July 26: Ecstatic Visions, Beverly Matherne, "The Vision of Madame Brignac"

I have always loved stories of saints and ecstatic visions.  Saint Francis of Assisi seeing an angel and receiving the stigmata.  Saint Teresa of Avila being pierced by a seraph's golden lance.  People levitating, entering altered states of consciousness.

For a while, I thought I would want to experience this kind of ecstatic vision.  But these visions usually are accompanied by a lot of responsibility.  Heavenly directions to minister to lepers.  Things like that.  And pain.  Usually, the visions entail some kind of pain, and I'm not really down with suffering.

There's a part of writing poems that's a little visionary, I think.  Every good poem has a moment that approaches ecstasy.  I sometimes call it the "breathless" moment, when I'm reading a poem and it just sucks the oxygen right out of my lungs.  That's when I know that a poem is really working.

Saint Marty will get his ecstasy from poetry and leave suffering to saints and martyrs. 

The Vision of Madame Brignac

by:  Beverly Matherne

Mme. Brignac stirred white flour into cooking oil for andouille gumbo.  She prepared the dish only once a month.  Sausage cost more than she had.  She though of her dead husband, Emile, glanced at his burial crucifix above her door.  She used to make gumbo every Sunday, in honor of him.

The roux was becoming the color of chocolate when Mme. Brignac heard leaves rustle and twigs snap on the path to the door of her shack.  She rested her cooking spoon in a saucer and slid her pot onto the back burner of her stove.

She looked out the window and saw, walking toward her, a young mother holding her little boy by the hand.  The two, barefoot, wore clothes made of flour sacks.  When they saw Madame Brignac at her window, they raised their open palms for bread.  Mme. Brignac reached for the latch of her door.  At once, blinding light flooded its frame and filled the room.  The two beggars appeared before her.  The mother smiled.  Blood flowed from her son's hands.

"Who hurt him?" asked Mme. Brignac.  "Is your pain bad?" she asked the boy.  The boy didn't answer.  The scent of jasmine rose from his wounds.

Rain fell on her tin roof.  Mme. Brignac heard a strange sound, the rhythm of gourds.  She glanced toward the sound, at the foot of the mother, into the red throat of a rattlesnake.  Mme, Brignac wanted to warn her, but the mother stood motionless.

She shone like ginger lilies, like the moon, like Emile's crucifix at dawn.

October 14: Live Water, Wisconsin Dells, Wedding Anniversary

Live water heals memories . . .

Greetings from the Kalahari Resort in the Wisconsin Dells, home of much live water.  We just returned from the water park where my son dragged me up and down many water slides.  I floated down the lazy river with my daughter.  I sat in the outdoor hot tub with my wife.  Like I said, lots of live water.  Not sure it's the kind that Dillard is talking about, but it made me feel alive.

Since my daughter has been nine or ten, my family has been coming here every year for this dance convention.  It just so happens that today is also my wedding anniversary.  Twenty-one years.  Our marriage has had its ups and downs.  Huge ups and huge downs.  But, through a lot of grace, we have endured.  I'm talking a LOT of grace.

I've been dealing with memories today.  As I was sitting with my daughter in the hot tub this evening, she asked me how long my wife and I have been married.  When I told her, she laughed and said, "Wow, you are really old."  For a year of our marriage, my wife and I were separated.  It had to do with my wife's bipolar and struggle with sexual addiction.  During that separation, my daughter, who was in kindergarten, was my lifesaver.  Some nights, she was the only thing that kept me tethered to the world.

There were a lot of people (friends and family) who didn't understand why I reconciled with my wife.  People who thought I should simply walk away from our marriage.  Cut my losses, so to speak.  But I didn't.  I couldn't.  For my daughter, myself, my wife, I chose love and forgiveness instead. 

And here I am.  Twenty-one years after my wife and I exchanged vows.  With a beautiful, talented fifteen-year-old daughter and smart, funny eight-year-old son.  Surrounded by live water and love.  As the new Nobel literature laureate Bob Dylan once said, "Behind every beautiful thing, there is some kind of pain."

Saint Marty will take the pain, because the beauty is worth it.