[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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Prayer
My days and nights pour through me like complaints
From “Prayer” by Marie Howe
and become a story I forgot to tell.
Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.
I have thought a lot about praying over the years. I have thought about prayer like shoes. I have thought about prayer like the irises in my family’s yard. I have thought about prayer like morning. I have thought about prayer like invention. In each case, prayer is active, personal, and alive.
Howe’s rendering of prayer makes me think of my grandfather. Of a leather L-Z-Boy recliner and the smell of pipe tobacco. Of bass tone lullabies and heartbeats. Of rest and comfort. Of there being nothing more important than simply falling asleep. I sat in his lap listening, for hours, listening and breathing, listening and breathing.
Prayer, in this context, is a meditation on presence, stillness and knowing. All of this I understood as a child. All of this I hold close to my heart as an adult. There is a moment of intercession in this poem that particularly rings true. Howe proclaims, “Help me.” She is exercising her direct relationship with God. She is asking God for help toward stillness and knowing. Toward being present in the chair. That is active, personal, and living prayer.
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.
