HEAVEN, HOPE, AND HURRICANES

Chapel of Community of St. Mary

This rainy day in south Louisiana, I read that the sun is shining on my second home in Sewanee, Tennessee, and my thoughts center on an event that will take place there soon after we arrive for the spring and summer season. At Sewanee, we worship in a chapel of the Community of St. Mary, a community that has been a presence on The Mountain for over a century. We're also on the Advisory Board of this Community and associates of the Order of St. Mary, and I often preach and “deacon” at services held in St. Mary’s chapel. This year, the Sisters, Board, Associates, students, and friends are hosting a spring gala entitled “Heaven, Hope, and Hurricanes” in support of an Organic Prayer Internship Program that includes young men and women who have helped expand the ministry of St. Mary into the community and the larger world.

Sister Madeleine Mary, Mother Superior of the Community of St. Mary, writes that “these interns have experienced intentional community and Benedictine practice and spirituality, as well as learned about the organic relationship between care for the body, the soul, and the earth,” and she’s excited about hosting this first gala event sponsored by the Community. It will include dinner, a silent auction, and a program of music given by our long-time New Iberia, Louisiana friends, Brenda Lowry and Joshua Murrell.

Brenda and Joshua will feature songs of hope and healing that they’ve written and recorded for their “Women at the Well” program, a collection of songs written from the point of view of some of Christ’s women disciples. They have presented the original music in parish halls, churches, private homes, and retreat centers throughout the country.

Brenda and Bubbs, songwriters and performers

These talented musicians will also present selections from a recording they made as “Blue Merlot,” their “B&B on the Rock” signature, many of which are based on hurricane recovery after Hurricane Katrina. Brenda writes: “When you’re sitting at your kitchen door, watching the water rise and realizing that there’s not a thing you can do about if, you learn something about surrender. And at some point, you laugh because the alternative is too ugly. Then that night, when the wind and rain have finally calmed, you see the Milky Way like never before, because there are no lights anywhere…and the beauty takes your breath away.” Those feelings inspired the music for special selections Brenda and Joshua (aka “Bubba”) will perform after intermission at the gala event.

I realize that many of my blog readers aren’t in Tennessee, but some of you may wish to help sponsor this event, and donations can be made to the Sisters of St. Mary, 1100 St. Mary’s Lane, Sewanee,TN 37375 so that the interns can continue to live, work, study, and pray at the Convent. They will help the gardens to flourish, worship to be enriched, and can engage in the life of a Benedictine monastic order. $1,000 will allow eight people to attend and participate in this benefit. The gala is scheduled for the evening of April 9, 2016 in Cravens Hall at Sewanee, and if you need more details, write to Sr. Madeleine Mary at the above address.

THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING CROWS

A mad crow as depicted by Diane Moore

In both places that I live, Sewanee, Tennessee and New Iberia Louisiana, I’ve always enjoyed the company of crows – those black, glossy bodies flapping, then gliding across the sky, landing on trees in my yards. They usually recognize me, and lately I’ve missed their strident conversations when I walk outdoors. I’ve begun to wonder if the felling of the pines in my front yard had anything to do with their disappearance. Or they could have become ill with West Nile Virus since the mosquitoes in my neighborhood have been breeding apace. Whatever the reason, I strain to hear their familiar caws and hear only a few cardinals singing “cheer, cheer, cheer” near the backyard coulee.

I’ve read that crows have real family values. Their offspring stick around to help with younger siblings, often feed Mama Crow and the siblings, and defend their home territory against invaders. Families can include step-parents, nephews, brothers, and even orphaned crows, and in New York some crow roosts boasting as many as a million birds disappear in March when breeding season begins.

Since breeding season hasn’t begun, I don’t know why my crow families have disappeared, but I suspect that their absence has something to do with the murder of the three large pine trees, which had often been their perches. The sound of those trees falling was like a bomb dropping on the street and frightened several neighbors who came out of their houses to see if we’d been victims of an ISIS attack. Usually, the crows had responded to the whisking sound of my broom as I swept off the leaf-strewn patio and drive — a futile exercise that invited their raucous laughter.

I’m including in this blog a new crow poem from a book of poetry that I’m working on entitled Street Sketches — one that will have a cover photograph of a glass piece based on one of Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings and rendered by the master glass artist, Karen Bourque, of Church Point, Louisiana.

RETURN TO CROW LANE

They circled overhead

like buzzards on the desert

waiting for us to tip the ladder

as we cleared overflowing gutters,

streets they perceived to be theirs,

landing fields closest to the empty house,

streaked windows they had peered in

and seen unlit lamps.

