[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
Enter your email here to receive Weekly Wide-Awake
back
The Heart has many Doors
The Heart has many Doors -/ I can but knock -/ For any sweet “Come in”/ Impelled to hark -/ Not saddened by repulse,/ Repast to me/ That somewhere, there exists,/ Supremacy –
Emily Dickinson
Knock and the door will open. Seek and you will find. Ask and an answer will be found. Supremacy happens in the knocking, seeking, and asking. Supremacy is love. Love happens in the space between knocks, quests, and questions. Love is beginning and ending, starting and stopping, birth and death, and everything in between. Love happens in each one of our 800 tries. Love is a verb. Love is do.
The fact that there are many doors to the Heart comforts me. It makes knocking hopeful and exciting, and maybe even joyful. Lots of doors, options, opportunities, horizons, paces, stories, roads. Many doors makes me think of curiosity and discovery. Many doors makes me think of magic and miracles. Many doors makes me think of the not yet, the as if, of doing and becoming.
When I think of Heart as love, I get even more hopeful. I start to think about community, relationships, justice, and peace. We can all open doors. We can all knock, and knock, and knock, and knock until we hear the sweet “Come in.” I imagine the sweet “Come in” will sound like the protection of generations and our earth. I imagine the sweet “Come in” will taste like everyone having enough to eat. I imagine the sweet “Come in” will feel like safety for all. I imagine the sweet “Come in” will be love in action.
One Reply to “The Heart has many Doors”
Leave a Reply
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.
Start where you are. “Love is a verb. Love is do”. We are all somewhere. Our’do’ is waiting for us to begin.