I’m writing this on Tuesday, March 25—a fascinating confluence of a day because it’s Flannery O’Connor’s 100thbirthday, it’s Dante Day in Florence (because it’s the day Dante traditionally is held to have begun his journey in the Divine Comedy), and it’s the Annunciation—during medieval times, typically celebrated as the New Year.
So it’s a day of beginnings: of life, of redemption, of incarnation.
Maybe that’s saying the same thing three times.
But these beginnings are also introductions to profound difficulties: for O’Connor, the loss of her father to lupus in her teens, the loss of a burgeoning literary life in New York and a constrained return to Georgia in her mid-20s, and the loss of her health and energy in her own battle with lupus. For Dante, his was a journey necessitated by the loss of his citizenship and his status, of his family and his friends, and of his city and his home. In important ways, then, both O’Connor and Dante are writers in exile—moving through bitter disappointments and displacements as they tried to chronicle an ever clearer vision of God’s overwhelming love and grace.
It must have been rather daunting for them both: one diagnosed with a terminal illness, one kicked out of a city that he had loved and led. How bleak everything must have looked. I can imagine lesser souls, lesser artists, giving up in the face of it all. And who would blame them? Not to mention the cast of characters that they were surrounded by: the sinners and freaks that people earth. Dante and O’Connor are both masterful in depicting all the ways humans betray and disappoint.
And then there’s the third figure of today’s triumvirate: Mary. Talk about daunting: being asked to mother the Son of God. And yet, she, too, responds in song, making art out of this moment of supreme challenge, her Magnificat powerful in its proclamation.
They give me hope.
For one thing, even as things were really dire—Dante was always without a home in his exile away from his family, O’Connor died before she was 40, and Mary’s life was never easy–they kept doing the work, kept telling the hard truth, kept being faithful to their calling.
For another, their stories are of people dwelling in a world of fear and failing whom God pursues, wherever they are—in the dark wood or rural Georgia or long ago Nazareth. That’s something I need to cling to as it feels like there are still dangerous beginnings in the woods (be they dark or back or ancient) that we have to traverse.
As O’Connor observed, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
That feels pretty convicting—because some (most?) days I just want to look away. It’s too much. I love, though, that St. Flannery and St. Dante (and the Virgin Mary, too) are all a little “too much” themselves. They are unapologetically fierce in their art, forcing our attention to the brokenness of the world, but absolutely committed to reminding us where the true power lies: in the “Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”
Today, I am grateful for their witness.
13 Responses
Bless you.
Yes. Bless you. Thank you.
Thank you for the encouragement you gave me in this blog.
Thank you, Jennifer.
In this time of spiritual and political uncertainty, I need reminders that strength, fierceness and commitment can be cultivated and produced.
I also want “to move through bitter disappointments and displacements” in order to discover and lavishly share a “clearer vision of God’s overwhelming love and grace.”
Blessings.
Amen. Thank you for your words this morning.
As O’Connor observed, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
All of this is so good.
Thank you.
Thanks for this, Jennifer. Funny you should refer to her as Saint Flannery. I started writing fiction decades ago after reading O’Connor’s stories, and have always seen her then—if Protestants have personal saints—as my patron saint. I owe her everything.
Nice! Harry Cook.
I, too, was introduced to Flannery O’Connor early in life. I wrote a response to “The Artificial Nigger” in undergraduate college and became a fan of O’Connor. Thank you for reminding me of her writing. I have reread a few of her stories a few years ago and might do it again. The best always deserved a second, third, or fourth reading.
I truly believe you and others in the RJ clan are clairvoyant. You think and write, using just the right stories, that touch our hearts and calm our minds. I, too, need to return to Flannery O’Connor; to reread those that I so loved years ago. Thank you.
Flannery is one of my heroes. Reading her very personal prayer journal makes me realize what a brave struggler she was. We are blessed by such complicated, honest saints. Happy birthday, Flannery. Thanks, Jennifer.
Thank you for your words about these witnesses and convergences. An Alice Walker quotation comes to mind “To acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves, that the line stretches all the way back, perhaps to God; or to Gods. We remember them because it is an easy thing to forget: that we are not the first to suffer, rebel, fight, love and die. The grace with which we embrace life, in spite of the pain, the sorrow, is always a measure of what has gone before.” Even as – just today – I took photographer Brian Lanker’s I Dream a World 1989 book from my shelf to be renewed in spirit again – by his portrait/interviews of 75 Black Women Who Changed America. It’s the first text I studied, page by page, when DT was first elected; time to study it again.
I too, adore Saint Flannery, but today especially I can’t thank you enough for referencing her comment about “our ability to stomach it”.
I had just finished reading KK duMez’s recent column and I am losing the ability to stomach the political culture in which we live. Thank you Jennifer, you are such a gift!