After digging around a little bit more I found something that works.
To load a python program into a worksheet, one can use
load "filename.py"
assuming your code is stored in the file with name filename.py.
Certainly you may need to specify the path where you save filename.py
To compile and then load a Python or C program to a notebook, one can
cython(open("home/sage/.sage/filename.spyx").read())
here assuming the file with name filename.spyx is located at the
directory home/sage/.sage/
note that filename.spyx can contain code in either C or python.
The SAGE tutorial describes the use of load and the use of
cython(open(...))
was discussed in this group under the title Problem to access C code