Margaret O'Bryan Brodnax, Teacher Extraordinaire

I came late in learning of the passing of one of my English professors, Dr. Margaret Brodnax. She died at her home  on March 30, 2013 at the age of 80.  There was a nice obituary in Samford University’s Seasons which came in the mail this week and gave me the news.  She lived a full life with academic achievement, lay leadership in the Episcopal Church, and was an early advisory board member for the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.  I knew Margaret Brodnax as one amazing teacher. She knew her topic and she kept her students engaged in the material. My first encounter with her was in a World Lit class my sophomore year and she certainly helped to make that a memorable year.

“It Was All about Sex and Jesus”

Margaret Brodnax did two things to shake up my world that semester.  The first shake up came when my first written assignment was handed back to me full of red marks. There was a “C” grade  and a note to see her after class. I went to her in shock, not accustomed to C’s, wondering what was wrong with the work I had turned in.

“For one thing,” she said, “it wasn’t written very well…” My head must have been spinning by then. “Not written very well!” I could not believe what I was hearing. The bottom line was that she wanted me to re-write the brief paper addressing all of her comments in the margins.  I think she wanted me to realize that I was just skimming the surface of the reading material, responding with some cursory answers. She wanted me to delve into the reading assignment to find the nuances of meaning and to take note of some core life issues.  After I did the re-write, she gave me a better grade, smiled and said, “That was so much better, Charles.”

The second thing she did was the astounding way she brought ancient Greek literature to life. I was a 19 year old ministerial student who had not seen much beyond my rural Baptist environment in Tallapoosa County before arriving at Samford. It seemed that with every Greek drama or myth that we studied, Dr. Brodnax brought it home to us by appealing to our adolescent hormones and our Sunday School lessons from home. I was in no small way unnerved by that. Back in the dorm I told my friends, “No matter what our reading assignment is, she relates everything to sex and Jesus!”  Years later, after I had finished grad school, traveled the world and was on my second job, I took it upon myself to read Joseph Campbell’s Masks of God series. Campbell opened up the ancient world and their grounding mythologies to explain not only their world but the heritage we have received from those ancient times. As he explained the ancient fertility rites and the spiritual concepts of our ancient forebears, it hit me: “Margaret Brodnax was right! It all comes down to sex and Jesus!”

It Was All about Being Fully Engaged in Life

Well, in my early college days, I was glad to get out of Dr. Brodnax’s class with a decent grade, but I was afraid she was a little too much for me to handle. Then came my senior year when I needed one more elective to complete my English Major. Dr. Brodnax was teaching a graduate level course on Edmund Spenser, with the bulk of the course addressing The Faerie Queene.  She granted me permission to take that graduate curriculum to be counted as a 400 level course  in order to fulfill my academic requirements. I was a little bit intimidated at first. There were only five in the class and I was I there with those graduate students! In addition, we had to actually present our term papers in class.

Throughout that course, Margaret Brodnax was nothing but supportive.  One of the texts that she wanted us to use was a specific edition of The Faerie Queene. She told me, “You don’t need to buy that one; I’ve got an old copy you can have.” The course unfolded into a wonderful experience.  My paper dealt with Sir Gawain and the Red Night, and my research actually became for me a process of spiritual enrichment.  Her final note to me written on the last page of my paper was, “I hope you enjoyed writing this as much as I enjoyed reading it.”  That was a long way from the first comment she had made back during my sophomore year. It also indicated progress that I would not have made without dedicated and engaged teaching.

That is the way she was.  Nothing was routine or matter-of-fact for her. In her classes, she did not simply impart information. She made connections with the students to bring the subject matter to life.  Literature was intensely important and she took her role as teacher very seriously. She intended to see that every student was awakened to the essence of life that was reflected in the stories we read. She wanted us all to be fully engaged in life.  Margaret O’Bryan Brodnax, teacher extraordinaire! May she rest in peace.

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Saturday Haiku: Walking the Dog at Night

  Crickets in the grass,

        bats chirping in darkened skies;

        unseen life abounds!

                                                                          ~ CK

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Photo: "Midnight Mist" by Miguel Virkkunen Carvalh
            Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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"Where Everybody Knows Your Name"

    "Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you."

                                                                                    ~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

                                                                                   (from The Measure of My Days)

Last week one of the TV stations was running back-to-back episodes of the 1980s comedy series, Cheers.  I was busy with other things so I wasn’t attending to the program, but each time I heard the theme song, something glad arose inside. That was part of the attraction of the series. Not only was the writing excellent and the acting from the ensemble cast top notch, the theme song effectively gave us the gestalt of the fictional bar in Boston.  When the series originally aired, I tried to catch it each week, and I would always listen to the theme song that began and ended each episode. For some reason, listening to the theme was just as important as watching the episode.

We Need Community

That Cheers theme reminded us of the need for community. It reminded us that when life throws us a curve, when disappointments abound, it is important to have a place to go “where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.” None of us escapes hardship in this life. No one is immune to misfortune. That is why it is important to have a community we can turn to.

What’s more, even in the good times we cannot do what we need to do to have a good life without help from others.  There are numerous things I cannot do for myself and would not even know where to start. For example, I like to bake.  One day it occurred to me that even though I rely upon baking soda for many recipes, I had no idea where it comes from. If other people were not producing it and packaging it, my life in the kitchen would be sorely limited.  

There are numerous other examples of how we all need others for everyday living: flipping the light switch, turning the water faucet, setting the thermostat in the room, placing the garbage out on the curb – all represent actions which require a host of others to make work properly.  Yet these are just everyday factors that occur and we seldom see any of the people who make those things happen. Our real sense of belonging comes from the people with whom we interact face-to-face, the people we personally connect with. They are our family, our community, our strength and our support.

Finding Community, Creating Family

We all have those days when life deals a cruel blow – an accident on the road, an illness, or a family tragedy.  Maybe it is a betrayal, a job loss, or turn of events that seems to make the bottom fall out. Those are the days when community and friendship are all the more important.  I hope you have that community. From my experience community occurs in two ways: it arises and it is sought out.

For most of us, though we have a family of origin, we also have a family of our own choosing. Sometimes the family of origin is fraught with so much baggage and unnecessary expectations, that one cannot find that support that is needed. Robert Frost famously wrote in his poem, “The Death of a Hired Man” that “Home is the place where, when you go have to there, they have to take you in.” Certainly, that is important to remember, but we also need that family that is there to cheer us on and support us, not just to take us in if they have to. That is where we find our true community and our true family.

That true community will often just arise out of out friendships and contacts. Community, however, is too important not to be sought out.  Some find that community at church. Some find it in their neighborhood (though our modern neighborhoods are becoming places of isolation where we may be living in the company of strangers).  Others find community in service organizations, civic clubs or in community projects. Your community could be a reading group, a choir or a Bible study group.

Whatever your community is, wherever you find family, be sure to nourish it during the good times so you will have someone to turn to in the bad times. On any given day, good or bad, it’s always good to go “where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came. You wanna be where you can see our troubles are all the same. You wanna be where everybody knows your name.”