The Creator's Cycle - Katie Steedly

[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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The Creator’s Cycle

We survive . . . and then we die. – Ojibway Elder

It is almost Spring and we are in the heart of Lent. It is timely to be thinking about the cycle of life. I am going to respond below to the questions Mark Nepo asks in today’s daily reflection. Perhaps you will want to answer these questions in your own way, too.

What is your greatest fear about dying?

My greatest fear about dying is that I will die without being able to say I left the world a better place than I found it. This might seem like a huge aspiration, a goal set up to fail, but I don’t think it is. Leaving the world better than I found it starts with a daily personal choice toward love. Leaving the world better than I found it means walking my path and serving others. Leaving the world better than I found it acknowledges the ashes to ashes, dust to dust, cyclical nature of life that is an invitation to use my energy, every day, toward a better world.

What is your greatest fear about living?

My greatest fear about living is that I will experience a personal health spiral that will not allow my quality of life to continue to be what I would like it to be. This fear is closely followed by a fear of living in a world in which the hate we currently experience takes hold in even more horrendous and painful ways and children continue to learn hate and cruelty. (I put my quality of life fear first because it feels a bit more manageable.)

Do these fears have anything in common?

Yes. If I am sick, I can not do my work. If I can not do my work, I can not leave the world better than I found it. Wait a minute. That is a cop out. Of course I can do my work sick or not. It just gets a bit more complicated. Doing my work needs to happen sick or well, happy or sad, energized or beat. When I am busy. When I am lazy. When the laundry basket is empty or when it is full. When the work is fun and when it is not.

How would you shape your life if you did not have any of these fears?

I would frame each day with my priorities, clearly placing my health and work first. Work, by this definition, does not separate the personal from the professional. The personal and professional dance together to be my real work. This means I stay on top of my health. I write during my writing time. I keep in touch with family and friends. I pursue new work with absolute fierce energy. I finish the work I start.

What if you shaped your life in this way anyway?

I have already started to do this, but I need to keep chiseling out stone to find my angel. The more successful I am at shaping life in a way that health and work are front and center, the better shot I have at leaving the world a better place.

https://kitt.global/march-10-the-creators-cycle-mark-nepo-the-book-of-awakening/