“A CONVERSATION WITH ST. BENEDICT AND MARY”

Chapel at St. Mary's Convent

Once a year I attend a silent retreat as an associate of St. Mary’s Convent, which is a gray stone building that houses an Anglican order of Sisters here on The Mountain at Sewanee, Tennessee. For at least two days, we attempt to keep silence, even at mealtimes when people like me, who’re accustomed to the convivial meals in Cajun country, must be quiet. We can’t even say “pass the salt, please,” which could translate, in my southern lexicon, as unmannerly, but simply denotes respect for the deep silence. A smile goes a long way. A nod of the head takes on heavy import.

Most of all, during such retreats, we’re exhorted to listen, an almost forgotten practice that helps unblock the transformations that are always hovering on the doorstep of our busy lives.  The theme of “A Conversation with St. Benedict and Mary” claimed my attention because it involved the Order of St. Benedict, an order that resides at St. Joseph’s Abbey, Ramsey, Louisiana, just 28 miles down the road from my birthplace in Franklinton. During my childhood, several monks from that order were sent to minister to the congregation at the Roman Catholic Church directly behind my mother’s house, and she, a staunch Episcopalian, spent her last years attending this church. She also provided breakfasts for the priests who served the little mission behind us, sometimes cooking half of a dozen eggs for one Irish priest who had a voracious appetite. As a teenager, I made many trips to the Abbey to fish in the pond beside it and became familiar with Gregorian, or plainchants, being sung at Evensong by the priests and seminarians who lived there.

After I became an associate of St. Mary’s six years ago, I became more interested in the Benedictine Order because the Sisters follow The Rule of St. Benedict. The Rule and a fictitious abbey formed the setting for a mystery co-authored by me and Isabel Anders entitled Chant of Death. Interwoven in the book are explications of chants followed by the devoted monks, and during the writing of Chant, Isabel and I listened to contemporary CDs performed by monks from Santo Domingo–Gary Entsminger and Susan Elliott, owners and publishers at Pinyon Publishing, also listened to chants while programming this book for publication. Susan even designed a cover that showcased an original chant she had composed while working on the book. In Chant of Death, Isabel and I explained that “the practice of chant, for the monks, was not only an act of worship, it was a spiritual exercise, a creation of unity that the singers themselves brought into being. Even the novices understood that the perpetuation of the traditional tones in sequence was a powerful sign to the world that God’s order prevails in the universe, that the Divine unity underlies all…”

The Rule of St. Benedict has been a guide for Benedictine monasteries and convents for 1500 years, but it also offers laypeople a plan for living a prayerful life. Adherents follow the rule of ora et labor (work and pray) daily. They vow to commit to stability, conversion, and obedience, and I’m particularly mindful of the “conversion” aspect, the idea that conversion is not a one-time experience, but that we remain open to conversion, walking constantly in God’s presence, opening our eyes and ears to convert to the way that God continues to lead us every day. Benedict believed that an open heart calls for a practice of prayer, work, study, hospitality, and renewal.

I often read and applaud the work of Esther de Waal, an Anglican who follows and writes about the Benedictine Rule. She emphasizes the role of poetry in Benedictine retreats in her book, Lost in Wonder, quoting from Roger Housdon: “[Poetry] dares us to break free from the safe strategies of the cautious mind… surely that is exactly why it has such a vital role to play in any spiritual exploration…” Amen!

For me, this brief retreat based on St. Benedict and Mary held at St. Mary’s Conference Center underlined the necessity for cultivating a sense of awe in the middle of frenetic daily life and for delighting in ordinary objects, people, and occurrences… for taking time to renew our spirituality and, as the Benedictine monks and Sisters do, to practice our own form of chanting in thanksgiving for the gift of life.

SNAKES ALIVE!

From The Beast Beelzebufo

A few weeks ago I talked, via telephone, with my ten-year old grandson Joel who lives in southern California and learned that he had added a new pet to his menagerie of two dogs, one cat, and sometimes frogs – a corn snake! I have known about Joel’s reptile obsession for several years and even wrote a rhyming picture book, illustrated by my young friend, Ben Blanchard, entitled The Beast Beelzebufo, a story about this prehistoric devil frog in Africa that was identified by scientists as the largest frog on earth.

I suppose that I could be accused of fanning Joel’s interest in herpetology and shouldn’t complain about his newest pet. But pictures of the coiled red corn snake that I saw online gave me a good case of grandmother willies and sent me scurrying for references on this reptile. Although the corn snake is actually a harmless snake, he looks sinister to me. Joel says that his pet can grow as tall as five feet (just my height) and has a life span of ten years, and he hopes that I can see him one day. However, I'm not anxious to visit while he's raising this pet.

The corn snake’s colorful skin attracted Joel, and I understand that the belly scales resemble maize, or, in our lexicon, corn. Early settlers often found these snakes coiled in their corn fields and corn cribs and surmised that they were eating corn, but they were really eating the rats that threatened their corn crop.

"16 inches long he
stretched, by far..."

