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I’m writing to you today from Chicago, which is not where I expected to be right now. I was supposed to be just outside D.C. today looking at cherry blossoms and gathering with a group of catechists for a Lenten day of reflection. Instead, I am looking at a magnolia tree. Similar color. Also beautiful. But an indication that Spring is not as far along here as in the South.
I made these sudden rearrangements because of the death of a long-time mentor and dear friend of mine, Sr. Diane Kennedy, who was the dean at Aquinas Institute of Theology when I was a student there. Diane passed away last week at 91, so she had a long and rich life, but when you have a friend like that you always hope for longer. It was one of the greatest honors of my life to be asked to offer a preached reflection for her funeral, for which she had chosen the following readings:
1st reading: Isaiah 52:7-9, 10b “How beautiful on the mountains…”
2nd reading: Philippians 1:3-11 “I thank my God every time I remember you…”
Gospel: John 4:5-30, 39 (Woman at Well)
Realizing that many of you who read this were friends of Diane as well, I thought I’d post these reflections here, too. Wishing you a week in which you are surrounded by beauty. (And apologies for the limited formatting options I have here... hope it is still easily readable.)
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The summer I arrived to take my first courses at Aquinas Institute was the summer I turned 25. I came in my Birkenstocks… which at the time might have been the only pair of shoes I packed. I was young, but a seasoned traveler with a couple years of teaching middle school under my belt… that would be if I had owned a belt. I had been raised to be hardworking and get by on as little as possible, pragmatic and frugal. Not bad qualities. But what did I know of beauty? Very little.
Until I met Diane that summer. She was one of the first truly classy people I ever met. Although I had a good four or five inches on her, I couldn’t help but look up to her. All of us students did. She was graciousness incarnate. Beautiful inside and out. She looked fabulous in royal blue and in hot pink—bold colors I would never have dared to wear. It was the era of rubber wrist bands marked WWJD: What Would Jesus Do? But after I’d graduated and joined the faculty at Aquinas, a co-worker and I discovered that when we needed to dress up for an event, both of us had the same mantra: WWDW—What Would Diane Wear? How beautiful the appearance of Diane.
Over the years, Diane tried to offer me a couple helpful fashion tips. I’m not sure they ever took, at least to the degree she hoped. A year or so ago when I walked into the Villa after a long day of driving across Illinois in my new baseball cap with one of those snazzy scruffed up visors, she greeted me, “Did your hat come that way or did you have some sort of horrible accident on the way here?”
But there were so many other lessons on beauty that did take. Each March she reminded me to pay attention for the first sign of the forsythia. “Nature’s first green is gold,” she would quote Robert Frost. And in September: “Have you noticed how the color of the light is changing?” An artist had pointed out to her that summer light was yellow, but autumnal light is white, and she had never forgotten it. Even winter could not be without fresh flowers. A vase of red tulips on the bedside table or some yellow roses in the center of the dining table. These were essential for a good life. How beautiful the world through the eyes of Diane.
Every meal with Diane was a feast. I learned the word “preprandials” from her. It took me a long time to figure out this was a fancy word for appetizers, generally from Trader Joe’s. But if you put them on nice dishes, she alerted me, no one will be able to tell. How beautiful the table of Diane—at Donohue House here in River Forest… or when she’d persuade Sue C. to gather us at her lovely home in St. Louis. Even at the Villa, Diane always kept a celebration in her closet. “There is some good chocolate in there,” she’d say. Or, “There are some wine glasses in the back. It is important to drink from real wine glasses, Ann, not plastic cups.”
Diane opened my ears to the beauty of poetry. Robert Frost. Emily Dickinson. Fellow Sinsinawa Sister Jeremy Finnegan. And, of course, her beloved friend Victor Klimoski—whose poem on Sinsinawa Mound she had committed fully to heart. When she entered hospice last August, she introduced me to Richard Wilbur’s “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World” which she had also memorized:
“The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep,
The astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.”[1]
Whenever I’d ask her what I might send even in these closing months, she would always ask for a good book. How beautiful words were in the heart of Diane—how tenderly cared for, how treasured.
