Weekly Wide-Awake: Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower

[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: Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell.
From Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower“

We are not alone in our darkness. We all experience it. It is part of life’s falling apart and coming back together. We have all come so far. That thought comforts me. I am comforted in the way a hug comforts. I am comforted in the way hearing and being heard, and seeing and being seen comforts. I am comforted in the way where two or more are gathered, there is love.

We all have a song. We live the lyrics. We live the melody. We live the rhythm. Learning to sing — in whatever way your song manifests — is the ultimate act of vulnerability and strength and love. To sing, we must choose an alchemy of grace and healing. We must turn our darkness into our song and sing. We must turn our darkness into our light and shine. We must turn our darkness into a bell tower and ring.

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