I am mostly an atheist. But that doesn’t mean I’m not
superstitious.
The other morning I lost my phone. I knew it was somewhere,
but still I couldn’t find it. (For
more information on this topic, see my recent piece on “the aging brain.”)
I had great faith, however, that my phone would be found. No
one would have stolen it. Also, I’m very good at losing things that get found
again.
So I took a walk at lunchtime, as I usually do, serene in
the certainty that my phone would be found by the time I got back to the
office.
And, just to make sure, I said the sure-fire St. Anthony
prayer / invocation:
Something’s lost that can’t be found;
Please, Saint Anthony, look around!
And I came back to the office, and no one had found my
phone.
But I found it myself, within a minute or so,
Saint Anthony was a Portuguese who became a Franciscan. He
was often sickly, but wanted to be a preacher, and even set out to proselytize
in Morocco once (although he didn’t make it there). Legend has it that he came
to a church to preach, but found it empty; to shame his congregants, he went to
the oceanside and preached to the fish, who rose to the surface and listened to
him (although they fell into their old evil ways later).
Here is Janet Baker singing Gustav Mahler’s song on the
subject:
