IONA, BLESSINGS, AND MIRACLES

There are numerous monasteries, convents, retreat houses, and churches that combine prayer and daily Bible reading with action for justice and peace, and one of the names that is on the bucket list of Anglicans searching for a place to join with others in carrying out this work is the Isle of Iona. Iona lies off the west coast of the Isle of Mull where St. Columba, an Irish monk, settled and influenced the establishment of Christianity in England, Scotland, and the European mainland. Iona, the site of a restored Benedictine abbey, attracts followers devoted to rebuilding “community,” and is populated by people from all walks of life -- followers who flock there to work in the kitchen and laundry and to light candles, lead morning services, or conduct sessions of Aramaic prayer for as many as ten weeks of volunteer service.

Sister Lucy, former head sister of St. Mary’s Sewanee, Tennessee, led many pilgrims to Iona and is reputed to have called forth miracles in this “thin place” off the coast of Scotland.  I’ve often told the story of a miracle about The Rev. Elmer Boykin, a good friend of mine (now deceased) who made one of Sr. Lucy’s pilgrimages to Iona years ago. It was a small miracle but nonetheless, one that reflects a kind of luminous clarity that occurred in a priest who suffered from Parkinson’s disease. During most of his life as a priest, Fr. Boykin had a booming voice that lifted the rafters when he preached and celebrated at the altar, but when he became ill, he not only lost his ability to celebrate, he could no longer read the Gospel at a service. When Sister Lucy was asked to conduct a service in the Abbey chapel at Iona, she walked up to The Rev. Boykin and in her characteristic no-nonsense way told him: “You read the Gospel.” Anne, the priest’s wife, hid her face in her hands in embarrassment, knowing that he hadn’t been able to proclaim the Gospel for several years. However, when the time came for the proclamation of the Gospel, The Rev. Boykin stood at the lectern and read it, every line reverberating in the old abbey chapel, and at that point in time, he reclaimed his voice. His wife Anne says that there was never a repeat performance, but in a restored abbey on an island off the coast of Scotland, he found his voice long enough to proclaim his faith.

The church in Iona was an early Celtic church, and the Celts, a strong part of the Anglican tradition, are impressive for their focus on blessing everything, from thresholds of homes and cooking pots to states of the heart. A blessing is an act that changes the atmosphere of a place or the heart of a person in a cogent way. In this new year, Fr. Matt Woollett, priest at the Episcopal Church of Epiphany in New Iberia, Louisiana (where I reside part of the year) has issued a call to parishioners to have their homes blessed, as is customary during the season of Epiphany. I had my home here blessed many years ago when the priest used the “long form,” blessing every corner and room, even the patio outside. The year that it was blessed, Hurricane Andrew roared through, flattening trees, destroying roofs, and flooding low areas in south Louisiana. However, although the wind squeezed my house back and forth like an accordion, it survived without harm, perhaps because “the defender of the household” had been invoked months before the storm.

For those who wish to read more about blessings that have Celtic roots, John O’Donohue has written a wonderful book of lyrical blessings entitled To Bless the Space Between Us that emphasizes seven rhythms of the human journey: beginnings, desires, thresholds, homecomings, states of the heart, callings, and beyond endings. He writes that “in the evocations of our blessings, the word ‘may’ is the spring through which the Holy Spirit is invoked to surge into presence and effect. The Holy Spirit is the subtle presence and secret energy behind every blessing…”

May you enjoy a blessed New Year.   

A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT WILDLIFE

I saw an armadillo running blindly at the edge of the coulee a few hours ago. He appeared to be scurrying away from something, and I wondered if he had a family waiting for a breakfast of ants, mosquitoes or, God forbid, termites he’d found in some neighborhood structure. He was probably disturbed by the commotion the neighborhood has experienced this week – a new roof went up a few doors down, my neighbor on one side had tree-height hedges trimmed, and three mountains of mulch from the grinding of pine stumps in our yard were whittled down to lawn level. I had already renamed our property “Mount Mulch” and after digging into the mix, our lawn maintenance man gave the mounds a lesser name when he discovered numerous ant piles beneath the ground-up pine stumps. This morning, those crows I had lamented about not seeing were drawn to the noise and came out to talk while I was sweeping the patio. They may have been the villains that chased the armadillo into the coulee.

The armadillo is not exactly my idea of a pet, but I’m fascinated by them. When I lived in Graham, Texas, I remember visiting an oilfield site with my petroleum engineer husband and my daughter, then three, and glimpsing one for the first time. My oldest daughter, Stephanie, had seen all the Beatrix Potter books, but her favorite was the story of Appley Dapply, the mouse with “little sharp eyes.” That day, an armadillo rushed past our car, and she exclaimed “Look at the big mouse!” Stephanie wasn’t far off track with her labeling because armadillos can be as destructive as a pack of rats. They burrow under houses and disrupt utilities, and in bayou country and Texas they’ve been known to spread leprosy if a human touches them or eats their flesh (and some people do consume armadillo meat!). At one time, a center here in New Iberia housed armadillos for the study of leprosy carried out by Dr. Polly Burchfield, an eminent scientist who now resides in Florida and continues to pursue research on this armor-plated animal.

