I’ll bet you didn’t know there was a saint for hemorrhoids. I didn’t! But there’s much more to Saint Fiacre than hemorrhoids. He is also the patron saint of herbs and vegetable gardens and is honored today, September 1st. If you see a statue in a garden and he’s holding a shovel in one hand and a book (the Bible) in the other, that’s not St. Francis; it’s Fiacre.
A seventh century Irish monk, Fiacre was so skilled at growing vegetables and herbs and knowing how to use them to help heal various ailments, he was inundated with visitors seeking help. In search of more solitude, he left his homeland he ended up in France where, legend has it, was told by St. Faro, Bishop of Meaux, that he could have as much land as he could dig a trench around in one day. Dragging his staff behind him, trees and bushes were miraculously uprooted, leaving in their wake a trench.i
Although he sought out solitude, Fiacre was far from a hermit. He built a monastery where he found retreat for himself and other monks, and he treated the ills of all who came to him. All that gardening was apparently hard on Fiacre. The story has it that his specialty of treating hemorrhoids came after he himself got them from all his hard work in the garden. Then, one day, while sitting on a stone, he was supernaturally healed. It is said you can still see the imprint of his hemorrhoids on the stone where many still travel to be healed of “Fiacre’s Curse”.ii
Hemorrhoids were not his only claim to fame (although for a while they were called the “figs of Saint Fiacre”). Fiacre also was sought out to cure worms, venereal disease, kidney stones, and other issues affecting the skin and digestive tract.iii
But all of this fame flows from his gardening skills. It is written that vegetables and herbs from his garden were of the highest quality. Fiacre’s talent in the garden was matched by his knowledge of herbs and his desire to bring healing to the people around him. I like that. And although I’m not so interested in being known as the healer of hemorrhoids, I wouldn’t mind learning more about the various herbs I grow and how they can be used as a balm of healing or the spice of reconciliation in my neighborhood.
Fiacre’s life also got me thinking about historically recognized saints in general. They were sought out, with people often traveling a great distance to see them (or their relics). Though not Saints with a capital S, we are all saints in the family of God. So what in our lives is attractive to others? Is there something compelling about how we live, some value we add to the lives of others? It’s not that we all need to have some kind of monumental impact, but shouldn’t there be something saint-like about our lives?
As I reflect on St. Fiacre’s life I can’t help but reflect back on my own. He cultivated gardens and attracted thousands. What in my life could I cultivate, attracting people to the message of wholeness, peace, and healing found in Jesus? Perhaps it’s something as simple as gardening… or as mundane as hemorrhoids.
i. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Fiacre
ii. http://www.oddee.com/item_96620.aspx
iii. http://harvardmagazine.com/1998/07/vita.html
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More Posts by Andy
Michael Moore —
In stark contrast to the beauty around us that is County Kerry in the Irish Republic, stands a memorial to those who died during the battle for independence. I was overwhelmed by the power of this monument in Ballyseedy when we toured Ireland on our honeymoon in 2014. This particular memorial commemorates the Civil War’s worst atrocity according to the Irish Times. Eight anti-unionist treaty prisoners were tied together and blown up by a landmine set off by loyalist (to the British Crown and the Treaty that United Ireland to England).
One man survived the blast, his name was Stephen Fuller. Stephen, the lone survivor of this atrocious crime, passed an invaluable lesson on to his son, Paudie. Paudie related this story as he reflected upon his father’s life and the miracle of his survival. “He held no bitterness against those who tried to blow him up; in fact, he was full of forgiveness,’’ he said. “My father once said to me that the Civil War divisions should not be passed on to the next generation.’’
Why do I share this story from the Irish Civil War of 1922-1923? And what does it have to do with Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne? In Ecclesiastes 1:9 we read the following: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.” Sadly, in Aidan’s time warfare and horrific cruelty were just as much a part of the landscape as it was during the Irish Civil War. Aidan was born in Ireland in approximately 590. As a young lad, he traveled to Iona to study in the great monastic house at Iona that another Irishman, Saint Columba, had founded in 567. As missionaries, they faced warfare and trouble in their own times as they sought to bring the Gospel to the Picts in what would become Scotland (Columba’s mission) and the Anglo-Saxons in the Kingdom of Northumbria in Northeastern England (Aidan’s mission).
