The Amen Corner: On how we learn we are seen and loved

[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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The Amen Corner: On how we learn we are seen and loved

I delivered a eulogy at my grandmother’s funeral. Standing in front of those gathered to celebrate and remember her, I recollected that she always made my brother and I — her grandchildren — feel like we hung the moon and the stars. She loved us deeply. She was part of my Amen Corner. An Amen Corner, loosely understood, is a corner in a church reserved for the most fervent praise. The kind of praise that starts in your bones and must be shouted. The kind of praise that is the heart’s exclamation point. The kind of praise that propels prayers directly to God or Allah or Source or Love. I want to suggest there are Amen Corners (or at least I hope there are) throughout and around and within and above the corners of our lives. Let me explain. Think of the people (and may there be many) who get your back. Think of the people who are the cheerleaders at your football game, the ovation at your opera, the lawyer in your court. Your ride or die. Your hill to die on. Your moon and stars. (It occurs to me there is a reciprocity to Amen Corners that I need to think more about.) That is your Amen Corner.

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I remember when I learned I mattered in this world — when I first felt seen and loved. Feeling seen and loved might be the biggest gift we are ever given. Somewhere in the gift of feeling seen and loved is my Amen Corner. Nights reading and endless rides to lessons of all sorts. Homework sessions and proofreading. Jigsaw puzzles and tending the garden. Dance recitals and musical performances. Church. Twenty years of all that taught me I matter. Twenty years of all that taught me, “You are loved. Now don’t be a jerk.” Twenty years of all that taught me the meaning of pay it forward. In a world that does not do a great job of teaching us about love above and beyond transactional relationships, generosity simply for the sake of being generous, and kindness because that is who we must be, I want to nod to a different world. A world of being seen and loved. A world of safety and comfort. A world of Amen Corners.

Thank you for reading about my Amen Corner. May you know your Amen Corner in deep and real ways. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project to think more about Amen Corners and we are seen and loved.