I have a number of favorite poems that I have memorized, that have stayed with me over the years. One is William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow":
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
Another is from the 18th century haiku master Buson:
Pressing Sushi
After a while
A lonely feeling
But my all time favorite poem is one which is probably the most obscure, devoid of syntax, and written by a woman with a developmental disability who was living in a group home at the time it was composed.
Everybody
by Shirley Nielson
I was wearing a blue
coat. it was cabbage and wieners.
They were big cooked wieners,
the smell was cabbage
ah delicious smell
of cabbage out not summer noise
was
running water in the kitchen somewhere.
Here's why I love it, why it is my most treasured poem of all time.
First, you are grabbed by the lapel and taken into the WTFness of the poem straight away. The author, the tour de force, is unapologetically wearing a blue coat. It is blue. Just so there is no doubt about what color it is. But wait, it is not just blue but CABBAGE AND WIENERS. A coat! Made from cabbage and wieners! What kind of world is this. I want to know.
So the coat is cabbage and wieners. And mind you, not just any wieners, but Big Cooked Wieners. You know the kind. We've entered into the insanity, but it's a kind of safe house with nice smells. "The smell was cabbage." Cabbage isn't like lemon torts or cinnamon cloves, but notwithstanding it is the best thing going in this homey asylum
ah. delicious. smell.
Do you have any reason to doubt it? Shirley was wearing a blue coat, and she let you know it from the start. She establishes her credence in the Once Upon A Time setting of her wardrobe, moving into not just wieners and cabbage, but go-big-or-go-home wieners, and "the smell" was cabbage, as if there was no other smell in the world. Ah delicious smell. What is it about the smell of cabbage that transports her back, with you in the back seat of the Model T, to cabbage in the summer, in the quiet kitchen, the curtains waving and folding in the breeze. And all that can be heard is out not summer noise was running water in the kitchen somewhere.
Why do I love this obscurely published poem written by a developmentally disabled women who lived in a group home so much? It does what great writing does: it takes me somewhere. It doesn't matter that the boat we're sailing on to get there is cabbage and wieners--what matters is they are big cooked wieners and there is confidence in a blue coat. The righteous formality of syntax has been left like a tailpipe and bumper at the station. I hear the water running. It is somewhere, not here. I am in the kitchen, and I have no idea why. But I'm there.
The little children will inherit the earth. Syntax is the language of the Church, and it has it's place. But it's 'church speak.' If you don't know what a narthex is, or an alb, or a consecration--but you DO know coats and cabbages and the sound of water, somewhere, THAT is what you use to describe the transcendental reality of "Everybody." Not everyone speaks the language of academics; but then again, not everyone sees with the eyes of a child. You may not know what a vestment is, but you know you are wearing a blue coat. You may smell incense and be taken away to a heavenly realm, but you might also smell cabbage cooking and hear water running in the kitchen somewhere and remember your mother who passed away when you were twelve. Ah delicious smell.
When we share the Good News of Jesus Christ with others, we would do well to offer them a ride rather than a tract. As a writer, this is what I try to do. I'm a story teller at heart. I love truth--not my truth, but capital T truth. Whether someone gets there by the lofty angelic proposals of Aquinas or the symbolism of Tolkien or the wit of Chesterton or the characters of O'Connor, all roads lead to Rome, to Christ, eventually.
But that doesn't mean there aren't absurdities along the way. That's why I am utterly convinced that we need to laugh the laugh of blue coats and big cooked wieners from time to time, because the realm of the angelic is ordered by reason, but we here on earth can enjoy a little of the absurd grace we have experienced in how God has worked in our lives. That is a story in itself, and we all have them--whether you are mentally disabled and remembering your mother and throwing syntax out the window to bring her back, or you are an engineer who rationally reasoned his way into the Church by way of proofs and counter-points. Like our motto in our family when we have people over for dinner--we share what we have, and what we have, we give.
I don't criticize tone too often in the work of evangelization, since everyone has their styles, but I do cringe slightly from time to time. Then again, I try to remember that St. Augustine was initially put off by the crudeness of the language of the written Bible that he was turned off by it....yet it won him over in the end, in all its coarseness. "We are not meant to be successful, but faithful" as Mother Teresa said. Successfully or not, swallowing red horsepills whole can get stuck in the throat if we're not careful--a little castor oil makes it go down a bit smoother.
I can't help being sensitive to tone because I am a writer, have always been a writer, and will probably die a lousy writer, unable to shake the compulsion to communicate with words until my death which will release me from my final assignment. It takes years to hone tone. Though I appreciate gruffness, I get turned off by the Westboro Baptist Churches of the world, the Franklin Grahams, the utilitarian crassness and unrelenting dourness of certain strains of Catholicism. Not that I'm any affodicio, and maybe its a matter of preference--that what turns one off may turn another on to something greater, or wake them up when nuance might be shrugged off or disregarded. People are watching you. People are listening to you, and watching your tongue and who you are cutting down and who you are talking about. They watch from the shadows, taking in your actions through a straw. Speak the truth, but don't forget the charity.
Personally, I like stories. I like images. I like being moved by simple things like red wheel barrows and blue coats, or glazed rainwater and running faucets somewhere, or the moonlight loneliness of preparing to eat alone, and of what's real in this world as a way of pointing to the next: wine and bread, weddings, lamps, tears, funerals, friends, the smell of nard, the heartache of betrayal, the hope of restoration, miracles, paradox, and everything getting turned on its head. Blue coats. Cooked Wieners. The smell of cabbage. And out not summer noise running water in the kitchen somewhere
"Personally, I like stories. I like images." ME TOO!
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