Here's to a Legend

There is something quite profound about live drama that can touch you in a way that television and cinema cannot achieve. I must have been around seven years old when I first experienced live theatre. The play was “Our Town”. At that age, I didn’t follow all of the plot line, but I can remember being quite impressed. On top of that, I was able to see the cast members back stage afterward. The reason I was able to mingle with the cast is that my mother was the director of the play, and the production was done by the senior class of Dadeville High School.

My mother, Mary Elizabeth Cook Kinnaird, was a Southern lady of class who believed that if you had Shakespeare, the Bible, and a silver tea service, you were set for life. She had a mission to bring culture wherever she lived. I witnessed firsthand how she sought to bring education, culture, refinement and faith to a small mill town where opportunities could be both limited and limiting. She would have been ninety years old on May 10, but she departed this life during the summer of 2000 at the age of 79.

She did all of those motherly things: kissing skinned knees to make them better, baking cookies, reading bedtime stories, sharing her children’s wonder at a snail on a leaf or a bug in a jar or a bird taking flight. Because she was also a high school English teacher, she had an influence on many other lives as well. My mother saw teaching as her calling and she was always very proud when she saw one of her former high school students doing well in life.

On a couple of occasions I had the privilege of hearing from her former students. Once I was at a gathering, and someone who saw my name asked if I was related to Mary Kinnaird. He then spoke with a kind of hushed pride that she had been his English teacher at Dadeville High School. “I didn't fully grasp when I was 16 the significance of all of those literary works she guided us through," he told me, "but by the time I was 40, I realized how much we really need that wealth of wisdom that is available in literature.” On another occasion, one of my former classmates happened to show up at my place of work. She told my work colleague, “His mother was a legend in our hometown.”

As a teacher, she was also proud of the high school plays she produced. In addition to “Our Town,” I recall seeing such classics as "I Remember Mama," "You Can't Take it With You," “Cheaper by the Dozen,” and "Pygmalion." These plays had appeared on Broadway, and I saw them for the first time at the Dadeville High School auditorium. My mother saw those plays and the many others her students produced as vehicles for her students' talent, and as one more way to give back to the community.

As a woman of faith, she continued in her role as teacher. She was just as comfortable teaching the Bible in her Sunday School class as she was teaching Shakespeare and Mark Twain to her high school students. She loved promoting education and the church. I can't tell you how many prospective students she took to Judson College (her alma mater) in her years as teacher, and there is no telling how many others she encouraged to go on to higher education. When the time came that she could no longer teach, that was a loss that she grieved over.

She certainly left the world a little better than she found it. That is the inspiration and challenge for all of us as we live our lives. She may have been a legend, but she was also my mother. I certainly think lovingly of her whenever I think of homemade cookies, bandaged knees, bugs collected in jars by kids, bedtime stories, literary works, live theater, and any number of other things that make life large and sweet.



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Silver tea service photo by Miki Duisterhoff (Getty Images)


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Now They Call Him Blessed

Now They Call Him Blessed  Saint

Note: this essay, as you will see, was written in 2011 after the beatification of Pope John Paul II. It has been getting some views this week in light of his canonization on Sunday, April 27.

Last Sunday, on May 1, the Vatican beatified Pope John Paul II, having placed him on the fast track to sainthood and echoing the shouts of "santo subito" that were heard at the late Pontiff's funeral. It was by all accounts a momentous and festive occasion. (You can read the Associated Press account here.)

The event was not without controversy. Some have questioned the rush to canonize the telegenic and charismatic pope who left his mark as he traveled the world during his long papal reign. The most chilling of the objections is the way the Vatican handled the cases of priests accused of sexual abuse during John Paul's tenure.

I do not agree with everything John Paul II said or did. I didn’t like his rebuke of Ernesto Cardinal or his silencing of liberation theology in Latin America. I did like his rebuke of capitalism in the same breath as his warnings about communism. I loved his stance against capital punishment and his speaking out against the U.S. going to war in Iraq (he said that “war would be a failure of humanity” – and he was right). I did not agree with a lot of his stances that seemed to be coming from an Old World culture. I agreed with his ecumenical spirit as exemplified by his visit to a Jewish synagogue in Rome (against the objection of Cardinal Ratzinger). I disagreed with his traditionalist stance regarding women.

But more than what I agreed with or disagreed with him about, the man made me hopeful. Here is what I wrote about John Paul II back in 2002, a little over a year after my family and I came into the Catholic Church:

On the Holy Father

How well I remember the day back in 1981 when we heard the news that the pope had been shot. I was not a Catholic then, but I was shocked that day. I felt sadness. I also felt fear and dread. I had seen a glimpse of what this pope could do in the face of totalitarianism, materialism, and oppression. The man who had stood in the sunshine and said to us all, “Be not afraid,” had been gunned down. Somehow, I sensed the abundant possibilities of this great man, and the thought of losing him felt like having to start all over. I was a Baptist seminarian in  Mill Valley, California at the time. One of our professors, Dr. William Hendricks, called upon the student body to pray for "our brother in Christ, John Paul II."

Now, as I look back over the twenty-one years since that day, I feel extremely blessed to have had those years living on the same planet as Pope John Paul II. If John XXIII opened a window, John Paul II threw open doors and tore down walls. He has stood in the open air of human dignity and freedom. Even though I may have sensed the possibilities 20 years ago, I could not have imagined what would unfold. He has been the ecumenical pope, a champion of the people, a spiritual advocate for justice, freedom, and peace. I have a brighter outlook on life and a greater hope that the world will work, and even thrive.

It was almost exactly 20 years after that fearful day in 1981 that I came into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. Yet even if I had never become Catholic, it would have been enough just to live in the world during the time of Pope John Paul II.

Charles Kinnaird
July, 2002

James Martin, Jesuit priest and a liberal voice wrote about JPII in America  magazine:

“One Vatican official stated recently that Pope Benedict XVI is beatifying his predecessor for who he was as a person, not for what he did during his papacy. In short, he’s not being named a “blessed” for his decisions as pope. This makes sense. Beatification (and later, canonization) does not mean that everything he did as pope is now somehow beyond critique. (Any more than everything St. Thomas More did is beyond critique: Should we believe that heretics should be burned because More has been canonized?) On the other hand, that line of thinking is a little mystifying: for you cannot separate a person’s actions from his personal life.

"But the emphasis on the personal life is an important one. The church beatifies a Christian, not an administrator. In that light, John Paul II clearly deserves to be a blessed and, later, a saint. Karol Wojtyla certainly led a life of “heroic sanctity,” as the traditional phrase has it; he was faithful to God in extreme situations (Nazism, Communism, consumerism); he was a tireless “evangelist,” that is, a promoter of the Gospel, even in the face of severe infirmity; and he worked ardently for the world’s poor, as Jesus asked his followers to do. The new blessed was prayerful, fearless and zealous. He was, in short, holy. And, in my eyes, anyone who visits the prison cell of his would-be assassin and forgives the man is a saint.”

You can read Father Martin’s entire article here.

There is another excellent article in Commonweal on the subject by journalist E.J. Dionne which you can read here.

You may also want to read the following posts on this blog site:

Something Is Happening Here but You Don't Know What It Is

Trending up, or moving backward?

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On the Death of Osama Bin Laden

On this day, some will rejoice and shout, some will feel relief but no resolution, and others will fear what may happen next. I've read a few comments of bloggers online and recommend the following:

Jim Burklo (Musings)  "A Meditation of the Death of Osama Bin Laden."

Nicholas Kristof, (On the Ground) "After Osama Bin Laden..."

Patrick Burrows, (Ordeal by Moleskin) "The Bible and enemies"



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