RETEACHING BEAUTY

When Francis preached love to the birds
They listened, fluttered, throttled up
Into the blue like a flock of words

Released for fun from his holy lips.

(Seamus Heaney “St. Francis and the Birds”)

Seamus Heaney’s 1966 poem is beautiful verse on a beautiful story of beautiful creatures. It calls out for beautiful visual representations. Yet years ago, our youngest son, almost three, visited campus and concluded, regarding a somewhat abstract framed print of St. Francis and the birds, “He loved butterflies and worms.”

Fair enough on the butterflies, in artistic interpretation, birdlike, I thought, but I never did see the worms. I’m not a fan. They wash out onto the sidewalks on rainy days and are slimy and icky and all-around uncanny.

Shame for my unfair worm aversion turns me toward another frequently taught poem on Francis, Galway Kinnell's "Saint Francis and the Sow," and its central line:

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness

Kinnell’s poem insists on the loveliness of the sow in all its earthiness and physicality. So often, we do see around us those who need to be retaught their loveliness, students and colleagues who are anxious, who are overwhelmed or overcommitted, who are ill-prepared, who have lost confidence. We can misinterpret and feel only an aversion, as with worms. We feel we are preaching love, but people do not always flutter up into the blue. Some stay grounded and often ground down.

To “retell” them of their beauty, we must first recognize it ourselves. Continuously, we must reteach ourselves to recognize the loveliness in the difficult, the person who appears lazy, entitled, combative, or even mean. I start by finding the people who do flutter, who delight in a “flock of words” and other fun. And there are many of them. Sustained by these flocks, I can begin to give grace to the ground down, to believe their inherent loveliness and then let this belief reteach.

Katherine P. Beutel, Ph.D.
Dean of Arts and Sciences/Institutional Effectiveness
Professor of English

Lourdes University

"Francis Preaches to the Birds," Brian Wildsmith

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Franciscan Month Reflection Series

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