Wednesday, January 27, 2010
PIGS CAN'T SAY PLEASE

Native of Franklinton, Louisiana, and resides New Iberia, Louisiana and Sewanee, Tennessee, on the campus of the University of the South. Ordained Episcopal deacon, former archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, and former director of Solomon House Outreach Center Mission in New Iberia, LA.
My regular blog posts are at A Word's Worth. There you may read about my latest publications, essays on various topics, such as Cajun Louisiana and the Cumberland Plateau, and book reviews, and commentaries about the life of the spirit. Poems excerpted from my chapbooks, and portions of my sermons over the years are included also.
Monday, January 25, 2010
“A WALK ON WATER”…Don Thornton


Native of Franklinton, Louisiana, and resides New Iberia, Louisiana and Sewanee, Tennessee, on the campus of the University of the South. Ordained Episcopal deacon, former archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, and former director of Solomon House Outreach Center Mission in New Iberia, LA.
My regular blog posts are at A Word's Worth. There you may read about my latest publications, essays on various topics, such as Cajun Louisiana and the Cumberland Plateau, and book reviews, and commentaries about the life of the spirit. Poems excerpted from my chapbooks, and portions of my sermons over the years are included also.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
THE CLAIM OF CRITTERS
Every time I see an armadillo, I think about my eldest daughter Stephanie. At three years old, she had begun to love animals, particularly Beatrix Potter’s illustrations of critters. We took her for a drive to a Texaco lease site near Graham, Texas where my former spouse worked, and she spotted this huge armadillo running to and fro near a cluster of mesquite trees. The critter halted in front of our Valiant, and Stephanie got out to “pet it,” she said. Her favorite illustration by Beatrix Potter was that of Appley Dapply, the mouse, and she took one look at the armadillo, exclaiming, “Mama look at the big rat.”

Native of Franklinton, Louisiana, and resides New Iberia, Louisiana and Sewanee, Tennessee, on the campus of the University of the South. Ordained Episcopal deacon, former archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, and former director of Solomon House Outreach Center Mission in New Iberia, LA.
My regular blog posts are at A Word's Worth. There you may read about my latest publications, essays on various topics, such as Cajun Louisiana and the Cumberland Plateau, and book reviews, and commentaries about the life of the spirit. Poems excerpted from my chapbooks, and portions of my sermons over the years are included also.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
AN EVENING OF POETRY AND PERFORMANCE IN NEW IBERIA

Native of Franklinton, Louisiana, and resides New Iberia, Louisiana and Sewanee, Tennessee, on the campus of the University of the South. Ordained Episcopal deacon, former archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, and former director of Solomon House Outreach Center Mission in New Iberia, LA.
My regular blog posts are at A Word's Worth. There you may read about my latest publications, essays on various topics, such as Cajun Louisiana and the Cumberland Plateau, and book reviews, and commentaries about the life of the spirit. Poems excerpted from my chapbooks, and portions of my sermons over the years are included also.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
UPDATE ON “THE LITTLE ONES OF HAITI"
Dorothy described the scene where she and Poutchino were trapped in a moving passage of the e-mail: “Generators lit the parking lot,” she reported. “It seemed like a scene from hell with all the moans and screams and cries for help, and the ground was covered with injured people and blood. People panicked at every aftershock. Burns were the worst injuries but thankfully few…A rumor started that a tsunami was coming and we had to leave…
“Poutchino definitely had meningitis but there was no more infection by the time the CSF was tested. Considering the chaos at the hospital, we brought him home with us. His abdominal pain is completely gone. He can eat again. I give him l gram of ceftriaxone every 12 hours, hoping to keep the meningitis from returning. Infection could be hiding in his shunt. An operation to remove the shunt would be difficult to get now…
“Phones are starting to work again but not yet normally. Helicopters are flying overhead all the time, and small planes. The U.S. military is running the airport now. Civilian flights are all canceled. UN police are in charge of security. Not much is seen of Haitian police. I don’t know why. I expect, hope, that relief supplies will come in soon. Our biggest concerns at the moment are cooking fuel and water…
“We all are fighting shock, trying not to be overwhelmed with grief and horror. I am trying to plan without being overwhelmed. Prayers and praises really work to keep spirit up. Remembering what God has already done in protecting and providing for us reassures me that he will continue to provide for our needs…
“I have heard that maybe 100,000 people died. I can believe it, based on what I have seen…We need news from outside but please keep e-mails strictly to news. We have to use our precious supplies of gasoline to get online. Since we have had no places to cash checks I have to work with Christian Light Foundation to find a way to get money to us. Please pray for all of us in Haiti and for all those sending and bringing help.”
Dorothy listed an address for donations to Christian Light Foundation, Inc., P. O. Box 23881, Jacksonville FL 32241-3881 with memo: For D. Pearce, Haiti.

