Showing posts with label Saints. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Saints. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

St. Martin's Lent

St. Martin and the Beggar
By Alfred Tethrl 1836


As we begin St. Martin's Lent I just wanted to wish every a happy St. Martin's Day!  May the peace of Christ be always with you and may you always choose to follow the Prince of Peace!


Wednesday, May 23, 2018

VanLife Day 16 or Serendipity, Saint Walburga, and Matthew Shepard


I started my day on a beautiful morning in Colorado Springs.  I had spent the previous evening boondocked next to a friends fifth wheel in an RV park.  I had my second shower in 16 days and hit the road.

I was zipping through Colorado and minding my own business when Google told me to jump off the highway and hop on a county road.  It sounded dubious to me but I reluctantly acquiesced.  I was getting off an interstate onto Owl Canyon County Road.  My first thought was, nope, nada, getting back on the highway and then the wanderer in me said, "why not?"  So, I kept going.

It wasn't too long until I came to a roundabout in the middle of nowhere and exited onto a dirt road, again, following Google's instructions.  At this point I wished I had stayed on the highway and wished I had my friend Jerry's new atlas book he had shared with me the day before I left the Ozarks.


So here I am on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere Colorado and then it gets even more sketch, as if that were possible. The dirt road is being grated and resurfaced.  Now I wait with a worker holding a stop sign in my way.

It goes on, and on, and on, and on...

Finally I get the go ahead to go though.  I can here the mud slapping all over the Kraken and I am just imagining what poor Peregrine clinging to the back of the van will look like.  What a mess.\

I'm dumped out one what appears to be a secondary road and Google spurs me onward.  It's at least a beautiful drive through some wonderful canyons and then I see a sign.  Abbey of St. Walburga.  I pass it at first because I was doing about 65 mph so I slow down and turn around, heading back to the main gate.  I tried to Google the abbey to learn more about it but as luck would have it Google wasn't cooperating.  Perhaps she was out to lunch.


I pull in and drive back into the abbey grounds.  It was a Roman Catholic Benedictine abbey full of welcoming and warmhearted nuns.  What a delight. I explored the abbey, the chapel, the gift store, and the grounds.  The nuns gifted me with a handmade rosary.  What a treasure and what a lovely place.


I had complained to a friend about my seeming misadventure with Google before I found the abbey.  He suggested Google knows me and he's probably right.  However you look at it, is was a serendipitous event and I was glad for it.

After the that I headed into Wyoming.  I was still coming off my happy high from my visit to the abbey when I rolled into Laramie. My thoughts immediately turned toward Matthew Shepard, a young man who was a student at the University of Wyoming who was tortured and beaten and left for dead for being gay.  If you'll click on his name it will take you to a link about him where you can learn more.  You owe it to yourself to lean about Matt if you don't know much or anything about him.


My thoughts were consumed by the seeming juxtaposition of my visits that morning within the context of just having watched the movie Milk the night before. The horror of homophobia and fundamentalism swirled in my mind for sometime as I drove.  I know it's not popular to say these days but Matthew remains in my thoughts and prayers as do the sisters from the abbey.

Wyoming was amazing.  It was a beautiful crisp and clear spring day and everything that could be green was.  The vistas were simply breath taking.  I drove through several sporadic sunny rain showers but after one in particular the heavy scent of fresh sage filled the Kraken.  It was glorious to say the least.  It felt and smelled like a vapor smudging and it helped to clear my mind of the lingering sadness over my trip through Laramie.  Its freshness and clarity reminded me of hope and in the words of Harvey Milk, "You've gotta give them hope!"

It was a wonderful day in #VanLife and one I won't soon forget.


Thursday, May 3, 2018

Humanities: A Love Affair Begins

Brian Ernest Brown 1986
This blog has been stirring around in my mind and heart for a long time it would seem and in reflection, my love of the humanities has forever been a part of my life I suppose. However, it came into clear focus in my high school humanities class taught by Mr. William "Bucky" Bowman my junior year.

For the most part, I consider my high school years to be a waste of valuable time and something I simply endured because I was forced to.  Had I known then, what I know now, I would have dropped out and taken my GED and jumped straightaway into college.