While living on Iona, Aidan heard tales from another brother who had been called to serve as a missionary to Northumbria. Corman’s mission had not been successful and he returned to Iona a bitter and angry man. David Adam, in his book “Flame in My Heart” summarized Corman’s thoughts in the following harsh judgment: “He seemed to suggest that these people were not worth the bother, that God could not be interested in them!” (p. 24)
During the awkward silence with Corman and the rest of the community, Aidan prayed… “O Lord, give me springs and I will water this land. I will go, Lord. I will hold this people in my heart.” (Celtic Daily Prayer, p. 158) From that prayer, Aidan spoke these words out loud to Corman and the assembly: “Perhaps, my brother, if you had spoken with more gentleness, and of the love of Christ, giving them the gospel to nourish them like milk is given to a tiny baby, then you would have won them and remained among them.” (Celtic Daily Prayer, p. 158)
Aidan was consecrated a bishop and sent to Northumbria where he founded the monastery at Lindisfarne and began the work of bringing the nourishment of the gospel to the people Corman said weren’t worth the bother. The Lord called and Aidan responded. He left all that was familiar and comfortable because God had called him. He responded in much the same fashion as Isaiah did: Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!” (Isaiah 6:8)
Aidan responded to God’s call and he indeed did bring the gospel to a people whom others had discarded as not worth the bother! The monastery at Lindisfarne which he established became a seat of missionary activity much like Iona to the west. How did that happen? A quiet monk responded to God’s call with a courage that came from somewhere outside of himself.
Today there are so many marginalized and discarded people who surround us. They are the invisible ones whom society ignores. The poor and the homeless… the mentally ill… prisoners… they have been ignored and so many say that they aren’t worth the bother. Today we are surrounded by hatred, bigotry, racism, misogyny, homophobia, ignorance, and fear. If you aren’t exactly like me in belief, skin color, ethnic background, or religious belief; well then, you are less than human. You aren’t worth the bother.
I thank God that there are people today who, like Aidan of Lindisfarne, are willing to respond to God’s call to love and to bring the gospel to nourish others rather than to beat them over the head. It takes courage and a humble spirit to do that. Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to see Christ in the face of those whom others say aren’t worth the bother?
We all have moments like this. Instances which, when we remember them, the creeping heat of shame comes over us: when we wish more than anything that our lives were like computer files which could be deleted – whether a brief, even petty, moment hardly enough to register as a bit or nibble, or in contrast vast Yottabytes of memory. Times which still flash through our consciousness, unbidden and unwelcome, in the waking hours when we feel most alone as the world around us sleeps in apparent tranquillity.
For the woman described in John chapter 8, caught in the act of adultery and brought to Jesus, there is a moment like that which must have seemed to last an eternity. Shockingly interrupted in a moment of deep intimacy (however much it was not theirs to share), she is dragged away, presumably desperately scrambling to pull clothing around her in a futile attempt to cover both her outer nakedness and her inner degradation. Roughly handled by sneering men, past the prying eyes of both strangers and fellow villagers, she is thrown at the feet of the prophet. A man who, she has heard, speaks and does only good. A man whose reputation is even more colourful than hers but profoundly more welcome. She knows she is likely to be stoned, as though this was her act alone. She fears not just the pain of the rocks but the intensifying, were it possible, of her disgrace and humiliation. She may not even be aware that she is actually just a pawn in the attempted set-up by the religious cynics.
Jesus’ bending down and writing in the ground with his finger has birthed much speculation. What did he write? Was it something to help her, and in any case could she have seen it through her tears, her eyes lowered with shame? We don’t know of course, though it is fascinating to imagine. What interests me more though, is that Jesus deliberately chose not to tower over her, emphasising their differences, but to stoop down to her level: a specific example of His entire life stance as he “set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human….an incredibly humbling process.” (Philippians 2:6 The Message)
With piecing insight, Jesus challenges her sanctimonious indicters. They can stone her – it’s the law – but only if they can declare themselves innocent. Did he list their sins, their moments of private disgrace, in the dust? Or was his astute and unrelenting gaze enough? Whatever the cause, they slink away, leaving her alone with Jesus and awaiting, surely, the pain from the first rock from the only guiltless man, the one entitled to throw it.