Was I only deceiving myself

about the intent of dark birds

others feel are dressed in misfortune,

thinking they’re heavenly agents,

creatures that speak in parable

strutting in the garden

and bringing messages of good will

directly from the angels?

When they left their roost in a dead pine

and soared into the sky

it was laden with the raucous noise

of a new language they had created

because we had gone away

leaving their streets untended,

the defiant sound of prophecies

we struggled to interpret.

  

SETTLING IN WITH HOORAH PLANTATION

When you spend spring/summer seasons in one state of the U.S. and fall/winter in another state, transitions from one place to another are often difficult. However, every time that I move back to Louisiana for the fall and winter seasons, I go through a little exercise that helps me “settle in.” I dust off my shelf of Louisiana books and find one that records the color and culture of my native state and sit down amidst the upheaval of moving to read.

This return trip I picked up one entitled Hoorah Plantation by New Iberian Al Landry. Al published the memoir several years ago for his children and grandchildren, and, as Al says, “the children and grandchildren of my friends and relatives so they might have some knowledge of their background and heritage.” The memoir covers the years from 1930-1945, a time that I’ve been writing about in my last two books of poetry — the era of no computers, televisions, central AC, cell phones, and other modern conveniences, but as Al writes, “we did have… one telephone in the house used almost exclusively by adults, ten or fifteen cent movies…a large console radio, good school clothes…”

Al explains that Hoorah Plantation is about the ethnic and cultural differences and relationships among the various peoples of New Orleans, the River Road, and Acadiana. His father was one of the descendants of the original Spanish settlers of New Iberia, and his mother a descendant of the Acadian exiles. One of his ancestors, Raphael Segura, built a home on the southern shore of Spanish Lake west of New Iberia and lived to be 98 years old. Al is a descendant of one of Raphael’s three marriages, described in New Iberia as a descendant of “the first bed.” (Can’t beat that for homespun aptness!)

Al is known as one of New Iberia’s outstanding raconteurs and in Hoorah Plantation, he provides amusing glimpses of the local French culture; e.g., a chapter entitled “Wad He Say?” This chapter is defined as a section that explores the misuses of vocabulary in south Louisiana. He records a few colorful examples: 

-I had to put my wife in the hospital — she was full of Noxzema — but they gave her an epidemic in the rectory and she’s getting better.
-I don’t know why I’m gaining weight, I just eat one French bread for breakfast and put skin milk and sacrament in my coffee.
-He’s so rich he must be a typhoon.
-Well, you’ve buttered your bread, now you have to lie in it.
-My aunt died of a cerebral hemorrhoid.
-I got nothing but seer-sucker vines growing on my fence”
 

Hoorah Plantation was the name of Al’s Grandma’s house, and his recollections of his grandmother are hilarious. He recalls that his Grandma spoke entirely in French, except for the phrase she used when Al and his family arrived or left: “I can’t believe.” Al described his grandmother to me one night when I had dinner at Lagniappe Too, the café he and his wife Elaine owned on Main Street of New Iberia. Al often acted as the host of the café, moving among tables and entertaining local patrons, as well as visitors from throughout the world. He later included this description of Grandma he had related to me in Hoorah Plantation: “We could never sit on her lap because it began at her chin and ended at her knees, one enormous, softly-rounded mass. She usually wore black, shapeless, full-sleeved, long dresses, with her important keys fastened to a white rope around her middle. She was only 4’9” tall. When the servants needed a key to unlock the pantry or a storage room, they would have to search for the collection of keys somewhere around Grandma’s middle. This intense search would tickle Grandma, and she would giggle like a school girl until the keys were found…”

Al Landry, who graduated from Tulane University with a Bachelor of Architecture degree, practiced architecture in New Iberia for many years and painted pictures of local characters, night life, and social activities in Acadiana. His wife Elaine taught private piano lessons and created soft sculpture dolls called “Grunchkins.” The couple opened Lagniappe Too Café in New Iberia in 1986 and operated it for over 25 years before retiring. I understand that Al is still playing the role of a raconteur at Garden View, just down the road from the point where his ancestors landed in flatboats and established Nueva Iberia.

From the above excerpts, readers can see how such reading provided my immediate re-immersion into the culture of Teche country. I am one of those who tasted bayou water 51 years ago and was destined to always return, despite the mosquitoes dancing on my window panes, the mud and flood week-end, and the humidity that enveloped me after I descended from The Mountain at Sewanee, Tennessee.