Native of Franklinton, Louisiana, and resides New Iberia, Louisiana and Sewanee, Tennessee, on the campus of the University of the South. Ordained Episcopal deacon, former archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, and former director of Solomon House Outreach Center Mission in New Iberia, LA.
My regular blog posts are at A Word's Worth. There you may read about my latest publications, essays on various topics, such as Cajun Louisiana and the Cumberland Plateau, and book reviews, and commentaries about the life of the spirit. Poems excerpted from my chapbooks, and portions of my sermons over the years are included also.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
REVISITING CARMEL
This is only a quick sketch about this uncompromised poet who loved the rocky Pacific coast. His poetry resonates with me and inspired me to write a minimalist poem when we visited Point Lobos on that wonderful trip about which Kimberly and I reminisced at Christmas. The poem is taken from my chapbook, SOARING.
We pass the grove of Monterrey cedars,
the lighthouse on a jutting precipice
dashed by high waves,
ice plants reddening canyons,
plant blood spilling over ragged crags,
majesty disappearing into the fog.
At Point Lobos
we walk down from the whaler’s cabin
to watch the spit of the sea,
white foam covering dark stone,
and I feel myself moving with the kelp patches,
bladders bobbing in the inlet of Carmel highland,
blades floating above long stalks
asking that my ashes be scattered here
where I may dance with the waves,
surrender to ocean’s eternal season.
Photo of me and my daughter Elizabeth, mother of Kimberly,at Carmel Bay, and of Point Lobos, by Vickie Sullivan.

