Weekly Wide-Awake: Intrepid

[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: Intrepid

Intrepid — adjective — extremely brave and showing no fear of dangerous situations: a team of intrepid explorers. Synonyms — brave, courageous, dauntless, fearless, valiant.
Cambridge Dictionary

I watch the Olympics eating peanuts on the coach. I contemplate excellence, artistry, and strength. I cry as I wrap my brain around the stories inside bodies that defy limiting thoughts, celebrate human experience, and inspire unbridled imagination. These are the things I do as I attempt to translate the superhuman into my understanding and make it my own. It feels like traveling to a different realm. A realm where joy and discipline speak the same language. A realm where commitment and connection need no explanation. A realm above and beyond life’s noise.

What happen’s there? We explore the as if and the not yet. We feel people in the arena getting it done. We witness lives built on pursuing heart’s desire. We see the dance of world and country, community and individual, competitor and team, part and whole that knows we all exist together. We celebrate together.

The athletes speak directly to me. They teach me how to pay attention to myself, others, and the world. They teach me how to listen to my heart — to what wakes me up in the morning — and spend my time there imagining, building, creating, and serving. They teach me that excellence is ultimately about breath, inches, and seconds — really small things. (I can handle accomplishing really small things. Small things — over time — lead to excellence.) They teach me about bravery. Showing up — every day — is the height of bravery. Brave space is created when we come together and connect. They teach me about truth and possibility — truth and possibility become faith manifest.

What I am Learning

What the Living Do

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,/ say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep/ for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:/ I am living. I remember you. — Marie Howe

The living fall apart and back together.

Falling apart and back together looks like doing the laundry and taking a bath. Falling apart and back together looks like making meals and fixing things that break. Falling apart and back together looks like grieving loss and celebrating gain. The falling apart looks and back together looks like stitching and mending. The falling apart and back together looks like deep breaths again and again and again.

Brave Space

We have the responsibility to examine what we think we know./ We will not be perfect.
This space will not be perfect./ It will not always be what we wish it to be./ But/ It will be our brave space together, and/ We will work on it side by side. — Beth Strano

In a world where some people are sooo wrong and I am usually sooo right, it is hard to examine what I know for sure. (Honestly examining what I know for sure feels fundamental to building brave space in my life.) In a world where safe spaces are often mocked and ridiculed and snuffed out, an invitation to build a brave space may seem quaint or impossible. In a world consumed by exploiting division and hate and cruelty, brave space asks us to wrap our arms around it all and create something else. In a world built upon individualism, brave space ask us to be vulnerable and connect.

Calling Dreams

The right to make my dreams come true,/ I ask, nay, I demand of life. – Georgia Douglas Johnson

We have the right to make our dreams come true. What an amazing, hopeful, optimistic, inspiring thought. It reminds me of the not yet. Writers and thinkers have mused about the not yet a long time. The not yet is the space beyond what is and what has been. The not yet is in our hands.