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I've been thinking a lot about "participation" in terms of the 'state of grace' literacy metaphor.  In class, we talked about the way our early experiences of literacy in the home: our exposure (or not) to a variety of texts, whether our parents encouraged our development of a literary "aesthetic," influence our ability to participate and engage with written texts.  I think part of developing literacy as a state of grace is developing an appreciation for the aesthetic value of writing.   That is, there is a certain quality of literacy that allows us to appreciate the way an writer's command of language can not only convey information, but can help us to reframe our thinking by eliciting certain emotional responses.  Good writing, I think, provokes us  to reimagine our ideas.  In that way, it enables the sort of "emancipatory" thinking Freire suggests.  However, to be affected in this way by a written text, readers must have the type of literacy that allows them not only to interpret text as information, but to see where a writer is asserting her creativity.  Reading in this way is participatory, because readers engage with the creative process of writing, and in the process of allowing a text to be a springboard for creative and critical thinking.  The question for me is how we can teach this type of literacy in a way that is more broadly accessible.