Staying Porous

[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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Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. – Rainer Maria Rilke

In this world of hard edges, steep climbs, and blind turns, staying porous may seem impossible. Stamping out the soft parts of our heart can seem like a safe strategy. Our defense mechanisms kick in before we even know it. It can feel like staying porous comes at too great a cost. I want to suggest that is not true. The real cost is in hardening to life, closing ourselves off, and losing connection with others.

Staying porous allows us to breathe.

By definition, porous things breathe. Water flows through. Air flows through. Opening and closing happen. Our ability to breathe, especially in moments when we get kicked in the gut, can be the difference between being built up or being broken. Our ability to breathe can allow us to bend in ways that show strength and patience. Our ability to breathe can mean survival in a world where we struggle for the very oxygen of life.

Staying porous allows us to create.

Creativity is how I connect. Writing is the primary way I create. Creativity is porous as ideas move through imagination and effort toward something beautifully expressive. Creativity is porous as something new comes from and through and between something else. Creativity is porous in that it is open and vulnerable and abundant. Creativity is porous in that it revels in the questions rather than the answers.

Staying porous allows us to grow.

When we are porous we are sponges. We are porous when we are doors. We are porous when we are soil. We soak it in. We flow. We shed. We move. We change. We adapt. We are not rigid. Staying porous allows us to grow. Growing allows us to live.

https://kitt.global/june-15-staying-porous-mark-nepo-the-book-of-awakening/