AN AFTERNOON WITH FRANCIS

When you drive up Rattlesnake Springs Lane, Sewanee, Tennessee, then turn and climb the hill leading to “Possum’s End,” you’ll enter the domain of The Rev. Francis Xavier Walter and his wife Faye, a clinical psychologist. The domain showcases a renovated 1880’s tobacco barn built of star pine that was transported from Virginia to Tennessee, and which the Walters have made into a large, handsome home. And if you spend an afternoon talking with Francis about his former work, you’ll probably decide that you were in the presence of someone special — in this case, the man who helped launch the famous “Freedom Quilting Bee” in the Black Belt during the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama.

We’ve been friends with the Walters for most of the nine years we’ve lived at Sewanee and have had our feet under their table and eaten fare Faye prepared a la Alabama style several times. The meals were usually preceded by a bit of drama (LOL) that involved six of us acting out plays about the southern culture in southern vernacular even we southerners find foreign to our speaking.

Francis, a native Alabaman, has just completed a book about his life and his work in the Alabama Black Belt, “which has no title yet,” he says, “but you could call it a memoir that focuses on my commitment not to participate in the culture of racism and is also about all the ways race has impinged on my life.”

Francis was born in Mobile, Alabama and graduated from Spring Hill College, a Roman Catholic institution located two blocks away from his home. He majored in English and minored in Latin, then entered the Episcopal Seminary at the University of the South and was ordained a priest in 1957. He spent the next two years as a fellow and tutor at General Theological Seminary in New York City and later served Grace Episcopal Church in Jersey City, a ghetto church. He attributes much of his interest in dealing with racial problems to the “living textbook” of this ghetto church.

Francis was eventually called to become Director of the Selma Inter-religious Project in Alabama, a group comprised of Protestant, Roman Catholic, and other religious entities established in Selma, Alabama to combat racial injustice. Through his work in that capacity and still serving under the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, he became totally enmeshed in the fight against racism. However, when he returned home to Alabama to carry out his work with the underprivileged people in the Black Belt, the Episcopal Bishop of Alabama refused to give him a license to officiate in the state as a priest. He was also monitored by the FBI and had difficulty getting an FHA loan to buy a house.

Francis persisted in his work as an activist. “My mother, Martha, had developed cancer while I was in high school and experienced what I call ‘a repeatable process of opening to the infiniteness of God,’” he writes in two chapters of his book entitled “My Mother and Father Cole” and “Conversion.” In 1951, his mother attended a Christ Church Lenten Preaching Service where clergy she had known for years vested in cassock, surplice, and stole. “As she was leaving the service, she saw a Black man wearing a clerical collar. He was in the last row of pews. One assumes everyone saw him, but she was the one who walked over to the last row of pews and introduced herself to Father Cole. She asked him why he wasn’t up front with the other clergy, and he told her that she’d have to ask the other clergy. My mother turned around, went down the aisle to the door in the parish hall, and headed to the rector’s office. She found the embarrassed answer she received not an answer to her new-honed grasp of the Church as the Body of Christ. Later, she approached the Black president of the Women’s Auxiliary at the Church of the Good Shepherd and told her, ‘I’ve never questioned how colored people are treated by us. But now I know I want you to know I will no longer be part of it. I don’t know what I will do, but I will never again be part of it.’”

His mother’s passion for justice and the Black struggle for equality inspired Francis and later played a part in causing him to initiate his most ambitious project, “The Freedom Quilting Bee Project,” which he helped promote and which became a handicraft cooperative recognized throughout the United States. The project gave granddaughters of slaves who had been field hands an opportunity to show how they had been victims of poverty and rural isolation but were capable of becoming dedicated artisans and businesswomen working with patchwork quilts. Later, the University of Alabama Press published “The Freedom Quilting Bee” by Nancy Callahan, a volume documenting the work of both Francis and the famous “freedom quilters.”

