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Elizabeth Anne Olson
John Richard Stepp Editors
Plants and Health
New Perspectives on the HealthEnvironment-Plant Nexus
Ethnobiology
Series Editors
Robert Voeks
John Richard Stepp
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11551
Elizabeth Anne Olson • John Richard Stepp
Editors
Plants and Health
New Perspectives
on the Health-Environment-Plant Nexus
Editors Elizabeth Anne Olson
History, Sociology, & Anthropology Department
Southern Utah University Cedar City, UT, USA
John Richard Stepp
Department of Anthropology and Tropical Conservation and Development Program
University of Florida Gainesville, FL, USA
ISSN 2365-7553
Ethnobiology
ISSN 2365-7561 (electronic)
ISBN 978-3-319-48086-2 ISBN 978-3-319-48088-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-48088-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016955836
© Springer International Publishing AG 2016
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
Printed on acid-free paper
This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature
The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface
The case studies collected here are concerned with the theme of plants, humans, and health from anthropological perspectives. The genesis for this volume was a session entitled, “Plants & Health: Producing Anthropologies at the Human-EnvironmentHealth Nexus,” at the American Anthropological Association annual meeting held in Washington D.C. in November 2014. During the session, and spilling into the rest of the afternoon, we engaged in lengthy conversations about the connections between our ethnographic research and the importance of this type of research at this moment in time. Since the conference, we have toiled with these topics further, pushed deeper into our own research, grappled with various theoretical perspectives, refined the case studies (and even added some new ones).
This volume showcases current ethnographic accounts of the ways that people use plants to promote human health and well-being. The goal in this volume is to highlight some contemporary examples of how plants are central to various aspects of healthy environments and healthy minds and bodies. The authors employ diverse analytic frameworks, including interpretive and constructivist, political-ecological, systems theory, phenomenological, and critical studies of the human-environmentstate interactions. The case studies represent a wide range have of geographies and contemplate a range of the health appeals that plants and herbs.
The volume begins by considering how plants may intrinsically be “healthful” and the notion that ecosystem health may be a literal concept deployed in contemporary efforts to increase awareness of environmental degradation. The characteristics of specific plant species, and the role of specific species in ecosystems, are significant for socially-attuned conservation. Thinking more about the relationships between the individual and the plants, the production of herbal and plant-based remedies may be therapeutic for the producer who has the advantages of experiencing the plants through the various stages of product production. An example of a woman who produces medicinal plant remedies highlights the apparent embodiment of the healthful attributes of the plant-based remedies she makes and sells. The volume continues with the exploration of the ways in which medically pluralistic societies demonstrate the entanglements of state and citizen. In other examples, we
find that profit-driven models of extraction and production of medicinal plant products can be related to health sovereignty for the state and perhaps also for individuals. Several of the chapters in this volume work to unpack the epistemologies of medicinal plant knowledge and the globalization of medicinal plant knowledge. The translocal and global networks of medicinal plant knowledge are pivotal to productions of medicinal and herbal plant remedies that are used by people in all varieties of societies and cultural groups. Humans produce health through various means and interact with our environments, especially plants, in order to promote health.
Cedar City, UT, USA
Elizabeth Anne Olson
Gainesville, FL, USA John Richard Stepp
Acknowledgements
Creating this volume has been a wonderful collaboration between the various authors, editors, and reviewers. A number of individuals have helped bring this collection of ethnographies together. We’d especially like to thank the supportive team at Springer, Eric Stannard and Hemalatha Gunasekaran, along with their colleagues. Our deep appreciation also extends to the reviewers, both anonymous and otherwise, who have read and commented on various versions and drafts of the chapters. Finally, thank you to the authors who have come along on this journey and have worked through multiple iterations of their contributions to provide great insights into the arena of Plants and Health
Medicinal Plants in Bangladesh: Planting Seeds of Care in the Weeds of Neoliberalism
Karen McNamara
Shaping Strong People: Napo Runa Therapeutic Narratives of Medicinal Plant Use
Nora C. Bridges
A. Olson
About the Editors
Elizabeth Anne Olson is an assistant professor of anthropology at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. Her anthropological research has looked at traditional and non-biomedical healing systems in Mexico, Utah, the Bolivian Amazon, and Western Europe. Her work with traditional healing systems has led to a focus on the intersections among health, environments, economic markets, and community development. Her past work has focused on indigenous medicinal plant knowledge, and she is currently studying the ways that globalization influences the transmission of medicinal plant knowledge and use. Dr. Olson’s current research concerns the globalization of medicinal plant knowledge and the relationships between indigenous, professional, and lay uses of medicinal plant knowledge across various ethnomedical systems. Her work connects to topics including the health sovereignty movement, as well as other social justice and community-based conservation initiatives. She frequently collaborates with community-based social justice projects in Mexico and the USA. Dr. Olson serves on the Board of Directors of the Culture and Agriculture section of the American Anthropological Association and is the Conference & Awards Coordinator for the Society of Ethnobiology. She is co-editor along with Cynthia Fowler of the monograph series Global Change/Global Health for the University of Arizona Press.
