On Pageants and Pantoums

Some of my favorite things. Lullaby lyrics by Kate Bluett. A pantoum by James Matthew Wilson. A prayer request for one family.

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

I recently had the great pleasure of watching a group of preschoolers, ranging from 3 to 5, perform in a Christmas pageant. Every cue that could have been missed was indeed missed wildly. Joseph faced everywhere but the audience while Mary held her baby securely in a headlock. The wise men wandered endlessly like a small Magellanic cloud. From the audience you could see the enthusiastic gesticulations of a grown up urging the children to move forward, stop, or come back—seemingly all the same time? The beauty and joy of such a production is not in its perfect execution, but in the flawed, unselfconscious acting of small children.

Thus we begin, making the art of a child. As we get older we are given the opportunities to iterate and make things more sophisticated, applying acquired knowledge to what we create. Ultimately, we want to make art that reflects our greatest abilities, our best selves. No other life has inspired as much art as the life of Jesus, and some of the more beautiful and poignant works are that which depict the Nativity.

Christmas is a time of gift giving, and art is a multifaceted present. First, there is the gift of talent that God gives the artist. Then there is the gift of time that the artist sacrifices to hone their craft and create their work. Finally, when the art is offered to the world, the gift is shared and reshared with others, whether it be a painting, a song, a play, a narrative, or another form.

As my gift to you I thought of sharing a couple of things I find beautiful.

A longtime Facebook friend of mine, Kate Bluett, writes prolifically on her website, often composing poems that are inspired by the weekly Mass readings. She is also a talented lyricist and a while back she and Paul Zach co-wrote the words to “Mary’s Lullaby (Black Haired Boy).”

Click here for the lyrics and more information on the song.

My second gift for you is a poem. As many of you know, I am a candidate in the MFA program at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. This past fall I took a class called The Craft of Poetry with James Matthew Wilson who is one of the most prominent Catholic poets of our time, and he has written many beautiful poems that follow Christian themes. Here is a pantoum that he wrote which First Things published in December, 2015.

The Christmas Preface 

There, in the hay’s warmth and the steaming sty, 
    The Word born to the frailty of flesh 
Cracks our mortality with a weak cry 
    And seals our life within his endlessness. 

The Word born to the frailty of flesh, 
    He lies wrapped in the cloths of mystery, 
And seals our life within his endlessness, 
    In infant finitude, eternity. 

He lies wrapped in the cloths of mystery, 
    The straining of small limbs, unopened eyes. 
In infant finitude, eternity 
    And love invisible we recognize. 

The straining of small limbs, unopened eyes 
    Draw us from torchlight to the light of glory, 
And love invisible we recognize 
    Shaping the child’s dream of the Christmas story. 

Draw us from torchlight to the light of glory. 
    Crack our mortality with a weak cry, 
Shaping the child’s dream of the Christmas story, 
    Here in the hay’s warmth and the steaming sty.

Printed with permission of the author.

Repetition is an aid that helps us remember things of great importance: names, histories, values, and lessons. Reiteration can also have an incantatory and meditative effect on us, as someone can experience when reciting the rosary or a litany. When a poet uses the pantoum for a religious subject, he takes assets of the repetitive form, and makes a poem evocative of prayer, asking God to “draw us from torchlight to the light of glory.”

Religious seasons are cyclical, often following nature’s irrepressible rhythm of life, death, and rebirth. Sometimes our sense of order is thwarted. Last night our family attended the vigil Mass for the fourth Sunday of Advent. Our pastor had rushed to church, forgetting his written homily somewhere along the way. He had spent the day with a family from our collaborative whose three-year-old child died suddenly that morning.

If you are the praying type, please pray for this family who instead of celebrating the joy of Christ’s birth is mourning their baby’s death.

It is hard to know what to think in times like these. But there is something I see in the last stanza of Wilson’s pantoum:

Draw us from torchlight to the light of glory. 
    Crack our mortality with a weak cry, 
Shaping the child’s dream of the Christmas story, 
    Here in the hay’s warmth and the steaming sty.

We cling to faith, hoping that something good, true and beautiful can be born from the steaming sty of the world. At this time of year, churches all over the world are staging productions of the Christmas story with small children playing members of the holy family or acting as shepherds, kings and angels. And all their lives, however long or short they may be, will end in a cracked mortality, rising into the light of glory.

Life is a gift to be lived with as much joy as we can give it.

Rejoice! He is born! Just as we rejoice when he is risen…

Wishing all of you and yours a blessed Christmas or whatever season you celebrate!