Native of Franklinton, Louisiana, and resides New Iberia, Louisiana and Sewanee, Tennessee, on the campus of the University of the South. Ordained Episcopal deacon, former archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, and former director of Solomon House Outreach Center Mission in New Iberia, LA.
My regular blog posts are at A Word's Worth. There you may read about my latest publications, essays on various topics, such as Cajun Louisiana and the Cumberland Plateau, and book reviews, and commentaries about the life of the spirit. Poems excerpted from my chapbooks, and portions of my sermons over the years are included also.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
BRAD
Before the recent big freeze, my daughter called and said “Brad is coming over to put shields on all of your faucets,” and hung up. I was still in my pajamas when he showed up, sock cap on his head and several Styrofoam sheaths in hand, looking as pleased as if he had just received $2500 for the latest miniature armoire he recently built. For the one faucet he couldn’t sheath, he went home and returned with a towel to wrap and tape the pipe. Yesterday evening, my daughter called and said, “it rained today, mama, and I know you didn’t realize that the wrapping is wet on that pipe, so Brad is coming to rewrap your faucet.” All this occurred without any beckoning on my part.
“What would we do without Brad?” my daughter often says ruefully. Indeed, what would I do? Two years ago, a few nights before a wedding in which I had to serve as deacon, one of the arms to my only pair of eyeglasses suddenly detached from the frame. In panic, I dialed my daughter’s house. “I won’t have time to get the glasses fixed before the wedding,” I wailed. “Not to worry, Brad is coming over,” she said and hung up. Five minutes later, Brad appeared with at least three kinds of tape and began to experiment with one that would disguise the broken limb and wouldn’t advertise me as an aging street woman wearing one-armed eyeglasses who happened in on the wedding. No one at the wedding noticed the patched arm.
Another time, after a plumber came and cracked the tile behind my shower so that half the wall came down, I again sent out an SOS to Brad who said, “You can either put in a new wall or rig it. For economy’s sake, I think you should rig it.” The broken half of the wall went home with Brad to file down the jagged edges, and a few days later, he appeared with it and a tube of some kind of glue. The crack is almost invisible, and after seven years it’s still intact.
Brad owns “Restorit,” a furniture restoration business of which he is the sole manager and craftsman, and he turns out exquisitely, meticulously-restored antique furniture. He often rebuilds not-so-valuable pieces of furniture in a large shop where broken chairs hang from the ceiling, and long boards of cypress, pine, oak, walnut, and Philippine mahogany are stacked on the floors. It’s a huge metal building filled with vats, a full complement of carpenter tools, and pieces of furniture that look like they’re remnants of a garage sale – until he begins to work them over. One antique desk that belonged to my great-grandmother Dora Greenlaw came to me in pieces, and I felt that it would never resemble a refined piece of furniture again. I gave it to Brad to resurrect, and the photo below speaks louder than any of my brags about Brad’s restoration of this valued piece.
Brad is self-taught and in addition to his ability to build and restore furniture, he plays a guitar for his own amusement. He has also restored the cases of several violins that hang on a wall of his den. At one time, Brad played with a rock group for almost a year in Tampa, Florida, working during the day and playing at night, before he decided that he would return to Cajun Country “to Stephanie and to get a life.” Guitars, however, are still in his blood. Last summer when Brad and Stephanie came up to visit, we spent some time in Nashville, taking in the Grand Ole Opry and visiting guitar outlets. We went in the Gibson guitar outlet, and Brad came out with a guitar. We also visited the famous Gruhn shop in downtown Nashville, but we came out sans guitar because the prices resonated with sour notes for the pocketbook of a restoration artist.
Most of the time you see Brad, he’s wearing a baseball cap and blue jeans that have seen much wear from the work he does at Restorit, so he felt some trepidation when he had to dress up for the wedding of my grandson Martin about this time last year. He confessed he was nervous until he put on the handsome new suit my daughter had selected for him to wear. “That was a magic suit,” he says. “The minute I put on the coat to it, my tension just melted away. I was a new man.” He’s a modest man, so he’d never believe that he’s handsome even in his faded blue jeans. Ask all the elderly women in New Iberia who appreciate his talents, as well as his good looks and charm!
My grandson Joel has called Brad “Bread,” since he was two years old, and when “Bread” arrives during the Christmas visit, Joel walks past Stephanie, his seemingly invisible aunt, and throws his arms around his uncle. Children gravitate toward Brad, somehow sensing that he’ll give them the same kind of care as he shows his furniture, home, and wife… for my house, yard, broken eyeglasses, and, I like to think, me. “No problem,” he says when I gush gratitude, “and no, I don’t want a beer. You ask me that every time.” Brad’s only refusal: “I don’t do plumbing!”