He doesn’t, of course. Condemnatory stone-throwing has never been Jesus’ approach. Instead he releases her, offering the possibility of a life she has not yet known. She is tenderly handed a freedom she could never have envisaged in that terrifying moment of capture.
Perhaps this might capture a little of her experience….
I had lost all fight
Before they picked up stones.
More exposed there, clothed
Than ever I had been naked;
Seeing the hatred
In their eyes
I knew they were somehow
Stoning something in themselves.
Easier to call me an adulteress
Than see me
As a woman
Seeking some comfort
The only way she knew
When life had crushed
All dreams and hopes.
And then I saw him.
Such difference in his eyes.
Understanding was there
Though no excuses
Seeing past
All shame and regret
To what I could have been.
And could be still.
This month’s theme is listening to and learning from the life of Jesus. Surely there are lessons for either side of this apparent – but actually non-existent – divide? There lurks within each us the potential Pharisee, legalistically criticising the other and trading compassion for a flimsy, false superiority. Equally, we all conceal our failures and regrets, however deeply hidden and of whatever kind, lest they be seen and our private selves exposed, risking rejection by a world we sometimes perceive as infinitely better than us.
Jesus comes gently to us in our tender vulnerability and welcomes us, whether we are more aware of the sinner or the Pharisee within. Not a stone in his hand and no word of condemnation, he writes words of acceptance with his blood, and still sets us free, with the possibility of a life we could never have imagined before the encounter.
We’re going to try something new and see how it works. Top Ten Tuesdays will take our theme for the month and, with your help, create a new list from different perspectives. Our theme for September is “The Prayerful Imagination: Praying creatively for a more meaningful connection with God and others.”
We’re still thinking about what lists would fit best each week as we explore this theme. The easier ideas are things like, “Top ten websites for creative prayer”, or “Top ten books to help us pray more creatively”. I’m thinking of creating a list of my top ten creative ways to pray in/through the neighborhood (watch for it!). What would you like to see? We need your ideas both for lists and for content for those lists.
Since this is the end of August I’m going to keep our first top ten list simple: Top Ten Godspace Posts on Listening and Learning.
Here goes!
10. Hearing, Healing, Worshiping by Lynn Domina
9. Looking Into the Face of Jesus by Christine Sine
8. Listening to Jesus’ Early Morning Prayer by Lynne Baab
7. Christ Walk with Us by Christine Sine
6. Learning the Rights and Wrongs of Leadership from Jesus by Christine Sine
5. Let Us Go Into the Day with the Love of Christ in Our Hearts by Christine Sine
4. On Listening and Telling by Jeannie Kendall
3. Listening to the Life of Jesus… in a Tree by Andy Wade
2. Identifying Your Great Cloud of Witnesses by Andy Wade
1. Five Must-Learn Lessons from the Life of Jesus by Christine Sine
And a resource list:
Learning from the Life of Jesus – a resource list
There you have it. Now help us plan some lists for Top Ten Tuesdays in September!
This post is a special post for International Kitchen Garden Day which was celebrated yesterday.
The humble herbs have been faithful companion to both cook and gardener for centuries. Anyone with room for a herbaceous plot in their outdoor space is blessed indeed, and so is their food. Flavour and fragrance runs careful riot in rows here and reminds us of the difference one small sprig or sprinkle, one leaf, might make to the whole of a meal. Likewise, one person with a full and flavoursome faith may make ordinary tasks fragrant, done as they are for the love of God. And so the kitchen and its garden can become places where the Lord’s hospitality is shared out, where people may come and discover that his ways do indeed taste good, and the smallest gesture of kindness rises as a pleasant aroma.
