Saint Francis

When Saint Francis came upon a quantity of flowers, he would preach to them and invite them to praise God, just as if they had the ability to reason.  He would also speak to cornfield and vineyards, stones, woods, and every beauty of the land in this way. He would experience the elements of earth, air, fire, and water with gratitude.  He understood that they all willingly served God.

In short, he called all creatures by the name brother or sister.  He saw hidden things of creation with the eye of compassion. For, in his own way, he had escaped back into the wondrous freedom of childhood.

- The First Life of St. Francis (pub. 1229), by Thomas of Celano

Saint Canice

Now Brother Canice was born in County Derry in Ireland, the son of a bard who liked nothing more than a good song, and so for the rest of his life he sought nothing more than silence.  After his visits hither and yon, he retreated, paddling his dory to one island or another in the Firth of Lorn, where but for the wild creatures that flocked to him, he was alone in the still and quite and could immerse himself in his translation of the Gospels.

Even then, though, he was still pestered.  Once mice nibbled so furiously on his shoes that he took one of and threw it at them.  The shoe landed in the water and he had to hop down on one foot to retrieve it.  As he returned with his dripping shoe, he realized that this was his punishment for losing his patience and he apologized to the mice. 

Another time Brother Canice thought the chattering of some birds would drive him mad.   But although he was angry, he made himself talk to them in gentle tones and asked them to remain quite at least until the end of the Sabbath.

And there is one more story about Brother Canice.  In the small wilderness of his island retreats he would often read his large tome as he picked his way through the bushes and brambles.  But sometimes the book grew to heavy to hold.  At these times a stag would appear and offer his great antlers as a bookstand.

Once while Brother Canice stood reading God’s word held up by the patient stag, a sound from the woods startled the animal, and he bounded off into the forest with the book lodged in the crook of his latticed crown.

From The Lives of Irish Saints, by J. Hanlon

Khizr

Khizr (meaning green in Arabic) is mysterious being on the borders of reality - part plant, part djinn, part angel. Asked by his companions about Khizr, the Prophet Muhammad explained that when Khizr steps on barren land, the ground turns green with vegetation.  Khizr represents the rejuvenation of nature.  He is stunningly alive, creative, and wild.

Khizr is the patron saint of dreams, in which he appears to guide those without a teacher.  In one Quranic story, Moses meets him in the wilderness and tries to follow him but cannot bear it when Khizr sinks a ship and kills a young man.  As they part, Khizr tells Moses the secret meanings of his strange actions.

Khizr is the patron saint of alchemists, mutation and transformation.  His green emblem is the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus. In the Romance of Alexander the Great, it is Khizr who travels into the land of darkness to find the fountain of eternal life.

“The story teaches us to find the elixir of life and wisdom in our own shadow.  The places that we initially cannot see in our inner journey, can impart creative, volatile, and valuable energy that we can transmute and thereby bear spiritual fruit.”

- C. J. Jung

“Nowadays Khezr might well be induced to reappear as the patron saint of militant eco-environmentalism, since he represents the fulcrum or nexus between wild(er)ness and the human/humane.  Rather than attempt to moralize Nature (which never works because Nature is amoral), Khadirian Environmentalism would rejoice simulaneously both in its utter wildness and its “meaningfulness” – Nature as tajalli (the “shining through” of the divine into creation; the manifestation of each thing as divine light), Nature as an aesthetic of realization.”

- Peter Lamborn Wilson