Musing on Saints

A few weeks ago, I was in church with my niece E., and I was explaining that all the "funny pictures" around us told stories. I gave her an oh-so-brief rendition of St. George, because I thought the dragon might interest her. But it's gotten me thinking about saints in general.

Some saints I find completely frustrating. St. Juliana the Merciful... well, I loved her as a kid because she cared for orphans and had lots of children, but as an adult I find her far too good. It just doesn't seem like it was hard for her to be the sort of woman who stayed up all night making quilts for cold poor Russians. As laudable as that is, I would get tired. I would be grouchy. I would not do such a thing with good grace and endless patience. I don't think too many people could.

St. Moses the Ethiopian, on the other hand, is my kind of sinner. Slave, thief, murderer, penitent... and he ended his life full of forgiveness for all sorts of people. I could do that, given a good deal of practice.

I am also somewhat underwhelmed by St. Pantaleimon, though I understand why he's a saint. He was a doctor. He treated people for free. I like doctors who do that. Medicine seems to be one of those professions that attracts people with that kind of bent. It's a great bent. You deserve sainthood for it. It just doesn't touch me in quite the right way.

St. John of Kronstadt, on the other hand, is also my kind of guy. For one thing, his icon makes him look like a man with a sense of humor. For another thing, his wife really must have been divinely sent to put up with him. His late hours, his carelessness about his health, his being away from home so much, must have been pretty hard on her. So he doesn't strike me as discouragingly perfect.

Oddly, my reasoning breaks down when it comes to St. Seraphim of Sarov. For years, I resisted the appeal that has made him the Francis of Assisi of the Orthodox world. Not only was he too perfect, he had the great fault of being beloved of my mother, who can be... a bit sentimental and sometimes prone to anger over differences of opinion or point of view (be quiet, papertigers, I know, all right?). After a while, though, he is sort of irresistible. He liked animals. He liked people. He was the sort of guy who would be interested in a person like me, someone who is full of faults and anxieties and needs constant help from God to get through a single day.

On the non-Orthodox scheme, I'm fond of Francis Xavier, who did both creditable and non-creditable things with such a spirit of love and kindness that he was remembered even by people he wronged as one of the greatest men they'd ever known. He also loved to travel, even when it made him hugely ill, and even though he was witness to all kinds of injustice in the course of his travels - poverty, social exclusion, the dreadful waste of human potential, and much more.

I like the icon of the Russian Revolution in our choirloft, too. In the center are the martyrs recognized as saints. On one side are the royal family. On the other, behind broken barbed wire, are ordinary Russians, many of them carrying crosses. Above all of it, angels trumpet. It's a great thing to look at when one is feeling lost and hopeless... a lost and hopeless scene which also shows a greater reality. Many of our parishoners fled Russian Communism, so it's also a good reminder of the parish's heritage.

There is much more to say - the walls of our church are completely covered, and don't even give half the saints - but that is all that strikes me at the moment. The picture I decided to use is of my childhood dog, Tikhon. When she first came to St. Nicholas with me, papertigers looked at one icon and said, "Honey! Your dog is a SAINT! A male saint!" (She was a female dog.) So it seems fitting.

Meme of Literary Value

I used the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Meme from seraphimsigrist.

TO FIND TWO INTERESTING THINGS
1)Let us take into hand the Concise Columbia
Encyclopedia... (another book could serve of course)
2)Observe that it has 943 pages with two columns each.
3)Go to random number generator
http://www.random.org/integers/
4) Generate two random page numbers 1-943
then column numbers 1 or two
then 1 or 2= upper or lower half of chosen column
5)this gives us 6 or 7 entries.
6)choose the most interesting ones and find some information
new to myself about them.
7)Write something generally interesting one finds.


1) The first passage is from All's Well That Ends Well. I quote:
"So I say; both of Galen and Paracelsus.
Of all the learned and authentic fellows, -
Right; so I say.
That gave him out incurable, -
Why, there 'tis; so say I too.
Not to be helped,-
Right; as 'twere a man assured of a, -
Uncertain life and sure death.
Just; you say well: so would I have said.
I may truly say, it is a novelty to the world."

I found this a rather comedic dialogue, particularly out of context. Galen and Paracelsus - they are referring here, I think, to doctors in general, and showing the traditional layman's distrust of doctors and medicine. "So I say!" In complete agreement on this point, are they? Yet we are all assured of an uncertain life and sure death. *ponders*


2) The second passage is from the first part of King Henry IV.

"How now, blown Jack! how now, quilt!
What, Hal! How now, mad wag! what a devil dost thou in Warwickshire? - My good Lord of Westmoreland, I cry you mercy: I thought your honour had already been at Shrewsbury.
Faith, Sir John, 'tis more than time that I were there, and you too; but my powers are there already. the king, I can tell you, looks for us all: we must away all night.
Tut, never fear me: I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream.
I think, to steal cream, indeed; for thy theft hath already made thee butter. But tell me, Jack, whose fellows are these that come after?
Mine, Hal, mine.
I did never see such pitiful rascals.
Tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder; they'll fill a pit as well as better: tush, man, mortal men, mortal men."

At first I was amused by the apparent reference to the Nikki Giovanni cat, but... I still have genocide on the mind, I guess. Food for powder! Interesting, too, being on such familiar terms with Prince Henry as to call him Hal, completely untitled. Rebellious military operations ensue in following scenes, and Prince Henry prevails. Go, Hal!