PARTING

Last night, a dear friend of mine who lives in Georgetown, or Washington, D.C., died. I dreamed of her departure before I received word that she had passed, and this morning when I opened two e-mails, I was not surprised by the news… just saddened.

Jane F. Bonin was an old friend who lived in New Iberia, Louisiana for many years, and we became acquainted during the time she taught English at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, Louisiana. She was an early encourager of my poetry writing and once co-authored a graded reading list for Iberia Parish Schools with me. During the early seventies, we also co-authored a house journal entitled Epiphany Tidings, an Episcopal church newsletter, and served on the board of a kindergarten sponsored by The Church of the Epiphany in New Iberia.

Jane’s contributions to Drama at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette were formidable ones — she wrote three books in this genre: Prize Winning Drama, Maria Fratti, and Major Themes in Prizewinning American Drama. She also received The Distinguished Professor Award, and when she retired from ULL and migrated to Washington, D.C. she distinguished herself on the staff of the Foreign Institute in the U.S. State Department.

But her sojourn in Malawi and Niger, Africa became her greatest life challenge, and she later wrote of it in The Color of a Lion’s Eye as a “six year drugless high with no social or legal consequences and no hangover. Nothing in my life has been as intense or as exciting as my time there…it was an overwhelming time from which I have not recovered and perhaps I don’t want to…” In Malawi she held the position of Associate Peace Corps Director; in Niger, she was appointed Peace Corps Country Director. Nineteen years passed before Jane produced a book about her experiences (2015): “…disparate threads of my six years serving those who serve in that place of astonishing and terrible beauty…”

This morning I hear her voice clearly in the words: “If I were in Africa we would sit on a mat under a tree and tell our stories one to the other. I hope this remembrance will be the next best thing.” Jane was a consummate raconteur, and the voice in the stories about Africa was at times witty; at others, poignant with sadness over “rotting flesh, maggoty wounds, glittering feverish eyes, grotesquely twisted limbs, cleft palates, and amputations,” but strong as she followed a leitmotif she lived by: “Serve those who serve.” During her darker moments in Africa she wrote that “‘the force that drives the green fuse,’ as Dylan Thomas called the life force, drives harder in Africa and creates both life and death with ever more velocity.”

Her book of twenty-four vignettes has circulated around Georgetown and Washington, D.C. and has found an attentive and appreciative audience — only a few months before her death, she read excerpts to members of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, hoping to inspire them with the desire to serve some charitable mission. Two months before her death, Jane made a last trek to France, which she loved, and in her spare time, she kept up her French lessons. At times, she sang in a large chorale in Washington. She loved music, language, art (Jane was once a docent in an art gallery), theatre – all cultural pursuits. She could also tell a bawdy joke, lift a glass, and prepare a gourmet meal for her friends.

Jane’s “tribe” of friends was large and diverse, and she was among those who advocate “nothing human is alien to me.” She embraced the disenfranchised, as well as those who moved in the circles of advanced culture. Back in the 70’s and 80’s I had the privilege of working with her in the Hunger Project. Our job was to raise both money and the consciousness of people about the seriousness of hunger in the world. At that time I was an executive director of a Girl Scout Council, and we staged a large event in Lafayette, Louisiana, using all we had learned in an old self-actualization organization, EST, about “intention” to end hunger. We spoke to a packed crowd. Jane went on to utilize her experiences in her role as a Peace Corps Director, and I later became an ordained deacon and Director of an outreach mission.

Through the years I never lost touch with this charming woman who, like most humans, had many faces and many talents. I last saw her this past year when she visited her daughter, Knowles Harper, at Sewanee, Tennessee. Somehow I knew it was a farewell visit because she seemed to be slipping away, although she hadn’t been diagnosed with cancer at that time. I told her we would visit again, and she said to me, “Any time you want me to meet you in some vacation place, I’m game.” She was always game for an adventure, but I didn’t follow through. I wish I had, and we could have gone to a prize place on my bucket list – the isle of Iona, a thin place where miracles happen. The next best thing I could do for her was to put her on the prayer list in another thin place, St. Mary’s Convent here at Sewanee – and, actually, the Order of St. Mary here has a sister Order in Malawi.

