Like herding cats

Yesterday I mentioned my intrepid high school English teacher, who required her students to compose anthologies of writing which mattered to us, and then read one of our choices aloud and explain why it mattered to us. Here is the piece I read for that assignment.

I don't remember what I said then, but if I had to tell you why it still matters to me now, I'd say that sometimes I think of the line 'shepherding the saints is like herding cats' during faculty meetings and it keeps a smile on my face. Most of all, I love McDonnell's wry deprecation of his brothers and himself. Kindness and a sense of humor, I have learned, goes a long way in being a good member of a community.

Church of St Mary the Virgin, Iffley, Oxfordshire. Detail of west doorway.

The Monks of St. John’s File in for Prayer

In we shuffle, hooded amplitudes,
scapulared brooms, a stray earring, skin-heads
and flowing locks, blind in one eye,
hooked-nosed, handsome as a prince
(and knows it), a five-thumbed organist,
an acolyte who sings in quarter tones,
one slightly swollen keeper of the bees,
the carpenter minus a finger here and there,
our pre-senile writing deathless verse,
a stranded sailor, a Cassian scholar,
the artist suffering the visually
illiterate and indignities unnamed,
two determined liturgists. In a word,
eager purity and weary virtue.
Last of all, the Lord Abbot, early old
(shepherding the saints is like herding cats).
These chariots and steeds of Israel
make a black progress into church.
A rumble of monks bows low and offers praise
to the High God of Gods who is faithful forever.

~ Kilian McDonnell, in Swift, Lord, You Are Not (Collegeville, 2003)