Reflections on Kinnell's "St. Francis and the Sow"

  Every so often you stumble upon a poem that not only moves you but makes you want to live in a different way. Galway Kinnell's "St. Francis and the Sow" has been one of those poems for me I offer it here for everyone's consideration:

St. Francis and the Sow

The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow. 

   The bud stands for all things -  but does it stand for me? Or for you? Perhaps it does in the sense that each of us comes into the world bearing a sublime potential for beauty and goodness that  unfolds through life. Theologically speaking, every bit of creation expresses in a unique and  unrepeatable way something of God's creative Word. Thus everything in creation is possessed of a fundamental goodness and beauty, and each creature glorifies God to the extent that it actualizes its identity and becomes what God created it to be. Human beings in particular, as bearers of the divine image and likeness, possess a potential for expressing the divine  goodness and beauty that far exceeds anything else in creation. The sad truth however is that not everyone achieves the fullness of which he or she is capable, not everyone becomes the true self that God intends each one to be. Not every bud flowers.

   Sometimes it's because we grow up in conditions where we don't experience ourselves as accepted and affirmed. Sometimes it's because we experience tragedies that shatter our belief in the essential goodness of life. Sometimes our sins lead us to despair of ourselves. Sometimes we do things that make us ashamed of who we are and what we have made of our lives. Though there exists this drive within each of us to express and actualize our original blessing, it's a sad fact that not everyone succeeds.

   What enables one to flower? Kinnell calls it "self-blessing." By this I suppose he means the capacity to discover blessing in one's life, or better still, to experience oneself as blessing. For the Christian this is not quite the same as optimism or having adequate self-esteem. Nor is it attained through the pursuit of goods outside of ourselves. To experience oneself as blessing means to discover that who I am in my deepest self is loved and cherished irrespective of merits and accomplishments. It is to partake of God's delight in my very being. It is to experience myself in my identity as essentially beautiful, good and desirable. This awareness, fundamental to each of us, can be elusive for many. We taste it sometimes in those quiet moments when we are present to ourselves at our depths. In those moments of stillness, when we cease all striving, we often taste something of the original blessing bestowed on us in the moment of our conception. In those moments of peace, we can believe in ourselves as lovely and beloved.

   But because such experiences are often brief and elusive, and because life's harshness can lead us to lose touch with our original blessing, Kinnell tells us that it is sometimes necessary to "reteach a thing its loveliness",
    to put a hand on its brow
    of the flower
    and retell it in words and in touch
    it is lovely
    until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

This is what it means to love: to help another rediscover his or her loveliness, to call attention to the particular beauty and goodness that reflect the divine likeness in his or her person. It isn't about changing people. It's about appreciating, enjoying and reverencing the mystery of what has been given in the particularity of who one is.

   The sow stands for everything we might consider unlovely--that is, undeserving of love. Pigs are not only fat and unattractive, they wallow in filth, eat garbage and attract flies. Condemned as unclean, throughout the ages, pigs are routinely used to symbolize greed, carnality, and sloth.  In Jesus' parable, the prodigal son's occupation as swineherd renders him ritually impure and terminates his membership in God's covenant. 

   So think of the sow as representing all those people who have lost touch with their original blessing, all who experience themselves as damaged, mediocre, or singularly unlovely and are yearning for the freedom to be their true and best selves, the freedom to flower. Think of that great, ungainly, needy, broken-hearted sow as yourself.
  "Reteaching a thing its loveliness"  is as good a description as any of  the fundamental task of parents, teachers, friends, and mentors. In the poem, St. Francis lovingly mediates in word and touch the delight of God in his creation and so awakens in the sow an awareness of the loveliness particular to her porcine nature. Through loving word and touch, the saint calls the sow back to her original blessedness, and this, Kinnell seems to suggest, is something we can do for one another in a world where so much broken-hearted unloveliness abounds. This is what we do for one another in our best relationships and it is what we are invited to do in every relationship we enter into.