My session with Francis could have extended into the evening as he's an experienced raconteur, but readers will have to wait to read the final, expanded version of his story that will be published by New South Books, Montgomery, Alabama. It’s a fascinating account of the work of the Master of Possum’s End and includes many anecdotes about his childhood, family life in Alabama, as well as his early work as an Episcopal priest.

Francis describes his mother’s conversion as “a kairos, a Greek word for qualitative, not quantitative time: a period in which something special happens.” He closed our afternoon session by saying that his mother’s kairos “shaped future time for her, myself, my family, and who knows else?” I’d say that the “who knows else” includes anyone privileged to spend an afternoon with this engaging priest who made the cause for Civil Rights legislation and fight for racial equality his kairos.

Photography by Victoria I. Sullivan

GUMBO WEATHER AND BLUE DOG ART

Sunday morning dawned, or almost didn’t dawn, cool and foggy. To someone like me who has a bit of Cajun blood in her veins, the vision of a large black gumbo pot appeared in the mist—it was perfect gumbo weather! However, I reminded myself that I was on The Mountain at Sewanee and more than likely I’d be eating beef and potatoes for lunch following church services at Convent of St. Mary.

After church, we gathered in the refectory for light breakfast —coffee cake, biscuits, freshly cut melon and coffee, not to mention the ubiquitous pistachios in cups placed on the ends of two long tables. Forget the weather that should have inspired gumbo; we engaged in the Sunday pistachio eating contest, sometimes won by Dr. Victoria Sullivan; other times won by Fr. Clark. Both of them always sit with Faye Walter at what we call “the Politics Table,” the place where inveterate Democrats take turns preaching the second sermon of the day about feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and taking care of the disenfranchised.

I still had gumbo on my mind when my good friend, Kathy Hamman, appeared. Kathy has traveled the world with her husband Henry and stirs a tasty pot of international cuisine, frequently treating me to Iranian fare because she and Henry once lived in Tehran, as I did back in the 70’s. But on Sunday Kathy appeared with a copy of Talk About Good II, Le Livre de Cuisine des Acadiens underarm and held it out to me. “Here,” she said, “you told me that your son-in-law is interested in cooking, and I unearthed this while we were opening some of our storage boxes.”

“Eh la bas,” I said. “This is an old edition (1979) of Cajun cuisine, and it has a dozen or so of George Rodrigue’s paintings.”

“Don’t believe I know him. Is he French—and, as you say, who’s his mama, does he make that thing you call a roux?”

George, of course, was a native New Iberian and died in 2013. His works were featured in the Bayou Teche Museum in New Iberia for months in an exhibit entitled “Rodrigue Comes Home: Under Iberia’s Live Oaks with George Rodrigue and His Blue Dog,” and some of his art resides in the Public Collection of the President of France, the Louisiana Governor’s Mansion, Brockton Museum, Everson Museum, Fine Arts Museum of the South, Art Center at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, the Slater Museum, Butler Institute of American Art, and in other international galleries.

Rodrigue’s “blue dog paintings” are scattered throughout the world, and if anyone knew good cuisine, George did. He established the Blue Dog Restaurant in Lafayette, Louisiana where pungent, rich gumbos are still served up daily. I don’t own the particular edition of Talk About Good that features Rodrigue’s art, and when Kathy handed it to me, I promptly claimed it for my own.

“Forget about my son-in-law,” I said. “This keepsake is my keepsake. Are you sure you want to give it up?”

“Well, with your cultural background and outlook, how could I not? It’s yours.”

If the Convent had possessed a black iron pot, I would have gone into the kitchen and stirred up a roux (or so I told myself), but I just held the Talk About Good to my heart and scurried out before some other Cajun suddenly materialized and got into a “meet me in the street” confrontation in an attempt to carry the book away.

When I arrived home, I went to the computer and googled the World Championship Gumbo Cookoff hosted by the Greater Iberia Chamber of Commerce in New Iberia. Mais jamais d’ la vie, I discovered it was gumbo time in Teche country—October 9, 10, 11 where 100 teams will compete for the crown of champion of the best gumbo in the world. It’s a time when a “Cajun Creole Foodfest” will be held and a “Meanest Beans and Youth Gumbo Cook-Off” will be going on, as well as a family movie night under the Pavilion in Bouligny Plaza, downtown New Iberia. There’ll be dancing in the streets and feasting a’ plenty, and directions to the Plaza include: “Inhale and follow your nose to downtown New Iberia. The aroma should get stronger as you get closer.”

