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Happy St. Patrick's Day
St. Patrick's Day is nearly here and it will be a time of celebration, parades and all the green beer you can keep down! Many will see it as a chance to be "Irish for a day". For me it's an opportunity to observe my own Irish heritage and religious beliefs. No, I'm not Roman Catholic, and for the sake of religious argument, I won't get into my religious beliefs. St. Patrick of Ireland was a Roman Catholic priest. While he was credited with "driving the snakes out of Ireland", there were probably never were any snakes native to Ireland to begin with, save and except the two-legged kind! His contribution to Christianity, however, was far greater. The Shamrock has always been closely associated with Ireland and St. Patrick's Day, but few people really know why. In his sermons, St. Patrick used a Shamrock to describe the Trinity to Christian followers, that The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit were separate but of the same entity.
As a child when my maternal grandmother would come to visit, she would take me hunting for four-leaf clovers, and it never failed that she would find one. I asked her once if they were lucky, and she truly believed they were. She explained to me about St. Patrick and his teachings. When I asked her about the fourth leaf, and she said "when you find a four-leaf clover, the fourth leaf is your guardian angel watching over you." Whether THAT is true, I don't know, but it is certain that throughout her 88 years, she had more than a couple angels looking out for her! Many years have passed since clover-hunting with my grandmother. Today when I work the garden and come upon the clumps of oxalis, I never dig them up. I let them continue to grow among the flowers. When I go out to look at the flowers and see the clovers, I am reminded of that spring day hunting four-leaf clovers with my grandmother and St. Patrick. Someday I'll pass this on to my own grandchildren.
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