 I think that Joel’s snake has red-to-orange coloring, but I really didn’t question him too closely. I wondered if he was feeding him tree frogs and lizards, two of Joel’s favorite reptiles, which are included in the snake’s diet. I think that he may be feeding his pet rats bought in frozen bulk. The procedure for feeding is that you take the rat from the freezer and allow it to defrost at room temperature, then use tongs to pick up the rodent by the tail and hold the prey in front of the snake so he can strike at it. Sometimes quail eggs can be offered for dessert; however, not on a regular basis. Come shedding time, after the snake’s eyes clear from the white sheen he’ll develop before shedding, Joel will have to soak the snake in warm water – probably in the same bath he once housed the wooden snake where I bathed. This warm water bath enables the snake to shed its skin within 24 hrs. I can visualize stepping on the newly-shed skin, and, no, I won’t be visiting anytime soon. I calculate that this nameless snake won’t die before Joel reaches the age of 20, so Joel will have to travel to Louisiana or Tennessee to see me. However, I may not escape the infamous corn snake. I read that some of them can be found on the salt dome islands near Cote Blanche Bay, some of my favorite haunts when I return to Louisiana every year.

This is probably more than you ever wanted to read about snakes.  I did write a poem about the new acquisition and have included it, along with pictures from The Beast Beezlebufo – I couldn’t bring myself to ask for a picture of this addition to Joel’s family.

A CALL FROM JOEL

I should have known when I gave him

a wooden snake at age four,

an object that he would leave

on the floor of my nightly bath

and under my bed on Via Tranquilo (?) Drive,

he would one day buy a corn snake

to wrap around his loneliness.

It runs in the family,

this reptile obsession,

his great-grandmother kept a pet garter snake

in a primitive encampment of the Dismals,

sport for a Golden Eaglet scout,

telling the story enough times for snakes

to imbed themselves in the consciousness

of three generations.

But what a multi-colored snake will do

for the heart, I do not know,

except that both great-grandmother

and my grandson were lonely,

tend to tell all when conversing

with anyone,

and silent snakes make good audiences.

Or perhaps both Dorothy and Joel

trusted that living with a harmless snake

posed a lot less threat

than encounters with human beings

coiled around their innocent play.

LISTING…

And that title of “Listing” doesn’t mean that I’m walking tilted to one side now that I’m a little older! It

indicates the activity of someone who is an inveterate listmaker, a person that others often call “obsessive-compulsive.” However, I’m in good company because such notables as Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Roget of Roger’s Thesaurus fame, and Benjamin Franklin (who heads the list of listmakers) listed daily. Of course, Franklin often fell behind in his task of checking off items on his various to-do lists, so much so that he had to create another maxim: “Perform without fail what you resolve.” Actually, some writers on the subject of listmakers contend that the author of Genesis was a model lister who wrote a list of what was done in a week’s time at the time of the Creation.

I begin my day by making, or looking at a list I prepared the night before. The list is only long enough to cover one sticky note that is posted in the kitchen, but during the day I mark out, crumple up, and remake at least two more post-it lists, each one with the name, time, and place of the tasks, and a huge, dark check mark that obliterates the mention of the task before I throw the list away. In other words, I make plans on sticky notes and tell myself that I am taking control of my daily tasks. And if I don’t accomplish that control, it isn’t because I didn’t make a good list.

The truth is that most listmakers create lists because they help them remember things. Lists also bring a little order into an otherwise chaotic day. They relieve tension and help us focus on the more meaningful work we plan to do after we have listed the “to do’s.” Lists are actual records of our ability to organize. Of course, some listmakers merely make lists and don’t follow them or do the corresponding action needed. If you’re a procrastinator, making a list doesn’t help because you never get around to the stage of checking off any items. And procrastinators usually don’t feel hopeless enough about their non-completions to get motivated. To them, “to do” is ta dum or ho hum.  

I’ve a notion that listmaking is almost an inherited behavior – or maybe it’s a habit learned from “snooping,” which I guess could be another useful activity. I say this because when my children or grandchildren enter my second home in New Iberia, Louisiana, they surreptitiously glance at the yellow post-it on my kitchen counter and somehow manage to read the entire document with a practiced sidelong look. This, of course, leads to the initiation of conversation – questions like “Why do you have to remind yourself to clean the bathtub at 10 a.m.?” Or “Don’t you know when your toenails need cutting? I mean, really, Mama, do you have to write down the day and hour of such things?” Then, they go home and make a list! My oldest grandson makes extensive lists in perfect draftsman’s print, and his lists are infinite in length, surpassing my messy, short post-its. His lists are perfectly printed to begin with and are on longer sheets of paper, so he doesn’t have to buy as many post-its monthly as I do.

I read another article about a serious adviser of listing called The One Planet Education Network, or OPEN, a global online education content provider that promotes listmaking. OPEN advocates that lists simply help us remember what we’ve accomplished and what we need to accomplish.

The one list that I’ve avoided making is the “bucket list,” a list of things I want to do before I die because then I’d have to list the time and place of these things as if the grim reaper were just around the corner, and I don’t want to be prodded into that urgency!

A word of advice about listmaking: just don’t try to do too much at once – like Ben Franklin who had to write more and more maxims to take care of his unaccomplished lists: “Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.” Or in the words of Ecclesiastes: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…”

And, by the way, there’s an actual Listmakers Anonymous for those who feel invalidated because they’re dubbed “obsessive-compulsive” characters and list daily.