Essays

Moseying: Living La Vida Llanero

Two saints that bless gardens other than St. Francis
February 29, 2004

A few days after Christmas, Deborah and I were in the Herberia Krisna in Nuevo Laredo. In one room were the bulk herbs needed for remedios (remedies.) In another room were figures of saints, candles, incense, and other items needed by practitioners of the folk medicine tradition of curanderismo. We bought copal and a small painting of San Ysidro Labrador. As we travel about the backroads of west Texas we have often noticed in stores and cafes small statues of San Ysidro Labrador, the patron saint of farmers. San Ysidro Labrador is an intercessor for prayers that bless farms. Often, during droughts, prayers are directed through San Ysidro Labrador, but every spring during planting time, he is called upon for help.

San Ysidro lived in the 12th century. A farm laborer, he (and his wife, Saint Maria Toribia de la Cabeza) devoted their lives to doing good works. In most images of the saint, he is kneeling and praying, while in the background a winged angel in a golden coat is holding the handles to a plow drawn by a yoke of milk-white oxen. In one Bolivian story of the saint, he makes water gush forth from the ground by striking the ground with a staff. Throughout the Hispanic regions of the Americas prayers are directed through San Ysidro during times of drought.

Farming, although a labor-intensive endeavor, gives people plenty of time to explore spiritual connections. Success, especially in arid lands, is easily recognized as a blessing from God. Depending upon one's spiritual traditions, specific prayers and rituals often become an integral part of the lifestyle. Each spring, a farmer is filled with expectations of the miracle of new life, anticipating the flowers, fruits, and vegetables to be harvested. With faith, hard work, and close attention, the tiny seeds planted will provide food and beauty.

The Feast Day of San Ysidro, May 15th, has been celebrated for centuries in villages throughout the southwestern United States and Mexico. On the feast day, the faithful gathered in a procession, walking from farm to farm, singing "alavous" (hymns). Carrying a statue of the saint, the people sang and prayed at each farm all morning. After lunch and tending other responsibilities, the procession would continue to more farms. In the evening, the final prayers of the feast day were offered.

In honor of this tradition, we purchased the small print to frame and hang on a wall. After ten years of drought, we believe we need all the help we can get while we wait for normal rainfall. Before the first new growth of spring, we will light our copal in a small brazier beneath our portrait of San Ysidro, and the smoke of the incense will carry our hopes for the blessings of rain to the heavens. Around the painting we will attach colorful tinwork images of flowers and fruit. A basket of dried Indian corn will be placed nearby.

At a metalworks shop in Laredo, we purchased large metal silhouettes of a longhorn bull and a kneeling goat. I suggested taking our statue of St. Francis of Assisi out of the house to join these two images in the garden, in a similar "act of sympathetic magic" (as an anthropologist would say) to create another form of ornamentation with purpose. Deborah, however, thinks St. Francis should stay inside beside some of our indoor plants. When we placed the images of the animals in the garden, we were immediately struck by the similarity to the manger creches of the Christian Nativity.

Interaction with plants leads to philosophical ruminations. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the great German poet, fell in love with plants in midlife. He wrote an essay, "On the Metamorphosis of Plants," which is a grand effort to unite poetry and science. "Science developed from poetry, and to reunite the two, benefits both, bringing both to a higher level and mutual advantage." Gardening enhances sensitivity to life, making a person aware of the mysterious spiritual transmission that takes place between nature (powers much greater than us) and humans.

Native American farmers speak to the seed as it is planted, "Now I place you in the ground. You will grow tall. Then, my children and my friends will eat." Night after night, the planter walks around his field, "singing up the corn." The Zen poet Basho once stated, "the gardener does not make the garden, but the garden makes the gardener." Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the spiritual worldview known as Anthrosophy, celebrated "biodynamics," the lifelong study of human interrelationship with nature through observation and spiritual insight. He insisted that humans should put our spirit, our mind, our heart, and our soul into our gardens.

In the "Alavou de San Ysidro Labrador," the following lines are indicative of the fervor of a farmer's faith:

Del ladron acostumbrado
Que nucha teme al Senor
Nos libres nuestro sembrado
Te pedimos por favor.

El granizo destructor
Que no nos cause su dano;
Te pedimos con fervor
Tener sosecha este ano.

En tus bondades confiado
Te pido de corazon
Le mandes a mi sembrado
Favores y bendicion.

The paraphrased translation of the above is as follows; "We farmers ask favor of the Lord, that the hail will not destroy or cause difficulties and that it will be a good year. We ask with all our hearts that our farms be blessed."

Gardening allows a person to experience the interconnectedness and interdependence of all life. This is a spiritual perspective. Gardening helps a person to be alone with one's own self, quiet and listening and feeling. Spiritual teachings are revealed in the stillness of your quiet observation. Basho says, "Let go of your preoccupation with yourself. When you and the garden become one, poetry arises."

About 600 A.D. in Ireland, monks raised a young man, Fiacre. Monasteries of the time were centers of learning and knowledge. Travelers stopped at the monasteries, sharing knowledge and seeds. Fiacre's days at the monastery taught him a deep love of silence, the joy of planting, and an appreciation of the natural world. When he grew up he established a hermitage, and people came for prayers, food, and healing. He healed with herbs from his garden. He traveled to France, where the Bishop of Meaux informed him he could have as much land as he could entrench in one day. He dragged his spade across the ground near the Marne River, and trees toppled and bushes were uprooted by his passing, encircling a square mile. This miracle became cause for his sainthood. People flocked to him. His monastery is still there, as are his relics. He is now known as the Saint of Gardeners.

Deborah and I recently spotted two statues or paintings of St. Fiacre for sale locally. It portrays him with his foot on a shovel sunk into the ground. We will soon have one!