Traditionally a kitchen garden was a walled off piece of ground near the kitchens of a large house, where the vegetables and herbs needed to keep a busy household running would stay sheltered from the wind and be quick to fetch for the harassed scullery maids, almost like a living larder. Nowadays walled gardens are rare, but the immediacy of such freshness is a practicality still much appreciated by many, and lots of people have vegetable plots or allotments, or even grow their herb gardens on a windowsill or in a window box.
All this makes me wonder, who or what the flavours are that we would be lost without? Who are the stalwarts that we go to for wisdom or solace that are so close or so available that if we aren’t careful, we can become guilty of grabbing a few leaves whenever we need to, taking them for granted? Aunt Rosemary, Brother Basil, Father Thyme?
As a writer, my mind immediately goes to the books that I always have near to hand. My life’s window box contains my Bible of course, but also my journals, and those people who have had most to contribute to my learning: Richard Rohr; Teresa of Avila; Brother Lawrence; Francis de Sales; and so on, but also those books that bring a hint of magic into my life by taking me back to my childhood: L.M. Montgomery’s Anne Series; Johanna Spyri’s Heidi; C.S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles. And the wit and hilarity of Jane Austen, Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett are always close by. But doesn’t each one have their own resoundingly individual flavour? Doesn’t each writer, each artist, each person, each soul, have an essence that enriches our experience? Jesus used the image of salt to help us understand how to live out our lives as flavoursome taste-bringers.
I hope then, that we can all learn how to be our individual, appealing and wondrous selves, singing our own song, writing our own words, speaking with our own voice, expressing our true selves and not one of us exactly like another. This world is God’s kitchen garden, and perhaps we might imagine him walking slowly through the rows, in the cool of the evening, rubbing his fingers on our leaves and delighting in the fragrance that rises, savouring each plant and what it brings to the mix.
Transitions mean change. They are always challenging, sometimes painful. We want to hold onto the familiar and the comforting. The leeks and garlic of Egypt, all that sustained us in our past lives, beckon us.
Change is usually marked by deliberate steps we take that say life is going to be different. Jesus marked his move into adulthood (at the age of 12) by staying behind in Jerusalem to ask questions of the religious leaders (Luke 3:46). He inaugurated his ministry with 40 days in the desert (Luke 4:2) and he marked his transition towards the cross by a deliberate and determined walk towards Jerusalem (Luke 9:51). Jesus knew when it was time to say life is going to be different in the future and he knew how to prepare for those changes.
As you know I have just stepped down from my leadership position in Mustard Seed Associates and I am finding that I need to mark this transition with changes in my physical environment as well as my spiritual observances. Here is some of what I have already learnt through my transition:
Transitions require us to identify the stability points that will not change.
Part of what I have reflected on over the last few weeks is the foundations of my faith, the bedrock of my life that I know should not change. I need the security of knowing that not everything will change. I need to be able to stand firm in my faith as well as in my important relationships.
Question: What do I need to hold onto that will strengthen my faith and beckon me towards God’s love?
Transitions require deliberate steps towards change.
It is easy to settle into the familiar patterns of the past and not consciously work towards the changes God wants us to make. After all, what I am letting go of is my own creation. Now I get up in the morning and I want things to be the same as they have been for the last 10 years. Its comfortable and comforting to know where I am and what I should be doing. Now suddenly there are lots of new options out there for me. I don’t know what I should be doing. It is easier to look back than to look forward. Deliberating working towards change has been a very important and at times painful journey for me.
Question: What do I long for that should be letting go of?
Transitions require the creation of new boundaries and new rituals.
Tom and I have just embarked on a major remodel in our house. It is part of the transition, part of the establishing of new boundaries and new rituals. It will provide a new environment for both of us to work in and encourage us to establish new practices and new priorities.
Question: What changes may be necessary in your physical environment to prepare for the spiritual changes ahead?
Transitions require space and time for dreaming new dreams.
Transition time is busy time. We have a hundred and one tasks to hand over and spaces to clear out. It is easy to fill our days without really thinking about the future. Sometimes the dreams that moved us towards transition seem to get lost in the process.
