SUNDAY ON THE MOUNTAIN AND IN THE VALLEY

Agreeable responses to sermons have a salutary effect on those who preach, and Sunday I received perhaps one of the best responses to any sermon I’ve delivered since I began preaching seventeen or more years ago. I’ve mentioned Peanuts and his gang in previous sermons, but yesterday when I brought up Snoopy as an example of what Robert Short calls “the little Christ,” the small crowd in the chapel at St. Mary’s Convent, Sewanee, TN, became instantly alert. I apologized for seeming irreverent but went on to explain that, according to Short, Snoopy may be lazy, sarcastic, a coward, and quite weary of being a dog, but he also possesses love, loyalty, watchfulness, and courage. Furthermore, Short advises that before we can become a good Christian who loves well, we have to take on the dog’s lowliness of complete obedience and humility at the feet of the master and in service to others. When I said that Hegel, the German philosopher, recognized the dog as the most religious of all creatures who loves with complete dependence, the congregation seemed to be on the edge of applause. It was a memorable moment, and Penny, the Convent dog, who was curled under Sister Madeleine Mary’s feet, awoke from her usual nap in the sanctuary during church service and looked around for recognition.

I received a similar response when I went down to Grace Fellowship Church on Garner Road to deliver the same sermon. The response both gladdened and saddened me because I love dogs but cannot withstand too much exposure to them as I’m allergic to animal dander. Of course, Sophie, the Convent cat, isn’t as polite as Penny and insists on following me around, hiding under the table when I share breakfast with the Sisters in the refectory. Yesterday I was informed that the Sisters were up late vacuuming the chair on the altar where I sit before delivering a sermon because perverse Sophie had been lining it with animal dander all week in preparation for my arrival.

Sunday afternoon, we went down to the valley in Cowan, TN, to view an exhibit of the work of Carolyn Tocco who is one of the members of Grace Fellowship. Although Carolyn owns several dogs, I didn’t find any renderings of them; however, one wall of the Artisan Depot in Cowan featured a beautiful display of her oils that depicted wildlife and nature. Carolyn works in a studio of her home at Winterberry in the woods near Sewanee that we had visited last fall before we left Sewanee. We had come away from the visit with two small depictions of bugs and berries now hanging on the walls of the cottage here on The Mountain, and yesterday I added a painting of butterfly weed to our Tocco collection. I also left the Artisan Depot with two ceramic tea bag holders by Gretchen McCance who has a kiln at her home in Tim’s Ford, TN and another in Blue Ridge, Georgia.

The Artisan Depot just moved into a new facility on the main thoroughfare of Cowan and is a part of the Franklin County Arts Guild, which features fine art and crafts from Franklin County and surrounding areas. The Arts Guild is an organization of local artists and friends who promote the visual and performing arts for all ages in Franklin County. It also provides a scholarship for a promising high school senior who plans to study art or education at the university level, and an annual Sweet Tooth Theater, which is a musical act accompanied by coffee and dessert. The Artisan Depot is one of those galleries found in small communities throughout the Appalachians that promote venues for artists to sell their work.

It was a Sunday filled with “glad surprises,” as Thomas a Kempis says, made more pleasant by a Mexican dinner at the Fiesta in Cowan where the walls are decorated with another visual experience —the work of Sewanee artist, Edward Carlos.

A VISIT TO WINTERBERRY PLACE

The mission of the Convent of St. Mary here at Sewanee includes providing a Sister or minister to a small congregation of Grace Fellowship Church on certain Sundays, and the visiting member of the Religious coordinates "Reflection" time about the Gospel assigned for that Sunday. On the Sundays that I preach at St. Mary's, I also go down the road and deliver the same sermon to Grace Fellowship, and I've grown fond of the people who gather in the little church at the edge of a pond on Garnertown Road.

