Saint Francis

Saint Francis statue tied to a tree
Saint Francis statue tied to a tree

There is an old horse path that runs through the undeveloped part of Durand Eastman Park. It’s a beautiful trail that hardly gets any use although it did get a lot of attention when Bulldozer Man drove part of the trail with his earthmoving moving equipment about five or six years ago. Not a park employee or anything, just a private citizen, he atempted to clear the trial again for horseback riding. Some alert woods-walkers notified Larry Staub, the director of the Monroe County Park system. At one point this path skirts a cluster of homes and this statue stands behind a house at the edge of the woods. The base rotted out and he was laying down for a while. I probably have a picture of that on this blog somewhere. I keep track of that sort of thing.

We always had a statue of Saint Francis in the house when I was growing up and I have one today near my desk. My youngest brother youngest brother was named after him. The Paton Saint of animals and the environment, he is one of the church’s favorite saints and is usually pictured in a brown robe, sandals and a rope belt with birds on his shoulder. Born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, he is the patron saint of Italy. He is reported to have received the stigmata during the apparition of Seraphic angels in a religious ecstasy making him the first recorded person to bear the wounds of Christ’s Passion.

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