We need to take to time to breathe, to sit still and reflect. Clearing our calendars for a season, going on retreat, taking time to allow God to renew and refocus us is essential.
Question: What space is necessary for dreaming new dreams for the future?
Transitions require help from advisors.
Over the next few weeks I will be engaging with a new spiritual director and a life coach to help me move into this new season of my life. I am also reading a lot and seeking the counsel of a broad array of friends and wise counsellors. I have lots of ideas that I think are from God but realize that I cannot move into the journey God has for me without help.
We all need companions who can walk beside us, as well as those who can guide and help direct us into new seasons of life.
Question: Who are the companions and advisors that help us through transition?
Transitions cannot be rushed.
I wish that my transition season could be over and done with in a couple of weeks, but I know it will actually take months, possibly longer before the dreams and possibilities emerge fully. It is easy to get impatient, to try to give birth prematurely. This is not a season to hurry through. The season between conception and birth is essential and even after that there is a long and sometimes slow season on growth to maturity.
Question: How have we tried to hurry the transition process and tried to give birth prematurely?
What is your response?
Maybe you are not in a major transition time like I am, but I am sure that the next few months holds some form of minor transition that require the same kinds of questions I am asking. Perhaps you are starting a new school year. Or you may be preparing for a new liturgical season – Advent and Christmas are not far away. Or, at least for those in the northern hemisphere, it might be the desire to hold onto the last days of summer and the flavour of fresh picked tomatoes.
Sit and reflect on the transitions in your own life. What is God saying to you at this time that could help you through this season?
by Margaret A Trotman
I am learning something about myself, about my Lord Jesus, my God, my Spirit and my connection with God; and it all pertains to Moses, my cat.
I prayed yesterday and this is what I realized. She disappeared a few months ago and I haven’t given up looking for her though others made up their minds she was either dead or just gone. I prayed to St Francis,to ANY Angel who would hear, to Raphael,for crying out loud!, for her return. Spending sleepless nights, callings, searching night and day.
I have over a hundred animals collectively and when 1 isn’t there I won’t rest until I find it. I understand in my tiny human way how the Lord feels when one of His Lambs disappears from Him. You don’t even have to head count, you just know when one is missing and which one it is.
He waits and searches them out. I call, I wait silently, I put out food, I watch; as my Father, he whispers, he watches , he waits. I know where she is. After months of hiding she has been seen.
My Father, never lost sight of me. I see her and she see me we stand there looking at each other, I’m so close but too far to touch her, she hesitates and then turns to hide once more in the safety of the darkness of the woods. I stand there heart sick and tearful that she didn’t come but know she saw me and knows I’m there still.
I understand my Fathers hurt with this one cat, whom I love as all my others, no more no less just differently and at times more intently. Like my Father, who loves all of his children- some need more attention than others , some more patience – but all are loved equally but differently.
I understand on such a tiny scale my Fathers hurt when one of his runs and hides. I see his patience; waiting for us to just return to Him. I feel his heart break, as mine is that she isn’t safe at home in my arms, just like when we aren’t safe in His. On such a small small scale, I have learned that a soft gentle presence is the assurance we all need in our heart. I can’t even fathom my one lost cat trying to find her way back to the familiar love and comfort of home, compared to a world full of lost lambs searching in the dark for that small light to guide them Home.
So I pray, in His time and my learning, that his Will be done- that she will return home to the Love she knows is here. Like my Father, I will never give up. But I will let go, because, in all Faith, I can.
She knows I am but a whisper away, and so is my Father. Thank you, my Spirit, for putting this thought and prayer on my heart as a salve to mend the tear.
Margaret Trotman runs a small farm Southern Spirit Farm, found on Facebook at https://m.facebook.com/SouthernSpiritFarm/
with her husband in NE Fla., where they grow lavender as well as an array of four legged and feathered babies- She is a writer and photographer – and has a passion for cooking. As an artist her outdoor kitchen is her favourite pallet in which to create. Though it’s not much by worldly standards, she knows, through it all, she has been truly blessed by God. she blogs at magisark
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