November 26th 28 days before Christmas
St. Tannoch Patron Saint of Survivors of Violent Crimes
I went yesterday to look at several of my usual resources for a Celtic Saint for today, and came up dry...there was one medieval Anglo-Saxon saint, but without a Celtic tie-in that seemed to defeat the purpose. I am an inveterate bibliophile and have several compilations about Celtic Saints. I had noticed in the past that a few of the saints in my books didn't seem to have a specific day assigned to them. One of those is St. Tannoch, who is also known as St Enoch...she may indeed have a feast day listed somewhere but it must be pretty obscure, so I decided I would "translocate" her to November 26th. I suspect she wouldn't mind terribly.
So here is what I know about St. Tannoch, which is somewhat gritty, but frankly timely. She lived in the late 6th and early 7th century in Scotland, and was the Christian daughter of a pagan chieftan named Loch. He was trying to marry her of to a Prince Ewan, but she declined, and her father threw out of the house. She took up with some friends, but Ewan tracked her down and raped her. She became pregnant, which her father took as a further disgrace, so he had her apprehended and thrown down a cliff side. She survived this through the intervention of Mary, but the father, further enraged, tied her into a coracle (a small rudderless oval shaped Celtic canoe, basically) and had her set adrift. She ended up on the coast of Culross, where, befriended by local Christians, she gave birth to a son, whom she named Kentigern. She and Kentigern moved to the area of Glasgow where she was known for her piety and service to the poor. (Kentigern was also later canonized as a Saint).
St. Tannoch's story touched me in a number of ways. I find sexual violence against women pretty horrifying and forget sometimes how, as a male, how insulated I can be from the kind of dangers that women face. When I read about the current issues with sexual slavery or about abuctions of women who are kept as slaves of years, as happened recently in Ohio, I stop to wonder if we as a culture have really made much progress since the times of Tannoch. Her father's reaction compounds the issue--he obviously saw his daughter more as property than as family. As the father of daughter (light of my life!) I cannot begin to comprehend this. I am also reminded of an Irish movie from 2002, the Magdalene Sisters. Based in fact from the early to mid 20th century, it is the story of the convent that young Irish women were sent to, if they were felt to be "degraded." In the movie one of the characters is sent there by her father after she tries to confide in him after being raped by a cousin at a family gathering. He wants no dishonor on the family, so sends her away. Although this was 50 plus years ago, I still wonder how that kind of mind set could have occured in the last century, but obviously it did.
I have often wondered, as a male, how I can try to be responsible to decrease violence against women. I certainly tried to raise my two sons in such a way as to not only be respectful of women but to see them as fellow human beings first and foremost. Part of my vows as a life member of the Order of St. Aidan and Hilda is to keep my mind "chaste." As part of fulfilling this I decided to avoid TV or cinema that I thought was aimed at being sexually explicit when that wasn't necesary for the plot...when it was exploiting women for the sake of ratings or to sell the movie or show better. Perhaps I could be accused of prudery by some, but I take for instance the difference between the book version and HBO version of George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones. In the book, sex if of course mentioned, but it fits into the plot structure...on HBO it is flaunted at the viewer, 90% of the time with female nudity, not male. So I avoid the series and stick to the books. Does this make a difference? I doubt from an industry standpoint if it does, but I hope it allows me to feel like have taken a stand for my daughter and grand-daughter, and for the St. Tannochs of the world.
Lord, you created us a male and female. Help me to continue grow in avoiding media that could be seen as promoting women as objects, as opposed to being our equal partners in furthering Your purpose for creation. Remind me not to take for granted the safety I have been afforded by our society due to the accident of being male, and create in me an increased sensitivity to the issues for women in our increasingly violent times. In the name of Your Son, who befriended women who were outcasts. Amen.
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