St. Anne and Me - Rough Draft Done

Robert Frost once said, "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader."

If he was right, then December's article will have you weeping. I just captured the rough draft of December's Catholic by Grace diocesan article, and I was wiping away tears. Good tears. Happy tears.

The kind of tears that are appropriate during Advent.

So, coming to a diocesan newspaper near you . . . "St. Anne and Me"

(Artwork by Leonardo Da Vinci)

St. Anne and Me - Rough Draft Done

Mending Wall - For Catholics

(This is one of the first diocesan Catholic by Grace articles published - 2005)

Thoughts on Robert Frost's Mending Wall:

Among my favorite memories of childhood is the memory of sitting at the dinner table and hearing my dad recite poetry. It was usually some dramatic monologue he’d memorized decades earlier while attending his beloved Burr Ridge country school near Hillsboro, Wisconsin. This command performance on the part of my father didn’t happen very often, but when it did, my sister and I would listen with total fascination as the words to “The Highwayman” or “Charge of the Light Brigade” tumbled from our father’s lips.

One of the last conversations I had with my dad was about a poem, only Dad wasn’t trying to entertain me that November afternoon. That day, the poem served as an object lesson. “Do you remember ‘Mending Wall’?” he asked. I said that I did.

As I sat beside his hospital bed, he quoted a few lines, Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun, And makes gaps even two can pass abreast . . . After a long pause, he told me to be the kind of person who tears down walls. It was a strange thing for him to say, considering we had been discussing something totally unrelated in the preceding minutes. I suppose everyone reflects on peculiar conversations like that after a loved one dies. I did, anyway.

Tear down walls. That’s a tough one. Our world is founded on dividing lines. They separate everything from countries to counties. They define what’s mine from what’s yours.

One of the things that delighted me when I became Catholic was that the Church has one deposit of faith, one common ground that is terra firma. I like that because I don’t like conflict, and I’m terrible at diplomacy. Basically, I want everybody to get along, but I’m not very gifted in helping it happen.

I was never a zealous Protestant (even though I was the daughter of a minister). Something has changed now. I believe the fullness of faith is found in the Catholic Church. Suddenly, I’m having a terrible time keeping quiet – even when I’m around my Protestant family and friends. I’ve been over-zealous with many of them, often doing a better job of building walls when I promised to be about the business of tearing them down.

After my father’s death, I took some time to think seriously about Frost’s poem. I thought about how the speaker disagreed with his neighbor who thought fences were a good idea. The speaker casually asks his neighbor why good fences make good neighbors. Shouldn’t we just let the wall fall down? It seems inclined to do it anyway. Just look at all the rocks on the ground. Even nature seems to say fences don’t make good neighbors. But the neighbor just keeps on stacking the rocks on the dividing wall.

I decided that Jesus would probably have to agree with the speaker. Father make them one. That was the Master’s prayer the night He was betrayed (John 17).

I read a portion on ecumenism from Vatican Council II documents the other day, and I had this feeling that, if I could just master what the authors of those documents had to say on this subject, I would have the key to this whole thing. I would know how to defend my faith and simultaneously tear down the wall that divides the Christian world. It sounds like a paradox, and maybe it is. Much of theology sounds paradoxical, too. Death into life. Son of God; Son of Man. The King of Kings born in a stable. A young virgin becomes the Mother of God.

The lesson I need to learn is really a lesson of the heart. Like all theological paradoxes, the key has everything to do with love and very little to do with persuasive argument.

Like the speaker in Robert Frost’s poem, I’m learning I probably shouldn’t challenge my neighbor’s pre-conceived ideas until I figure out how to maintain a loving spirit and keep control of my tongue and my emotions. If I offend my neighbor, it’s worse than picking up rocks and reconstructing the wall. It’s more like adding mortar to the stones and fortifying the wall I wanted to see torn down in the first place. That wall will need more than ground-swell to knock it down. I suspect the Lord will have to send an earthquake to make it budge. I think we’d all prefer the gentle groundswell that comes with love.

*In the years following the publication of this artice, my husband and one daughter have entered the Catholic Church. I'm still learning what it really means to share our precious Church with those I love.

Mending Wall - For Catholics

God's Poetry

(The following CBG article ran in diocesan papers in 2006-2007. That year, I taught in a 7th/8th grade English classroom after the teacher became ill just three weeks into the school year. That same 8th grade class lost a student to suicide in October - when a family friend posed as an admirer of the 8th grade girl and sent messages that devastated Megan Meier to the point of despair. You have probably heard of Megan's story. It has been covered by national news and prompted a change in Missouri State Law regarding online harassment. I began teaching at Megan's school just weeks before the tragedy and remained with those classes until the end of the school year. It was not part of my plan. I wanted to continue writing full time. But I felt that God wanted me there - for a little while - for the sake of the students who mourned the death of their classmate. This article came out of that year's experiences. With prayers and intercession for Megan, her family, and all the lives she touched. Lord, hear our prayer.)

“So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow, glazed with rainwater, beside the white chickens.” American poet William Carlos Williams wrote the poem. I happen to like it, but my husband just laughs and says, “That’s not a poem; it’s a sentence.” John is right, of course; it is a sentence. I am right, too; it is definitely poetry. I guess I just like the simplicity. In my mind, I can see the wheelbarrow as it rests against the chicken coop and the rain bathes the wheelbarrow like an agrarian version of blessed holy water.

To me, it is the ideal of poetry, which should contemplate life, human interaction, and the complexities of our existence, like a pale imitation of faith and the spiritual journey. If that is the purpose of poetry, then “The Red Wheelbarrow” is indeed a poem and not merely a flowery sentence.

As a Christian, I am that red wheelbarrow, overused at times, underused at times, and sometimes used for fun and frolic. Many times, I feel like I am overworked by the Master. I want to cry out, “Can’t I just go back over there by the chicken coop and rest a bit? Lord, aren’t you driving me a bit too hard?”

Then, I sometimes feel abandoned. Like the wheelbarrow, I am propped up beside a chicken coop and left to wait and wait, as the rainwater drizzles down and the chickens peck at the ground. The dog days of summer stretch out before me, and I long for Jesus to take me for a joyride, letting some small child climb aboard, feet dangling as she throws back her head in laughter and the Master takes us both for a spin around the farm. I am happy to be used in this way. And the opportunities seem all too rare.

That is how it has been for me these last two years since my conversion. At times I am at rest – so much time to sit and reflect, time to contemplate God, my faith, and my purpose. But in those moments, I’ve often felt forgotten and even wondered if I would ever be used again for His service.

Other times, like now, I enter seasons in which I feel overworked – rushed about and pushed to the brink of my ability. I look back to the seasons of quiet contemplation, and I remember those days of rest with longing.

When I am most exhausted by seasons of active labor or feel forgotten in seasons of quiet contemplation, I am surprised and delighted when the Master decides that work and rest can wait. I can almost see the Master as He gently calls to me and says let’s do something else for awhile. Let’s have a little fun. I smile as He lifts a small child up and places her in my care, and we go for a joyride.

I hear the child’s laughter, and I am glad that so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow. So much depends on letting God use me in His way and in the timing of His great design. And that is the poetry of belonging to Him and submitting to His perfect will. That is the way my little life is transformed into God’s poetry.

God's Poetry