The Art Of Chemistry

Bro. Martin Sellner FSC weaves the periodic table of elements into his 20-year-old cross stitch design

- Rica Arevalo

Growing up in a family with 120 hectares of land and farm animals in quiet Sleepy Eye in Minnesota, Robert Walter Sellner had a destiny—to be a farmer!

Born on Aug. 29, 1937,the fifth child of nine in the family, Brother Martin Sellner FSC had a different plan. (During pre-Vatican II, all the religious had to change their names).

He recently trended on social media after he posted the completion of his 20-year-old Periodic Table cross stitch.

Recalling his younger days, he tells Manila Bulletin Lifestyle via chat, “My mother begged me to go to high school, which was not required in those years, and I refused repeatedly.”

He started school at the outbreak of the Korean War, thinking he would quit in a month if he did not like it.

When his brother was drafted into the Army, his mother Sophie Sellner then pleaded with Martin to quit school to help in the farm.

“By that time I so loved school that I refused. I look upon that decision as God’s way of guiding me to become a Christian brother,” he muses. It was in his third year that he fell in love with chemistry. “Then and there, I knew that farming for me was out, teaching chemistry was in,” he quips.