[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: Compassion
“Compassion is the basis of morality.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
I have been thinking about compassion and morality this week. As sickness and death spread like wildfire. As science gets politicized. As the rule of law is attacked. I have considered fiction, the arts, and walking a moral path. I have explored conscience and letting a moral life speak. I have mused about old love in celebration for friends. (Perhaps old love is the essence of compassion, and as such, morality.) I have sung about beauty as a path to compassion. I have run Goliath on my journey toward compassion. I have explored the Buddhist concept of maitre – loving kindness and compassion.
This is all to say that I have really worked hard on not falling into an abyss of fear, despair, and anger this week. I don’t believe I am alone in searching, in seeking to find, and be, hope and light in our world. If compassion is the basis of morality, as Schopenhauer suggests, then moral beings act compassionately. It is just that simple. Morality sees outside oneself. Morality sides with science in the universe of ideas. Morality creates just and peaceful homes, streets, communities, countries, and world. That is our task right now. Be compassionate.
Read Weekly Wide-Awake July 18, 2020 here.
Read Gratitude Conversations Volume V – Gratitude and Change here.
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About Katie
Born in 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.