Ah, but as the saying goes: too soon we get old and too late we get smart.

There were, from time to time, glimmers of light and life beyond those parochial walls and I count my humanities class among them.  Two other endearing and life changing classes were to be found in my four years of Latin and two years of  journalism.

The year was 1986 and my humanities class was a pilot program that had just been introduced to the R12 high school curriculum in Springfield Missouri by Mr. Bowman who worked on the school board as well as taught within the system.  I was giddy to be part of the pilot program at Glendale.

That class opened me to the world in a new way.  It helped to begin my cognitive development in a way that encouraged me to see the interconnectedness of all things, but particularly in regard to the human experience and its development through philosophy, literature, religion, art, music, history and language.

I gained a fuller appreciation of this cognitive awareness when I attended college and more especially, later in seminary.  However, it all started in that little classroom with a teacher that would admonish me, in my yearbook, to work harder in college than I did in high school.

While I have always been an ardent student I have not always been the best student. Mr. Bowman called me dingy but I prefer to think of myself as differentially distracted.

One of the things that struck me most from that humanities class happened on the very first day.  It was my exposure to a quote, which I use on the header of this blog, attributed to Publius Terentius Afer, more commonly known as Terence, a Roman playwright who lived around 170 BC.  It was inside the front cover of our textbook.

"homo sum humani nihil a me alienum puto" ~ "i am human i consider nothing human alien unto me"

I latched onto that quote like a drowning man latches onto a life-preserver.  I wrote it down on a little piece of paper that I used as a bookmark for many, many years.  In fact, it wasn't until this last fall that I finally consigned that little scrap of history to a burn pile in an effort to simplify my life and and to embrace minimalism but that's a story for another time...

That one line quote represented to me then and represents to me now how I saw and continue to see myself.  It continues to guide and inform much of my study, outlook, and life.

As a result, I consider myself a Christian humanist of sorts.  In the world of the Christian Church I would be considered a bit of a heretic suffering from Pelagianism, a heresy named after a Celtic monk, Pelagius aka St. Morgan.

If you'd like to learn more about Pelagius, please follow this link.

In short St. Morgan embraced, as do I, a particular view of creation that focuses on the essential goodness of human nature and the freedom of the human will but that too is a story for another time...






Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Saintly Wisdom Guiding Social Media Interactions

Saint Isidore Patron Saint of the Internet

Having been recently updating this blog with various social media links et cetera, I was thinking about how we tend to interact with one another these days in social media and other digital communications.

Just wanted to pass along some saintly wisdom we could look to that could help govern our email and social media communications on the internet. These sage sayings might be useful guides for us all as we attempt to communicate in this sterile, impersonal, modern age of cyber space in a respectful manner.

All too often it’s easy to forget that there’s a person on the other end of the communication and we lapse into unkind practices. I find it very appropriate that we look to ages past and saints long gone to their heavenly reward to aid our efforts.

 Our guiding rule as we type our emails, posts, and various other social media interactions should always be:

“Let the tongue have it’s rein firmly in the heart.” –St. Columbanus

 A good thing to remember when companioning our brothers and sisters:

“Oppression is not only evil, it is blasphemous because it makes a child of God doubt that s/he is a child of God.” –Archbishop Desmond Tutu

A good thing to practice with our brothers and sisters during disagreement:

“He [the monk] should not speak evil of, or harshly reproach, another, nor should he put anyone to the blush. Never should he violently rebuke anyone or carry on a conversation with a boorish person, and his speech at all times should be noted for its lack of boastfulness.” –Monastic rule of St. Ailbe

 When we take ourselves too seriously remember:

“Pious humbug is an invention of the devil.” –St. Comgal

When you’re feeling a little full of yourself and tempted to speak down to a companion think on this:

“Do not ever think yourselves better than the rest of your companions who share the same faith.” –St. Cuthbert

When someone new comes to the list seeking fellowship keep in mind:

“Do not despise those faithful who come to you seeking hospitality. Receive them, put them up, and set them on their way with kindness, treating them as one of yourselves.” –St. Cuthbert

In the haste of irritation be mindful of your free will and your choice of posts:

“The freedom to choose makes us like God: if we choose evil, that freedom becomes a curse;if we choose good, it becomes our greatest blessing.” –Pelagius

And when you interact try your best to see Christ present in the other person:

“See in each herb and small animal, every bird and beast, and in each man and woman, the eternal Word of God.” –St. Ninian

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Harvest Home
















Autumn is falling on the Ozark Mountains, the leaves are changing and the air is crisp in the mornings and cool in the evenings.

