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| (Tennessee Williams in 1965) |
Although yesterday would have been Tennessee Williams’ 101st birthday, the spiritual themes
that he wrestled with are as young as this moment.
Williams was born to tackle such subjects, as his grandfather (one of Williams’ strongest overall influences) was an Episcopalian minister whom Williams described as “higher church than the pope.” According to Canon
Patrick Comerford, this grandfather – “the Revd Walter Dakin (1857-1955)” – baptized Williams “soon after his birth.” Williams then spent many of his formative years “in his grandfather’s rectories, first in Saint Paul’s Parish in Columbus, Mississippi, and then in Saint George’s Parish in Clarksdale, Tennessee, from 1917 to 1933.”
Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Columbus, MS now has an annual tradition of focusing a sermon upon one of Tennessee Williams’ plays. This is in honor of the fact that Williams was baptized there, then lived in that rectory (where the chapel stands today) for the first two years of his life. Today’s Rector, the Very Rev. James F. Carlyle, preached such a sermon called Sweet Bird of Youth: The Part We
Play in 2010.
In this sermon, Carlyle mentions a “stained glass window in the center of the east wall of the nave” that was given to Saint Paul’s in memory of Walter Dakin and two other rectors from his era. Carlyle also point out that Sweet
Bird of Youth begins on Easter Sunday “within earshot of an Episcopal Church filled with worshippers singing, praying, praising, and communing with God and each other…”
This act of “communing
with” one another was a central theme in Williams’ life and art. In a 2008 sermon, Carlyle presented this quote by Williams (from a Studs Terkel interview):
The drama in my plays, I think,
is nearly always people
trying to reach each other… I can’t think of any better
example than my grandparents [Walter and Rose Dakin] who were
so close together they were like one person.
Resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Williams
http://www.muw.edu/tennesseewilliams/sermon_7sep08.pdf
http://revpatrickcomerford.blogspot.com/2011/09/re-reading-night-of-iguana-by-tennessee.html
http://www.muw.edu/tennesseewilliams/sermon_12sep10.pdf
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