light is a tough idea to grasp. On the surface, it makes sense. But the actual logistics of darkness—living in, sitting with, and experiencing the totality of darkness—leave my heart racing.

I am unsure what needing darkness—possibly even welcoming darkness—means. Maybe needing darkness means being present to it all and paying attention. Maybe needing darkness means living daily life as a prayer. Maybe needing darkness means an abiding ability to return to our breath again and again. Maybe needing darkness means rejecting binaries and embracing complexity.

How does darkness save our lives? It allows us to be still and know, knowing that quiet falls in the dark. It allows us to fall apart and back together, knowing that the flow from light to dark is life’s flow. It allows us to see with more than just our eyes, knowing that seeing and being seen is one of life’s greatest gifts.

What I Keep Learning

The Peaches Right Now

I have lived in Atlanta for three years. Every spring, I watch the peaches grow in the small orchard in Piedmont Park. Every year, I watch the trees wake up. It starts with a hint of green that becomes a leafy stretch and yawn. The breath of the yawn is the exhale of white blossoms. Over time, tiny peach buds emerge at the season’s behest, shaped like an infant’s tear drops when waking from a deep sleep. Peaches grow from the buds. The peaches woke up this week. It will take time for the tear-shaped buds to become fruit.

Last year, there were no peaches in the orchard. Every indication is there will be peaches this year. Life’s sweetness has been restored. I believe in signs, harbingers, and omens. I believe in perfect timing and have faith in the order of things. I believe in the power of blossoms and the life-saving risk of blooming. I am ready to taste the sweetness that will emerge.

You Belong Here

A random sticker on a large rock outside our house reads, “You Belong Here.” I read it every time I walk up the path to our home, every time I stop to stretch and breathe, and every time I notice the tree that stands across the trail or the wooden statute of wolves that keep watch.

It is important to remember you belong here. You belong here when the noise in your mind becomes too loud. You belong here when relationships ebb and flow. You belong here when things don’t go to plan. You belong here when darkness falls.

The Doing It Wrong Brigade

I read an interview between Rebecca Solnit and Anand Giriharadas in The Ink this week. At one point, Solnit references climate journalist David Roberts’s concept, “the Doing It Wrong Brigade.” She explains, “The people who actually get things done are organizers. And then there are all these disorganizers who are kind of the armchair quarterbacks telling the organizers and the people trying to do things that they’re doing it wrong.” That concept stuck with me as both politically and personally relevant.

I often join the Doing It Wrong Brigade. Let me explain. I find it easy to get stuck in my old ways of doing things and fail to remain open, agile, and flexible. I find it easy to get mired in yesterday and tomorrow, leaving today at the mercy of fear, doubt, and paralysis while staying outside the fray. I find it easy to jump into judgment, comparison, and blame rather than to resist reaction, breathe, and take action.

Getting beyond the Doing It Wrong Brigade takes practice. Armchair quarterbacking is safe. Finger-pointing requires no real risk. Telling someone they are doing it wrong requires no solutions or common ground. It takes courage, creativity, and imagination to leave the Brigade.