The last of the harvest season is upon us. The pumpkin patches are full and soon the Great Pumpkin will arise from the Pumpkin Patch, or so Linus Van Pelt would have us believe. (And believe I do!)

In the Celtic tradition we approach the end of the year at Samhain or October 31st and we begin a new on All Saints Day November 1st.

At this time I always reflect over the year gone by. I think of all that has been harvested in my life, that which has been stored for the winter, and that which has withered and died away. Time changes and life marches on. The wheel of the year turns yet again.

Is your harvest greater than your loss? Is mine? Time will tell. Winter cometh.

Sunday, August 31, 2014

My Patron: Saint Melangell


This website/blog is dedicated to Saint Melangell, a long time patron saint of mine. She’s a wonderful wandering Celtic saint that spent her life trying to make a safe place for folks amongst the thorns, thickets, and brier patches of society and of the world.

The Legend of Melangell and the Hare


There is a legend that survives from long ago, known to Welsh school children who have learned it from their mothers’ lips. The legend concerns a maiden, an Irish girl whose father had arranged for her to marry a chieftain back in 607 CE. She did not want to marry this chieftain – he was old and she was young. She joined a band of Irish hermits who came across the sea to preach the Christian gospels to the Pagan Welsh. The maiden’s name was, in Latin, Monacella. In Welsh it became Melangell. She traveled to the Pennant Valley, in Powys, in the 7th Century and lived in a cave in the hillside.

One day Brochwel, mighty Prince of Powys, was out hunting with his men and his hounds. The hounds raised a hare that took refuge in a thicket. The hounds were urged on but fled howling. Their huntsman raised his horn to his lips and was unable to remove it. On pursuit, the Prince found a young woman standing there – the hare had run under her long skirts to hide. The young woman told Brochwel that she lived in the valley, where she had come to take refuge. The Prince was so impressed by the young woman’s godliness, that he granted her the valley as a sanctuary for people and animals. Here she founded a religious community.


Another Account Of Saint Melangell


The Life of Saint Melangell of Wales (+ca. 590) ST MELANGELL (whose name has been latinised as Monacella) is interesting because the incident for which she is known is a Welsh version of one that is known in various forms in several European countries. She appears in the pedigrees as a descendant of Macsen Wledig (the usurping Roman emperor Magnus Maximus), and according to her legend her father was an Irish king (probably Scottish, in its later meaning, is intended). She vowed herself to God, and when pressed to marry fled to the part of central Wales called Powys, where she remained hidden for fifteen years.

Then one day the prince of Powys, Brochwel Ysgythrog, came hunting in her neighborhood, and pursued a hare into a clearing of the forest where Melangell was at prayer. The hare ran for the shelter of her garments, and turned to face its pursuers from a fold of her skirt.

Brochwel urged on his hounds, but they drew off, howling; the huntsman tried to wind his horn, but it stuck mute to his lips; and Brochwel approached the girl for an explanation When he had heard Melangell’s story of herself, he made her a present of the land on which they were standing as a “perpetual refuge and place of sanctuary”, in recognition of God’s protection of the ” little wild hare” in the shadow of His servant Melangell.

Accordingly she lived the rest of her life there, another thirty-seven years, gathering a community round her which she directed as abbess. But it was also a meeting-place for hares, who never showed any fear of their protectress, so that they came to be called “Melangell’s lambs”.

The church of Pennant Melangell in Montgomeryshire claims to stand on the site of this happening, and it formerly contained St Melangell’s shrine. It still has some medieval carvings relating the story of the hare, and the shrine chapel at east end.