Community Prayer and Remembering, Sheila F. Brown, 3/8/05

The College of St. Catherine
Our Lady of Victory Chapel

Andrea J. Lee, IHM
President of the College of St. Catherine

Readings
Proverbs 31:10-131
Lamentations 3
Matthew 5: 14-15

Over the past several days I’ve met and spoken with Sheila’s best friend at least 20 times. And each time, her best friend has had a different face and voice. Are 19 of these friends mistaken in claiming that she or he is Sheila’s best friend, or could it be that this woman had the rare and highly prized gift of making each friend, each colleague, each student absolutely believe they were the most important player on the court, or animal in the barn, to use an analogy that seems apt when considering Sheila’s favorite book, Charlotte’s Web?

When someone told me that Sheila loved Charlotte’s Web, indeed wept openly as she tried to share a favorite passage about friendship with her colleagues at a Student Affairs retreat, I could immediately see why. Sheila’s whole life was all about spinning webs and that is what makes her a valiant woman, more precious by far than jewels, the salt of the earth, a friend to be cherished, a colleague to be emulated, a bright light in our world.

Spiders have a bad reputation you know — they’re territorial and often intrude in your space when you rather wish they wouldn’t. And Sheila could do both of those things, couldn’t she, especially when the territory she was protecting was the Butler Center or the soccer field, or when coming into your space meant she needed something and needed it now. My best memory of that was her passionate plea about the Butler Gym floor. “It’s not five years old yet, Sheila,” I tried in vain to reason with her — “there are so many other things that need doing.” Her insistent logic prevailed, though, and we have our floor — it really is and always will be Sheila’s Gym, as Katie Jacobson calls it.

But it is Charlotte’s web that is the central point in the story and Sheila’s web my central point here. Simply stated, webs are about connections — strong and powerful connections; beautiful and sometimes surprising ones; fragile ones that help us move from here to there; ones that help find what nourishes and sustains us. Spider webs are, indeed, all about connections. How else could it ever be possible for a spider to become best friends with a pig who didn’t really think much of himself anyway, or with a rat or a goose or a sheep? Not possible, at least not until Charlotte arrived.

When Charlotte knew her time had come to die, her friends spun themselves into a dither trying to make it otherwise. Charlotte, though, became increasingly calm, peaceful, and quite aware of something beyond herself.

I am not ready to die,
But I am learning to trust death
As I have trusted life.

I am moving toward a new freedom
Born of detachment,
And a sweeter grace —
Learning to let go.
(E.B. White, 1952)

Fearing a future impossible to imagine without her, her friend, Wilbur, begged for her egg sac so her legacy might endure. Templeton, ever the complainer, nonetheless climbed high to retrieve it — Charlotte even moved a bit in her weakness so he might detach it more easily, and then Wilbur carried it home to the barn safely protected on top of his tongue. And so the legacy was safe; the connection from now to tomorrow possible.

We are lucky. We have our Sheila spider’s egg sac, and we didn’t have to climb very high to get it, so willingly did she give it to us. It is Sheila’s legacy, her gift to us, and as Charlotte said, “I can guarantee that it is strong. It is, after all, made out of the toughest materials I have.”

Who do you think is in our Sheila spider’s egg sac? Who will carry her legacy forward? Some hundred or so athletes I think; her young coaches; many of us; and even little Carter is in there I think. In there as well are women athletes who will never know Sheila personally, but who will come to this place, and so come to understand much about what she believed so intensely about women and sport, about women and collaboration, about women and excellence, about women and friendship.

How could a woman who was so fiercely competitive, we wonder, teach us so much about collaboration and working together as a team?

How could a woman who rarely entered a classroom, we ask, be such a first-rate teacher?

How could a woman who wore sweats most every day, we shake or heads, first of all, look so darn good in them, and besides that, teach us so much about style and grace?

The answer is simple. Because our Sheila, like Charlotte, was a spinner of webs, because she was willing to share her beautiful legacy of fragility and strength, her egg sac, her magnum opus or great work as Charlotte liked to call it.

As Charlotte’s Web concludes, “For Wilbur and the rest of us, nobody ever forgot the year of triumph and the miracle of the web. Life in the St. Catherine’s barn was very good — night and day, winter and summer, spring and fall, dull days and bright days. It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the exuberance of young black labs, the love of spiders, the smell of manure and the glory of everything.” Wilbur and all the rest never forgot Charlotte, or we Sheila. Sheila. … and none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend. Our Sheila was that.

How could this woman, our Sheila spider — stricken and sickened in her very gut, sick unto death in her spinnerets, still spin strong beautiful webs of friendship and goodness; powerful webs of planning for the future; fragile yet indestructible webs of empowerment and legacy even during these last difficult months?

Because that is what she did, our Sheila spider — she spun webs — fragile, lovely, powerfully strong webs. She is indeed a valiant woman; more precious by far than jewels, the salt of the earth, a bright light in our world, a spinner of webs on which we can climb and in which we can live.

So, There are no farewells.
Praise God for her mercies,
for her austere demands,
for her light
And for her darkness.

In this we believe. Over the past several days I have met and spoken with Sheila’s best friend and she has 20 faces and 20 names: Mom, Dad, Eric, Mary, John, Carter, Katie, Peter, Nick, John, Emily, Dick, Sheila, Forbes, Pat, Shelly, Brian, Madge, Colleen, June and Ellen — a hundred faces and a hundred names, and I suspect, a thousand and thousand more, so tightly woven is our Sheila spider’s web.

A few of Sheila’s best friends will speak in a few moments, but we want to give each of her best friends, every Wilbur, every Templeton, every Fern, every Zuckerman, Avery and Tate who has come here today a chance to share a word about your best friend, our Sheila spider. In the pews are small cards. We will take a few moments of quiet now so that those who wish, may write a word or a phrase or sentence to our best friend, Sheila. When you are finished, please pass the cards toward the center of the chapel and as we sing the wonderfully comforting song of healing and love, You Are Mine, Jen our dancer, will gather and bring them to the front to rest beneath Sheila under her warm light in the great holy barn at St. Catherine’s.


Poetry by May Sarton
Quotes from Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White, 1952