Diane took me to the Chicago art museum. It was important I see Monet up close, she insisted. In France, we went to a chapel with yellow and blue stain glass fashioned by Matisse to see the colored light dance on the white wall as the sun passed. Wherever Diane dwelt so dwelt a Fra Angelico or two, and Mary Lou Sleevi’s portrayal of Lydia in purple and red. Several times she pointed me to read Sleevi’s description of her artwork:
“This is the way it might have been….
A story told in primary color.
Red was the softness that came through a window at day’s rite of passage.
Red was the time of a young church gathered with the hostess presiding at table.
Just to behold the Great Red of sunset was itself a partaking of God.
Lydia, in purple, served bread and wine as all shared together
The intimacy of Presence.
Red can be rapture that erupts into song.
Red is the glory in spontaneous silence,
Hearing the heartbeat of God-with-us within-us.”[2]
Diane herself also looked good in red, I might add… and in purple.
How beautiful art was in the eyes of Diane. “On any day the eye sees so much beauty it risks exhaustion,” she would quote Victor. “The eye is memory’s net gathering in the ordinary with the strange and wondrous.”[3]
Yet all of this is but a long prelude to the most important lesson about beauty that Diane sought to instill in me, and in all of us here. It concerns the beauty Isaiah draws our attention to in today’s first reading: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the one bringing good news.” The one announcing peace. Announcing salvation.
Real glass, red tulips, Matisse—these are all beautiful—but most beautiful of all is the Word of God preached among those feeling desolate and worn down… which is some of us on every day, and all of us on some days. Perhaps this day. How beautiful the ministry of preaching good news.
And in case we might have missed it in the first reading, Diane gives us an example in the Gospel she chose for today: John’s passage on the Woman at the Well—a woman revered by our Orthodox sisters and brothers as St. Photina – “The Enlightened One.” Photina has an encounter with Christ as truth. A challenging truth, but a wondrous truth. And before the apostles (we might even say before Mary Magdalene), Photina goes out to preach the Good News: “Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Messiah?” How beautiful on the mountains the footsteps of Photina.
Diane was before all else and above all else a Dominican, a member of the Order of Preachers. “A Dominican never says ‘no’ to the invitation to preach,” she would say. And her own life was one great “yes” to preaching in both word and in deed. Were we to ponder the particular good news that Diane shared with us, it might be similar to St. Paul in today’s second reading which truly sounds exactly like Diane speaking to us here right now:
“I give thanks to my God at every remembrance of you.
I am filled with joy because of you.
You have been my partners in the Gospel from the first day till now.
You are beautiful. You are just so beautiful.”
Has Diane not told you this a thousand times in your life? I know she has. And the chief reason today gives us grief is because we can never hear those words enough, can we? We would say we loved her, and she would always say she loved us more. We are sad we won’t hear those words again and life will be less beautiful.
But we will hear those words again, because we will continue to tell each other. One of the things that Diane was best at was binding us in friendship not just with herself but with each other. And we can continue to gather at this table. This table where the veil between heaven and earth is at its finest. Where no matter where each of us lives across the country, we are always still one. Where the air is all awash with angels. Where the eye will only be able to perceive the ordinary bread and wine but in memory’s net gather the strange and wondrous. Where we will be able to hear the heartbeat of God-with-us within-us. And know that Diane is not gone. Her voice is not gone. As part of that great communion of saints we are forever bound in friendship to one another. Love never dies.
How beautiful.
How beautiful the mystery of it all.
How beautiful Diane.
How beautiful you and I.
How beautiful the feet upon the mountains preaching the good news.
How beautiful the table of the Lord.
[1] See: https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2024/11/08/richard-wilbur-poetry-review-jayme-stayer-249222
[2] Mary Lou Sleevi, Women of the Word (Ave Maria Press, 1989)
[3] Klimoski, Victor. “Lookout at Dusk” in Revisited: A Month in Kilcar & Other Poems of Place (Prior Avenue Publications 2023), 13.