Yesterday, at the invitation of Carolyn and Charles ("Chuck") Tocco, a couple in this Fellowship congregation, I went out to Winterberry Place in Deep Woods to see Carolyn's studio paintings. I had seen many of her depictions of Jesus that hang in the sanctuary at Grace Fellowship and had asked about exhibits she schedules twice a year at times when I won't be on The Mountain, so she offered a private showing of her art.

I thought I'd hiked in and seen all of the deep woods around Sewanee, but Winterberry Place is situated in a wood Robert Frost would have called "lovely, dark and deepest." We drove down the Fire Tower Road just past St. Andrews School, then traveled about three miles on a paved road and on to a gravel path that ran through dense woods leading to Wormwood Lane, a lane ending at the gate of Winterberry Place.

Everywhere we looked, we saw flowers and gardens, and the Toccos stood on the porch to welcome us, attempting to shush the barking of several dogs (mixed breeds, Carolyn explained) that had been penned up so we could visit without interference. Just inside the front door, we glimpsed several of Carolyn's large oil paintings, one of a snow scene in the woods and another depiction of Jesus on a hill overlooking an ancient city.

We walked through the house and onto the back porch to get a view of the bluff that overlooks the town of Pelham, Tennessee and toured the tea house at the end of the porch. I had brought Carolyn a copy of my book, Porch Posts, and it proved to be a perfect gift because the Tocco's porch would make a good photograph for any home and garden magazine and appears to be a favored room of the home. My friend Vickie, who accompanied me, had brought her book Why Water Plants Don't Drown as a gift, and it was also a "hit" for the Toccos, two seasoned gardeners.

Carolyn, a native of Sewanee (actually Garnertown) has been painting since childhood and spent four years studying art with a private instructor in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She has done most of her excellent work in oils, although she has tried acrylics and watercolors, choosing oil as her favorite because "it's the most forgiving medium," she says.

Before we went upstairs to see Carolyn's studio, we sat and exchanged stories about our backgrounds. Both Carolyn and Chuck had been in the Air Force and met at an airbase in New Jersey, and both say that when other retirees tell them that they retire to travel, they're amazed because they've already had their peripatetic experience, traveling with the Air Force to stations in Alaska, Okinawa, Thailand, Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii, and other posts.

When the Toccos decided to join the retiree population, they were living in Sweetwater, Tennessee where Chuck worked as a Systems Engineer at Watts Bar Nuclear Plant (TVA) following his stint in the Air Force. Both sang in a Methodist Church choir in Sweetwater, and nowadays Chuck sings solo and a capella for the Grace Fellowship congregation.

Although Carolyn's former work had included a sophisticated assignment as an Air Force Communications Specialist executing flight plans and decoding cryptographic messages in a "vault," her background as a hardy Tennessean served her and Chuck well when they bought the ten acres of woodland in Deep Woods. She joined Chuck in clearing the land much as women of Tennessee stock must have done during pioneer days. "Chuck used one chain saw, and I used another until we had cleared the entire space for our home on the bluff," she says.

We climbed stairs to Carolyn's studio and entered a room with long windows that let in the generous shafts of light that artists need for painting. Bookcases on two walls contained Carolyn's eclectic reading, including books of poetry, religious writing, and classics. We were also intrigued by a small insect display that Carolyn had been collecting for her "bug paintings." Renderings of owls, dandelions, cotton plants, milkweed pods, horses plowing in a field, sheep, and other outdoor scenes leaned against the wall beneath the long windows, and a painting of a road resembling the entrance lane to Winterberry Place stood on Carolyn's easel. Carolyn paints in the afternoons and says the subjects for her paintings are inspired; she disciplines herself to carry out the work as "it is a gift from God."

 

We lingered longer than we had planned and were invited to return another time when Carolyn
promises she'll have two of her small paintings ready for us—a "bug painting" and a "berry painting"—mementos of this wonderful artist's haven in the deep woods on The Mountain at Sewanee that we'll take back to bayou country in October.

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan