Sinsinawa Wisconsin 1979

 

Sinsinawa, Wisconsin 1979

chloroplasts

In memory Sinsinawa is corn country.

Green was the color of the sparkling corn--

early September, tall as a man, six foot tall like me.

Green corn, Chlora’s country, Flora’s country,

where the Sinsinawa River runs along the hills south 

towards the Father of Rivers in neighboring Illinois.

I half-swam through corn under all the light I couldn’t see.

God’s glory-green grace, tasseled tops, 

couldn't see over it, couldn't see around it, 

had to go through at the door.

We were there for five days of Counseling Learning,

a method developed by Father Charles Curran from

Carl Rogers' client-centered therapy.

The teacher became the counselor, the students clients. 

The counselor's work was to Understand the client;

being understood would  remove the affective filter obstructing learning.

That was the theory. We were the practice, 

a group of some twenty language teachers,

alternating roles as counselor and client. 

Understanding and being Understood.

In white history--ignoring all before the Black Hawk War--

Sinsinawa was papist, settled by the Dominican sisterhood

since the 1840s--a century of popes before the advent

of Father Curran and his counseling crew.

Now lingered no odor of the conventicle

every Jack and Jill among us ecumenical,

myself not least among them,

though raised hard shod as a typical prod.

My highschool class had but one papist body

Doubt I ever spoke to her but her name was Dolores.

The papists had a church but no burying ground

like that of the blacks it was located outside town.  

Now however I was in Dominican Sinsinawa

aged 33 as sweet Jesus before me

for the first time in thirty years of stumbling

Understood at last, 

I saw that I would be able to live my life,

to get through the whole thing, start to end

not to stumble and die by the road in a ditch

as my prophetic soul had always foretold me.

One Sunday post-noon a group of us took a walk

through the cornfields. As was my wont, I strayed away

like Ruth among the alien corn.

In this world of green sermons written on the leaves,

the thought came to me 

that this was the first group I'd ever belonged to,

the first ever to accept me,

unwashed, unredeemed, unforgiven as I was.

Thy people, my people.

I turned and rejoined them

among the corn leaves in a light I could not see

in a light that I had never seen.

Under the sunlight’s sword,

Sinsinawa was my Damascus road, 

though I didn't know it then

my moment of the Damascene.