What's in a name?

     

     The first two months of my Mississippi life have been busy.  Once my furniture arrived it took me three weeks to unpack.  But I think it is all done now and I am settling in to a routine.  I still haven’t been on the golf course, but I have played a lot of tennis.  Truth be told tennis is my first love anyway….  I am enjoying the grands and staying the course in diet and exercise for the most part.  That was one of my biggest worries in this move, so I made a point to get into a gym immediately and set up a routine.  I am working in the yard some and riding my bike a lot. 

     My new parish is filled with hearty and generous souls and I am enjoying that work immensely.  The parish is named St Patrick’s. It is an easy jog to the beach!  When I accepted this call I knew very little about this Irish Saint, but I have learned lots.  He was from England and had been captured by pirates and taken to Ireland as a boy.  He fell in love with the place and even after his rescue and return home, he longed to go back.  Patrick became a priest and returned to Ireland to convert the people to Christianity. 

     I struggled to find a name for this new blog and then I had this idea to use the symbols associated with St Patrick.  Hence the name “Shamrocks, Breastplates, and Grasshoppers”.  .Shamrocks are of course a symbol for the Cross – breastplates are more complicated.  A breastplate is worn to protect from injury, but it is also a religious symbol.  The wearing of breastplates for religious leaders goes all the way back to early Judaism.  St Patrick’s Breastplate is of course a poem and is sung as a hymn.  I’ll post the poem next time…..  But what about the Grasshopper????  This church along with others on the Coast has been washed away twice - by Camille in 1969 and by Katrina in 2005.  And yet it endures.  A reflection by the rector during one of the hard recovery times was based on Numbers 13 where the Israelites are bemoaning the fact that the Canaanites are giant while they were mere grasshoppers.  Aaron tells them that they will survive because even though they are mere grasshoppers, God would be with them and so they would thrive.  The grasshopper became a symbol of endurance and resilience with God as their stalwart. 

So there you have it.  Shamrocks, Breastplates, and Grasshoppers.

Buen Camino,

Mother Jane