Talking Fast

[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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Live loud enough in your heart and there is no need to speak.

– Mark Nepo

Living Out Loud

Living out loud is about building, not tearing down. Living out loud is about abundance, not scarcity. Living out loud is big, not small. Living out loud is about seeking to understand rather than to be understood. Living out loud does not require words, rather it speaking the language of your heart. We know the language of the heart. It is clear and honest and kind. It is vulnerable and courageous.

Daemons

Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk on nurturing creativity discusses the classical notion of daemons visiting people and inspiring profound moments of soul shaking clarity: the idea being that creativity is not the burden of the individual soul as asserted by Renaissance thinkers, but rather the product of daemons that visit all of us. What if we have daemons that inspire us to live out loud? What if we could call upon them? What if they actually walked beside us and inside us and helped us to create? What is the relationship between our daemons and the spark of Divine that lives in each of us? Could we focus our daemons on inspiring us to solve issues like violence, famine, and war?

The Inhale and the Exhale

Living out loud is about the inhale and the exhale. There is an inhale and an exhale to the writing process. Time to read, research, and think. Time to write, tell, and share. Timing is a part of living out loud, too. Time to be still. Time to see. Time to think. Time to listen. Time to speak. Time to walk. Time to run.

Creating and Inventing and Imagining

One of my favorite things discussed by philosopher Maxine Greene is the idea that we can all do philosophy. Living out loud is doing philosophy. Simply understood, it means living in ways that are aligned with our ethical compass, creative energy, and highest thought. If we are scientists, we must engage in science. If we are preachers, we must preach. If we are artists, we must create art. In this light, philosophy manifests in action, and leads to a more compassionate and just world. Greene views the arts as a primary way to do philosophy. The heart of doing philosophy is about imagination and creativity. Greene uses the Wallace Stevens poem “The Man with the Blue Guitar” to illustrate the idea that we are only bound by a world in which we can not imagine. We are called to be amazed by the shape we take when shape has been destroyed. That is living out loud.