My father didn’t die of leprosy, but he once shot an armadillo and removed the shell to make a basket for my mother, then had her cook the meat. As far as I know, the dish of armadillo had no effect on his digestion. Although my parents lived in the small town of Franklinton, Louisiana, and not in a rural area, my father had this image of himself as a great hunter and shot or trapped animals on the two lots bordering our home – rabbits, squirrels, armadillo, and hawks – and cleaned them for my mother to cook in a black iron pot over an open fire in the living room fireplace. The hawk, by the way, became a hawk pie similar to chicken pot pie. This fare wasn’t served during the time I was growing up, but after I married, I was once treated to my mother’s version of rabbit stew. As far as I know, my father had no difficulty with his digestion and didn’t contract leprosy, but I have no desire to do a taste test on armadillo meat or any of the animals he killed or trapped while playing the great hunter in his backyard (which bordered the Roman Catholic Church and whose members never complained about his pursuit of this outdoor sport, even while Mass was in progress). My father also had beehives and harvested large quantities of honey, at times even allowing himself to be stung on the arm by his colony of bees because he claimed bee stings cured bursitis. In retrospect, I think he must have been caught up in a wilderness time warp.

I’ve written poems about armadillos that appeared in the backyard, but I think I’d have felt more frightened than poetic if I had seen the endangered pink fairy armadillo pass by my window. Talk about an ugly critter! This morning when I glimpsed what may have been a nine-band one running at the edge of the coulee, I didn’t feel very poetic – I only thought about further property destruction, having spent the greater part of our winter visit in New Iberia repairing house and yard.

In a few months I’ll be returning to The Mountain at Sewanee to prepare for the appearance of more wildlife – moles that have created a vast tunnel system in the backyard and have made it a wavering path to traverse, a family of skunks that loves to tear up insulation for nests and bed up under our cottage, and I’ve heard rumors about a black bear wandering around the campus this year. However, during the eight years we’ve lived on The Mountain, no armadillos.

BUNNY AND NON-BUNNYNESS

Six years ago, Ben Blanchard, a young man I’ve known since he was ten, illustrated a book-length poem I’d written entitled The Beast Beelzebufo, the story of a devil frog that was the largest frog ever to live on earth. At the time of the book’s publication, Ben was visiting his mother here in New Iberia but living in Sedona, Arizona and practicing as a raw foodist. He had graduated from the Raw Food Preparation and Organic Gardening School sponsored by the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center and was working on art projects in his spare time, one of which was The Beast.

A few years later, Ben, now working in Austin, Texas, wrote and illustrated his own book-length poem, Willameena Moonbeam, a story about children wishing for the sun to stay out all day so they could play outdoors, and when their wish comes true are dismayed that the world has become unbalanced.

In Austin, Ben became affiliated with the School of Acting and began working in film, a field he had aspired to enter after graduating from high school. Yesterday evening, in a private showing, we were treated to Ben’s first short film, Bunny and Non-Bunnyness, a dark comedy that showcases his considerable artistic talents. Ben wrote and directed the film with Luftfield Studios in Austin, probing an existential ("egg-istential") crisis the Easter bunny undergoes when he realizes that no one believes in him anymore. He says “If no one believes in me anymore, what’s the point of making art?”

One of the many themes Ben presents concerns the Easter bunny’s egg painting, which symbolizes the controversy about whether pop art is really art. In the background of the setting, viewers see stacks of eggs waiting for the artistic bunny to recover from his angst and paint. There are deep levels in the short movie that reveal Ben’s knowledge of Buddhism and reincarnation and a concept pointed out by one of the Bunny’s fellow artists: before an artist can be reborn, he must die to the idea that he has to be recognized by others in order to succeed.  

Ben photo-shopped what he thought the film would look like before creating the video and spent a year working with producer Alexis Gabriel Ramirez of El Paso, Texas on production, then helped raise money to finance its completion.

A self-taught artist, Ben thinks that the best way for a person to learn an art form is to practice it and to surround himself with people who are dedicated to their art. He recognizes fellow artists like Meredith Johns, the woman who created the make up for the film and who has a formidable record in her field, having worked on movies such as True Grit. Ben's ambition is to enter Bunny and Non-Bunnyness in film festival competitions and to adapt the shorter film to a full-length narrative film.

“The way to succeed in Art is to marry and get the best experience from something that combines many forms of disciplines at one time,” Ben says. “Film combines music, costume, creative writing, architecture, and artistic set-making in one experience.” He might also say that a bit of philosophy, knowledge of world religions, and psychological perception enhance the mix.

A fifteen-minute performance brought forth “bravos” from this talented young man’s private audience, and we were home by 9:30, driving under a three-quarter moon (one of Ben’s favorite art subjects) from Broussard, Louisiana where Ben is enjoying a brief visit with his mother. We wish him the best in his “art making” and hope Bunny and Non-Bunnyness garners a 1^st place in film competitions this coming year.