[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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Worship
Ernest Hemingway wrote, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast.” I feel the same way about Meeting; it is a movable feast of the spirit.
Robert Lawrence Smith
The second chapter in Robert Lawrence Smith’s, A Quaker Book of Wisdom, is entitled “Worship.” Quaker worship services are called, “meetings” and center on silence. At traditional Quaker meetings, “friends” (church members) sit in silence until moved to speak. Smith asserts there is large variety in today’s Quaker meetings; but in general, silence is a center piece of worship as friends seek “continual revelation” of truth and to hear their still small voice.
Continual Revelation
If worship is integral to continual revelation, and continual revelation is about learning and understanding our truth, I want worship right now. I want want worship in the most heart expanding, earth shaking, truth finding, love centered way. Right now. I want worship that stops violence, creates justice, heals sickness and wounds, builds community, feeds all people with all we need, protects that earth, and considers all generations as the work of our hands. That is not too much to ask.
Worship Is All Around Us
When understood like that – worship toward the continual revelation of our truth – worship is all around us. In seeking first to understand rather than be understood. In silence and in protest. In wearing a mask and in social distancing. In listening to and supporting people of color. In supporting people of different sexual orientations. In supporting people of different beliefs. In financially contributing to organizations that support more just, safe, strong, and smart communities. In voting and supporting the right to vote. Worship that is about wading in the water and getting to the other side. That is all worship.
About Katie
From Louisville. Live in Atlanta. Curious by nature. Researcher by education. Writer by practice. Grateful heart by desire.
Buy the Book!
The Stage Is On Fire, a memoir about hope and change, reasons for voyaging, and dreams burning down can be purchased on Amazon.
