It's Never Too Late - 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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It’s Never Too Late

“What makes maitre such a different approach is that we are not trying to solve a problem. We are not striving to make pain go away or to become a better person. In fact, we are giving up control altogether and letting concepts and ideals fall apart.”
Pema Chodron

Chapter 5 in Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice For Difficult Times, “It’s Never Too Late,” looks at the concept of maitre and its relationship to times when things fall apart. Chodron defines maitre as developing loving-kindness and an unconditional friendship with ourselves. Chodron explains maitre is based on the idea that, “we can’t attain enlightenment, let alone feel contentment and joy, without seeing who we are and what we do, without seeing our patterns and our habits.”

Practicing loving-kindness with ourselves when things fall apart is a difficult concept to grasp. Rigidly staying in self perceived problem-solving mode – that often goes by the names of fear, worry, resentment, and complaint – instead of seeking quiet and truth ultimately “poisons” the atmosphere of the world. Chodron tells the story of dogs in Nepal who bark all night. She explains, “Discursive thoughts are rather like wild dogs that need taming. Rather than beating them or throwing stones, we tame them with compassion.” In Nepal, that constant noise is called the sem mind. The quiet mind to which we all aspire is the rikpa. Compassion toward ourselves and others is the path to rikpa.

In simply describing maitre, Chodron reflects, “practicing loving-kindness towards ourselves is as good a way as any to start illuminating the darkness of difficult times.” Rikpa right now is about compassion born of presence and breath. When we give up fixing and solving, the light shines through darkness. When we choose compassion, things falls apart and come back together, things fall apart and come back together, things fall apart and come back together. It is never too late for loving-kindness.

Read Gratitude Conversations Volume V – Gratitude and Change here.

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