“Difficult Magic of the Ordinary”

I still remember the opening session of the 2002 Festival of Faith & Writing. It featured the poet Stephen Dunn, who just the year before had won the Pulitzer Prize. 

That long ago April noontime came to mind again when I learned that Dunn died last week of Parkinson’s disease.  

Rita Dove, a one-time U.S. poet laureate, observed that Dunn was someone who “achieves that most difficult magic of the ordinary.” And that’s what I remember about him: he was unassuming and wry, charming and deeply thoughtful. That, and the poem that he shaped his talk around, which I share below. It’s a poem that in its utter ordinariness of topic navigates profoundly complicated territory indeed, including the twist of that wonderful final line. See if it doesn’t make you think about your own silently sung songs, your own reckoning with “what’s comic, what’s serious,” your own sense of the stories that have pull in your life. It’s a great poem, I think, one that has stayed with me over twenty years. So I share it, with gratitude, with you today.

At the Smithville Methodist Church
It was supposed to be Arts & Crafts for a week, 
but when she came home 
with the "Jesus Saves" button, we knew what art 
was up, what ancient craft.

She liked her little friends. She liked the songs 
they sang when they weren't 
twisting and folding paper into dolls. 
What could be so bad?

Jesus had been a good man, and putting faith 
in good men was what 
we had to do to stay this side of cynicism, 
that other sadness.

OK, we said, One week. But when she came home 
singing "Jesus loves me, 
the Bible tells me so," it was time to talk. 
Could we say Jesus

doesn't love you? Could I tell her the Bible 
is a great book certain people use 
to make you feel bad? We sent her back 
without a word.

It had been so long since we believed, so long 
since we needed Jesus 
as our nemesis and friend, that we thought he was 
sufficiently dead,

that our children would think of him like Lincoln 
or Thomas Jefferson. 
Soon it became clear to us: you can't teach disbelief 
to a child,

only wonderful stories, and we hadn't a story 
nearly as good. 
On parents' night there were the Arts & Crafts 
all spread out

like appetizers. Then we took our seats 
in the church 
and the children sang a song about the Ark, 
and Hallelujah

and one in which they had to jump up and down 
for Jesus. 
I can't remember ever feeling so uncertain 
about what's comic, what's serious.

Evolution is magical but devoid of heroes. 
You can't say to your child 
"Evolution loves you." The story stinks 
of extinction and nothing

exciting happens for centuries. I didn't have 
a wonderful story for my child 
and she was beaming. All the way home in the car 
she sang the songs,

occasionally standing up for Jesus. 
There was nothing to do 
but drive, ride it out, sing along 
in silence.