Native of Franklinton, Louisiana, and resides New Iberia, Louisiana and Sewanee, Tennessee, on the campus of the University of the South. Ordained Episcopal deacon, former archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, and former director of Solomon House Outreach Center Mission in New Iberia, LA.
My regular blog posts are at A Word's Worth. There you may read about my latest publications, essays on various topics, such as Cajun Louisiana and the Cumberland Plateau, and book reviews, and commentaries about the life of the spirit. Poems excerpted from my chapbooks, and portions of my sermons over the years are included also.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
“A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN’, with apologies to Virginia Woolf
On wintry days when the tin-colored sky could be depressing, I look for places of light, and the room in which I begin my days is the dining room where I sit at the mahogany dining room table and look through undraped windows at a small sunroom, the room with the most light in the house. The sunroom “came with the house” and is only large enough to hold a glass-topped wrought-iron table painted a bright yellow by my much-appreciated son-in-law who also likes brightness. It’s flanked by four yellow wrought-iron chairs holding soft blue cushions.
The sunroom heats up mightily during summer, but in the early Spring, it’s a pleasant place to lunch while looking at another view–a Louisiana coulee bordered by abundant fern, ginger, elderberry trees, vines, and giant elephant ears. I once used the glass porch as my writing room and moved two shelves of poetry books into it, then moved out because the dining room table provided more writing space. A futon was housed on the glass porch until we moved to Sewanee, and several friends have used the room during times of emotional crises in their lives. These women have told me that it’s a magical room with an aura of sooth and peace. One friend sat on the floor of the porch (before the futon arrived) an entire afternoon, recovering from the schism of a broken marriage, and in recent years, she sometimes shares lunch with us on the yellow, glass-topped table, talking about the powerful atmosphere in the room, about writing, religion, and relationships in a “let your hair down” chat that stretches into three-hour conversations.
It’s important for women to have a “room of one’s own,” a meditative space of “incandescence (as Virginia Woolf once wrote) in which creative activity is unfettered and free.” Woolf advocated that female Shakespeares should have two avenues to freedom: fixed incomes and rooms of their own. I remember Virginia’s remark every time I go onto the porch, thinking about her big question: Why is it that men have always had power, influence, wealth and fame, while women have had nothing but children? This is a wry question that doesn’t quite describe the condition of post modern American females, but there are many women in the world who still lack freedom, fixed incomes, and rooms of their very own.
I’m fortunate to have these privileges, and even a third—another room at Sewanee where I converted a utility space into a narrow study with one wall of windows overlooking the woods (Joyce Carol Oates says that all of her writing desks have faced windows). Right now, these woods are blanketed with snow, and in March, when I usually return to my study overlooking the woods at Sewanee, I’m treated to the sight of large clusters of white and yellow daffodils growing beneath trees that haven’t leafed out. I’m not the female Shakespeare Virginia Woolf talked about, but in this narrow room, I’m free to write many poems, one of which appears below, taken from my newest book entitled OLD RIDGES. The poem is redolent of the atmosphere in early Spring at Sewanee and is entitled “Sewanee Socked In.”
SEWANEE SOCKED IN
How many dead moons hover over us,
birthing the mist that stores itself
between the dark tree trunks,
obscuring the valley,
the air dense and wordless,
mountains gathering the only light.
In the gloom of gray rock and mist,
the subtle energy of a lone hummingbird
beating its wings
becomes words in the morning.
If I did not take time to write,
I would read poets all day,
layer after layer of metaphor
puncturing the subconscious
with bloody darts,
significant tortures done
to thousands of psyches,
poets putting their hands
into the dark wounds
and bringing up birds,
black crows squawking,
wind in the grass,
daffodils in their white hoods
come up from snow,
furnaces in words,
sublimation and art,
madrigals of song.

Native of Franklinton, Louisiana, and resides New Iberia, Louisiana and Sewanee, Tennessee, on the campus of the University of the South. Ordained Episcopal deacon, former archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, and former director of Solomon House Outreach Center Mission in New Iberia, LA.
My regular blog posts are at A Word's Worth. There you may read about my latest publications, essays on various topics, such as Cajun Louisiana and the Cumberland Plateau, and book reviews, and commentaries about the life of the spirit. Poems excerpted from my chapbooks, and portions of my sermons over the years are included also.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
BECOMING FLAME

Isabel Anders, my writer friend at Sewanee, Tennessee who collaborated with me on a mystery entitled CHANT OF DEATH (still being reviewed by a publisher), has a new book In Press. BECOMING FLAME: UNCOMMON MOTHER-DAUGHTER WISDOM will be released by Wipf and Stock Publishers in March.
BECOMING FLAME explains feminine wisdom in the Christian tradition through a series of mother-daughter dialogues which Anders defines in her introduction: “Woman’s wisdom is, of course, as particular as an individual woman herself, since only in the context of real-life dilemmas and choices can true wisdom become actualized. The proof of wisdom is in the health (in the largest sense) of the one who is nurtured by it, as any mother knows in her soul.”
Isabel has written classics in religion and spirituality, including AWAITING THE CHILD, which features a special introduction by Madeleine L’Engle, Isabel’s teacher and mentor. I had the privilege of seeing the original manuscript of BECOMING FLAME in 2008 when I read it aloud to my friend Vickie while we traveled from Sewanee, Tennessee to Louisiana. I knew then that the manuscript was a gem which belonged on the bookshelves of all women who try to impart wisdom to their daughters. The style of the book, which resembles Socratic dialogues – question and response -- is highly effective and emphasizes the distinct character of woman-to-woman discourse. Dialogues remind me of Louisiana Poet Laureate Darrell Bourque’s latest volume of counterpoint poetry, CALL AND RESPONSE, a book that Bourque wrote with fellow poet Jack Bedell, featuring poems patterned after responsorial type songs in the work fields and in Catholic and Anglican churches.
Isabel’s scenarios in BECOMING FLAME emphasize the value of exchange and connection in the most personal of spaces – the home -- and in the most personal relationship of mother and daughter. Readers will recognize Isabel’s strong theological grounding in the inspirational exchanges between mother and daughter.
Isabel is a graduate of Wheaton College and has an M.A. in Religion from Mundelein College, Chicago. She received an Ohio Arts Council fellowship in Creative Writing in 1989. She’s also managing editor of “Synthesis,” an international magazine of commentary on Biblical readings for the Anglican Church calendar each year. Among Isabel’s other books are FACES OF FRIENDSHIP and SOUL MOMENTS, two rich texts that illuminate her spiritual journey.
I love one of the quotes about feminine theological inquiry written by L. Maloney that Isabel included in her latest blog: “…God has her skirts tucked up and is busy sweeping and searching too…” I miss the “writerly” conversations Isabel and I shared during coffee breaks and lunches and while breakfasting after services at St. Mary’s Convent, Sewanee, where I first met her.
You can see her blog at www.IsabelAnders.com.

Native of Franklinton, Louisiana, and resides New Iberia, Louisiana and Sewanee, Tennessee, on the campus of the University of the South. Ordained Episcopal deacon, former archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, and former director of Solomon House Outreach Center Mission in New Iberia, LA.
My regular blog posts are at A Word's Worth. There you may read about my latest publications, essays on various topics, such as Cajun Louisiana and the Cumberland Plateau, and book reviews, and commentaries about the life of the spirit. Poems excerpted from my chapbooks, and portions of my sermons over the years are included also.
Friday, January 1, 2010
GULLS IN THE NEW YEAR

Last week on a typical monsoon day in Louisiana, I sat in the Winn Dixie parking lot, waiting for a shopper to pick up a few items from the store and watching passersby slosh through ever-widening pools of water. Seagulls soared through the lot, now dark silver in color, now white, their colors conforming to the color of cloud patches overhead. I wondered if the gulls thought a beach lay nearby and if they were puzzled about the lack of sand. I know that they’re ground nesting carnivores, but their hunting ground is usually near the ocean where they search for crabs and small fish. They also nest in dense colonies, but only a few gulls dipped over the lot. Did they think that the umbrellas moving in and out were beach umbrellas? Did they think the smells coming from the deli signaled a picnic? By the time the shopper returned to the car, most of the gulls had dispersed, except for a lone scavenger that landed on a “$4/12 Pepsi” sign and finding no food, sailed off, squawking loudly, into black rain clouds.
After I returned home, I sat for a few moments in my striped “reflecting chair” in the living room, thinking about the similarity between the lone seagull and the 1970 bestseller, JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL. It’s the story about a seagull who tires of petty squabbles among his scavenging flock and develops a yen to learn all he can about flying. He’s expelled from the flock because of his non-conformity and unwillingness to engage in fellow gull squabbles. Undaunted, he makes higher and higher flights and finally reaches a point where he can fly no higher. Befriended by two caring seagulls, he joins another gull society to learn a new way of being. The gulls teach him “You’ve got to understand that a seagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the Great Gull (God). You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way.”
There are themes of love and forgiveness throughout Jonathan’s learning, and he ultimately becomes a teacher, expressing wise commentary about trespassing rules that are rigidly followed (seagulls that are Pharisees?). Jonathan has a vision to teach the idea that despite differences in individual gulls, there’s something that binds them all together. No ambiguity here–the theme emphasizes the idea of a caring, truly spiritual community where “all are welcome at the table.”
You may think JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL is an oversimplified book, but I think it’s a New Year’s Day story about human potential and the possibilities of developing a spiritual path that begins “by knowing you have already arrived.”
HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Native of Franklinton, Louisiana, and resides New Iberia, Louisiana and Sewanee, Tennessee, on the campus of the University of the South. Ordained Episcopal deacon, former archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, and former director of Solomon House Outreach Center Mission in New Iberia, LA.
My regular blog posts are at A Word's Worth. There you may read about my latest publications, essays on various topics, such as Cajun Louisiana and the Cumberland Plateau, and book reviews, and commentaries about the life of the spirit. Poems excerpted from my chapbooks, and portions of my sermons over the years are included also.