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Friends United
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September/October 2007
A Quaker Take on the Spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi
By Katie Terrell
Katie Terrell, Marketing Associate for Friends United
Press
interviewed Terry Wallace about his new book,
Sparrow Seed: The Franciscan Poems. Their conversation follows:
Katie: You’re a Quaker, a 21st century writer. Why your interest in a 13th century man? A Catholic saint no less, a man we know largely for his preaching to the birds.
Terry: Most know Francis of Assisi only vaguely as the saint who had a penchant for preaching to congregations of birds. It’s a touching image, one that makes Francis cute and safe.
Katie: Cute and safe?
Terry: Francis today is too often treated as Jesus has been over the last few centuries. We’ve all heard of “Jesus meek and mild,” but that characterization is terribly misleading, for Jesus, though the very measure of humility, is hardly mild and meek. Ask the Pharisees who felt his judgment or the money changers in the Temple!
Likewise, “cute and safe Francis” helps us avoid meeting the real Francis, the man who fostered one of the great reform movements in Christianity—and did so without violence. We miss getting to know the man whose very example and temperament planted the seeds of the High Middle Ages and the development of the Modern era. We miss getting to know the man whose life and preaching so closely emulated the teachings of Jesus that people still revere him as one of the most Christ-like men in history.
Katie: That makes him a rather august and daunting figure!
Terry: Francis is anything but august and daunting. He’s one of the most approachable and down-to-earth saints in history. Francis started life rather privileged and wealthy (compared to the rest of the world) and jaded in his values. But his story only starts there. Francis challenges us all as he meets and follows his Lord, abandons his privileged life, turns his back completely on the pursuit of money and sets himself to live the Gospel. August and daunting? No. Francis is humorous, compassionate, understanding and meets us with an infectious joy for God’s creation and a deep empathy for all His creatures. His empathy and compassion touch the entire spectrum of human experience: from the outcast leper to the embittered victim of injustice; from selfish beggar to the violent murderer; from the fraudulent “saint” to the all-too-human zealous but misguided faithful individual.
Francis may be a 13th century man, but his life and work still have much to say to us today. He taught by example as much as by word. While others struggled mightily to raise themselves up, he worked to lower himself, to become more and more humble. While others strove to amass wealth and power, he sought to be Christ’s follower rather than a leader. Like George Fox in the 17th century, Francis took men and women to Christ and left them there.
Katie: Explain your book’s title: Sparrow Seed.
Terry: You might say that the entire book is meant to be seed for sparrows like us, stories to feed upon, kernels of spiritual food and wisdom. The title also is quite appropriate for Francis’ followers. They were to live lives as common as sparrows. Like sparrows, they trusted in God’s providence to provide what they needed and exhibited a total lack of interest in fame and fortune. They were to walk freely over the earth, preaching God’s love and calling all men and women to faithfulness. And Francis loved sparrows, birds that in their very nature reflect the lives of his followers in their commonness, lowliness and freedom.
Katie: You spent several years working on the manuscript of Sparrow Seed. Why did you feel that this particular project warranted so much of your time?
Terry: You might say I’ve been preparing to write this book for most of my life, since I first discovered and began reading biographies of Francis’ life in my teens. Francis has always had a strong hold on my imagination and I wanted to do his life and story justice. I wanted my portraits of Francis and the early Franciscans to be both historically and spiritually accurate. That meant researching the life and times of Francis and his followers, especially the early medieval texts that bring one closer to the real man than modern biographies do.
Katie: Why did you chose to write using the dramatic monologue form of narrative poetry?
Terry: The dramatic monologue proved the perfect vehicle to bring Francis and his early followers back to life. The monologue is a poem in the voice of a single character speaking to one or several silent, yet expressive, listeners. The speaker tells his or her story at a point of white-hot realization and reveals a great deal about his life, character and values, and the nature of his world very quickly. The monologue is by its very nature easy to read, dramatic and immediate.
Katie: The point of view shifts from poem to poem throughout the book, allowing the reader to be St. Francis, then a member of the brotherhood, a stranger, etc. Why not simply write from one point of view?
Terry: The shift in point of view from poem to poem was necessary. For instance, what was Francis’ impact on the women of his day? How did he treat them? Only the women could testify to that, and so some of the poems are in the voices of his female followers. Likewise, what was Francis’ effect on the people who met and joined with him? What we find is that they’re people like us, men and women who struggle with pride, anger, envy, too much talk with too little practice of the Gospel. Men and women like ourselves who struggle to be obedient to Christ within us.
Katie: In the poem “Sparrow Feathers,” you write, “A sparrow should take nothing but his feathers.” What have you learned from this project, about St. Francis, life, writing, etc., that you will take with you?
Terry: When Francis says this line, he’s simply telling us “travel light, dear friends,” except he would add a “very” or two: “travel very, very light!” We Americans travel very heavy with all the weight of our cars and houses, our tons of possessions and properties upon our shoulders. Francis reminds us that we don’t need much, but he’s not sour-faced about it. He’s in love with being the poorest person on earth. He loves not only his life, but all creation. He’s a man brimming with joy, even in moments of deep suffering, and he challenges us to see God’s creation with the fresh eyes of someone witnessing miracle after miracle.
I also love Francis’ very human side: his struggle to be faithful, his embarrassing misunderstandings and missteps when he tries to live the Gospel, but doesn’t quite get it right on his first attempts, his remarkable humility and memorable and often amusing or touching ways of communicating the gospel by example, rather than mere preaching.
Katie: What might Francis have to teach us today?
Terry: So much! Today we only hear of one American Dream, the dream of wealth and power, but that dream leaves us terribly restless, discontented, vain creatures. We run on a treadmill of desire that takes us nowhere but to frustration. The 18th century New Jersey Quaker, John Woolman, warned us in his journal that “as wealth increases the desire for wealth increases,” and we become trapped in a vicious acquisitive circle.
Katie: So you suggest that our early Friends and the first Franciscans had much in common.
Terry: Indeed they did, because following Christ Jesus and doing His will produces certain recognizable spiritual fruits. The early Franciscans, like the first Quakers, put Christ and His will first in their lives. Both groups were unconcerned about the fashions and ways of the world. Both sought the good of all and displayed remarkable compassion and patience under rejection and persecution. And both challenged the state of Christianity in their day, its shallow and confused understanding of the faith, with the real thing: the people of God living as they should in His kingdom.
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