By the way, the famous gumbo dish emblematic of Louisiana was enriched by immigrants to the area during the 18^th century—French, Spanish, Germans, Irish, African-American and Anglo-Americans who came and tasted bayou water and added their own seasonings to the cultural mix.

COLD SNAP #2

It's one thing to write about a cold place you're slated to visit and another to arrive and experience the icy breath of winter on The Mountain at Sewanee. Although we missed the three-degree temps Sewaneeans experienced the week preceding our return to The Mountain, we've been deprived of sunlight for at least three days. However, the worst aspect of the weather is heavy fog, fog that surpasses any mist hanging over the Louisiana swamps.

We went out to St. Mary's Convent at 7 a.m. yesterday to attend Eucharist, and the Subaru crawled down the road leading to the Convent in dense mists that I can only describe as "unsafe." However, after breakfast with the Sisters, I found a copy of May Sarton's Journal of A Solitude (order below), and settled in a rocker before the wood-stove in the Common Room. I actually began to feel safe and cozy. I had unconsciously selected a book that contained many chapters describing a winter in New Hampshire, where Sarton lived and wrote in her late years. At least we didn't have to cope with the fifteen inches of snow she described in a journal entry, "February 8," I thought, as I warmed my feet before the fire.

Although Sarton wanted her novels and poetry to be recognized and acclaimed as best sellers, her journals and memoirs gained the greater readership. I've almost finished this book of observations on the inner and outer worlds of the writer. Chapters about books, people, and Sarton's spiritual journey fascinate me, and I was ready to go out in the fog again after reading during the morning at the Convent and the afternoon at home when the woods were shrouded in heavy fog.

One journal entry that resonated with me: "Simone Weil says, 'Absolute attention is prayer.' The more I have thought about this over the years, the truer it is for me. I have used the sentence often in talking about poetry to students, to suggest that if one looks long enough at almost anything, looks with absolute attention at a flower, a stone, the bark of a tree, grass, snow, a cloud, something like revelation takes place. Something is 'given' and perhaps that something is always a reality outside the self."

After reading this, I surmised that even when a writer sits and stares at fog, something happens because a few moments after reading this, I added another poem to the book of poetry I'm writing entitled The Lonely Grandmother. A few hours later, I needed that inspiration when we again set out in the fog, bound for the Hamman's place, "Tick Farm," aka "The Bat Cave" as both ticks, and, lately, bats have been discovered in residence on their property. This time, we set out at night, and missed numerous turns off the highway, as well as the narrow lane leading into the Hamman quarters.

The drive through the fog was harrowing, but inside the Hammans' cottage, Kathy's gourmet cooking made up for the pall of the weather. The Rev. Francis Walter and his wife Faye arrived a half hour later and announced that they had lost their way several times before finally turning into the drive at Tick Farm. The Hammans have lived in London, Iran, India, and other exotic places, and good food and conversation helped us forget that we had to travel back through pea soup. Usually, when the six of us get together, we dive headlong into conversation about politics, religion, books not-so-conservative, and other unsafe topics and emerge invigorated by talk that other people often find taboo table talk.

When I arrived home, I found that I had dropped my cell phone somewhere along the way and panic overtook me—panic worse than that I had experienced going through the fog, I'm ashamed to admit. Fortunately, the Hammans found the phone in the yard, the only thing to be victimized by the fog, and they're bringing it to me today. Meanwhile, I welcome the silence and Journal of A Solitude (order below), glancing out the window now and then to check on the ubiquitous fog. It's still overhanging us, and we are, as Sewaneeans say, "socked in." However, we should be back in Teche country by Saturday afternoon!

Photographs by Victoria Sullivan