St. Patrick
The text that follows is adapted from the sermon I delivered at Michael Servetus UU church Sunday March 16. To be human is to tell stories. It doesn’t matter if your stories are cloaked in the language of myth, science, psychology or religion, we tell ourselves and each other stories all the time. And most of these stories are about how the universe works, or how we should live inside it. This brings me to one of my least favorite characters in all of western history: St Patrick. He is famous for converting Ireland to Christianity. Legend tells us he chased the snakes out of Ireland. Of course, the snake – the better word is serpent - is a symbol for pagans. The serpent is the symbol for the great goddess, and of people who see holiness in the earth, and who have divinities that take female forms. To me the serpent is a symbol of the raw, untamable, awesome and frightening power of the life force that surges and courses through everything we see (and everything we don’t). And that ener