Wisdom Through Awful Grace

[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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Wisdom Through Awful Grace

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. —Aeschylus

Indianapolis was my first grown-up city. Indianapolis was the first place I lived after I graduated from college. Indianapolis was the first place I rented my own apartment. I was an AmeriCorps member and high school drama teacher in Indianapolis, too.

Several blocks from where I served in AmeriCorps stands the Landmark for Peace, a memorial sculpture at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park. The memorial sculpture was built in the park where Robert Kennedy announced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s death to people gathered in Indianapolis that night. He had planned to deliver a campaign stump speech calling for economic justice, but that changed upon learning of King’s assassination. Robert F. Kennedy’s speech in Indianapolis spoke of the need for racial understanding and peace. He pleaded that violence not be the response to the tragedy of King’s death. Riots had erupted in several cities while Indianapolis remained peaceful.

Kennedy invoked the words of Aeschylus toward the middle of his speech. He then went on to state:

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

Those words are particularly important at this moment. There is an urgency and a need for action. People are dying. Masked thugs terrorize our neighborhoods. The rule of law collapses under the weight of corruption. The threat of war threatens civilization itself. We must ask where are the love and wisdom and compassion of which Kennedy spoke? When will enough pain have dropped on our hearts to stop cruelty and indifference? We have a choice. We have a choice. We have a choice.

This is a time to reflect upon the state of peace and love in our world and act accordingly. We must build the beloved community envisioned by King. Hand in hand. Our politics must be a politics of love. This is a time to let the pain so many people feel form a river of tears to carry us from chaos to peace. We must stay human in the face of those who steal humanity. Our hearts must be graceful, soft, and strong.