Of farewells, Emily Dickinson said it best: “Parting is all we know of heaven…and all we need of hell.” I’ll miss you, chere amie, but I also know you’re going to help them “pass a good time” and keep to their good intentions in the other world. As I once said in a homily for another old friend, and I don’t remember the source (readers of this tribute should know that the lines below aren’t original with me). The thoughts were taken from an article that describes spiritual movement in our lives: “the good and the affection we share with one another is eternal. They don’t start with us, and they don’t end with us. They come from and point toward God, toward love. No love we ever bestow on those who we care about is ever lost. It goes with them to God’s home and it stays with us. The love that goes deeper and reaches beyond material existence into the realms of spirit is the love that overcomes death because it comes from God, divine love.”  

CHRISTMAS CELEBRATIONS AND FRIENDS

Mary Ann and Darrell

The Greek word philia means affection or friendship, and C.S. Lewis wrote one of the best treatises about this special relationship with others in The Four Loves, my favorite book by the great Anglican apologist of the 20^th century: “It may be a common religion, common studies, a common profession, even a common recreation. All who share it will be our companions; but one or two or three who share something more will be our Friends. In this kind of love, as Emerson said, ‘Do you love me?’ means ‘Do you see the same truth?’”

Pistachio cake

The Christmas season provides fertile soil for commonality among cherished friends, and lately I’ve been blessed to have been invited to a few celebrations in which I’ve enjoyed the “real glory of friendship,” as Lewis puts it. The most recent of these celebrations took place this week when I and my friends Vickie Sullivan and Mary Ann Wilson, went over to Church Point, Louisiana for dinner especially cooked by Darrell and Karen Bourque. Darrell, a former poet laureate of Louisiana and acclaimed poet (as well as my mentor in poetry), had prepared a succulent pork roast, fresh asparagus, quinoa with chunks of sweet potato; and Karen, master glass artist, had created an artistically-arranged green salad with thinly sliced avocado and homemade dressing. The piece de resistance was a beautiful white pistachio cake with coconut frosting, pictured here.

Karen and Diane

As we sat around the table, I thought about Emerson’s words: “Do you see the same truth?” Most of the conversation centered on common interests: books, art, and politics, but table talk soon turned to concerns about a mutual friend who has been diagnosed with cancer, and we discussed the humanitarian work she has done during her almost-80 years. Our friend, Jane Bonin, a former professor of English at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, was affiliated with the Hunger Project for many years, presenting talks to various groups to raise the consciousness of people regarding the problem of hunger in both Acadiana and Washington, D.C. where she migrated after leaving Lafayette, Louisiana. She was dedicated to the sustainable end of world hunger and to the maxim of “Creating An Idea Whose Time Has Come.” A few years later, she joined the Peace Corps and served in both Malawi and Niger, Africa for six years. Her experiences in Africa have been recorded in The Color Of A Lion’s Eye, released earlier this year.

The note of solemnity that had begun the conversation about Jane’s condition, changed to one of shared acknowledgement as we talked about Jane’s resilience and strength. And after a few moments, we were laughing about adventures several of us had experienced with her; e.g., “The 6-Day,” a leadership training course in which we rappelled off the side of a mountain and endured the famous “Tyrolean Traverse.” During this exercise, we were strapped at our waists and had to propel ourselves, hand over hand, across a wire strung above a ravine yawning beneath us. What we remembered was how long some of us (Jane and I included) hung in the middle of the wire and, finally, those who had made it to the “farther shore” sat on the end of the wire so that it sloped downward, and we could get off. These efforts of fellow participants underlined the support we had been promised when we entered the rigorous program. We were greeted by cheering supporters who massaged bound muscles in our arms and told us how accomplished we were to have moved across the wire. Actually, the Tyrolean Traverse is a good metaphor for the support of friends.

It was late when we drove away from the dark countryside near Church Point, but the three of us left the celebration at the Bourque’s table feeling not only the warmth of strongly-supportive relationships in which all of us “saw the same truth” but were buoyed by the “real glory of friendship.”

And we just know that Jane is going to make it across that yawning ravine again.