John Richard Stepp is a professor at the University of Florida in the Department of Anthropology and Tropical Conservation and Development program. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy, and was in residence at the University of Hawaii as the Wilder Professor of Botany. He has conducted biocultural conservation research over the last two decades throughout the tropics, especially in the Maya Forest and in the Greater Mekong Region of Southeast Asia. His research explores persistence, change, and variation of traditional ecological knowledge and ethnobiology. Much of this work has focused on wild food plants and medicinal plants. His work has also focused on patterns and causes in the distribution of biological and cultural diversity (biocultural diversity) on both regional and global scales. Other interests include the anthropology of food, medical anthropology, visual anthropology, social science
research methods, GIS and land use change, and the anthropology of climate change. He is also involved in documentary and ethnographic film production on topics both related and unrelated to his primary research. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Ecological Anthropology and former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Ethnobiology. Along with Robert Voeks, he serves as an Ethnobiology series editor for Springer.
Contributors
Eugene N. Anderson Department of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA
Nora C. Bridges Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Natasha-Kim Ferenczi Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
Julie Laplante School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Karen McNamara Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
Elizabeth A. Olson Department of History, Sociology, and Anthropology, Southern Utah University, Cedar City, UT, USA
John Richard Stepp Department of Anthropology and Tropical Conservation and Development Program, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
Traditional and Nontraditional Medicine in a Yucatec Maya Community
Eugene N. Anderson
Abstract Traditional Yucatec Maya herbal medicine survives in eastern Quintana Roo. Here, both hmeen (curers/ritualists) and ordinary people continue to use traditional herbs, but fewer species over time and with more and more introduction not only of biomedical cures but also of folk cures from other parts of Mexico. The result is a free, open, dynamic system in which individuals choose what seems to work and what seems to offer hope.
Introduction
The Maya of the Yucatan Peninsula maintain an herbal medical tradition that is demonstrably very old. The people in question are the original “Maya,” those who call themselves Maayah. With the extension of that word to cover the whole language phylum, the language in question is now known as Yucatec (a Spanish word; the pseudo-Indigenous form “Yukatek” is incorrect). They were the builders of the northern lowlands cities such as Chichen Itza. How far south they extended into the central lowlands in Classic times is unknown; somewhere in the southern peninsula they gave way to their linguistic relatives the Cholans.
Depictions in pre-Columbian art show some of the plants now used medicinally, and show rituals that may include curing ones (personal observation of art in many sites and museums). Documents from the Spanish Conquest onward speak of it and show that the major herbs have been used at least since that time. These documents include very good dictionaries, notably the quite early Calepino de Motul (Arzápalo Marín 1996, orig. ca. 1600). Other sources include the astonishing Ritual of the Bacabs (Arzápalo Marín 1987; Roys 1965), an early Maya text in Spanish letters that details a series of rituals involving mystical and religious references to many animals and plants, several of them now used in curing; also the Book of the Jew, an eighteenth-century herbal-medical text (Barrera Marin and Barrera Vasquez 1983). With the modern age came extensive ethnobotanical research on the Maya, beginning with Ralph Roys’ classic Ethno-Botany
E.N. Anderson (*)
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA
e-mail: eugene.anderson@ucr.edu
© Springer International Publishing AG 2016
E.A. Olson, J.R. Stepp (eds.), Plants and Health, Ethnobiology, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-48088-6_1
1
E.N. Anderson
of the Maya (1976 [1931]) and continuing through the foundational work of Alfredo Barrera Vásquez and his son Alfredo Barrera Marín (Barrera Marín et al. 1976) to subsequent research climaxing in the definitive work of Arellano et al., listing 2166 species (Arellano Rodriguez et al. 2003).
Maya medicine can be divided into naturalistic and personalistic theories (Foster 1994), but the division is fuzzy. Naturalistic medicine, in George Foster’s terms, involves causation by natural things: insect stings, sunstroke, thorn stabs, animal bites, and the like. Personalistic causation involves active cause by a god, evil spirit, witch, or other entity working ill. The Maya are not always clear about causation. More, their major causal category is “wind,” ik’, which can be either a normal natural wind or an evil spirit that appears only as a rush of air, and such spirits can be mindlessly harmful or mindfully malevolent.
My research was carried out between 1989 and 2007 in eastern Quintana Roo, primarily in Chunhuhub but also in the nearby towns of Polyuc, Xpichil, Presidente Juarez, Margaritas, and others. These are agricultural towns, growing maize, vegetables, and fruit, and raising cattle and small livestock. Agriculture was an intensive form of the classic milpa (swidden) system, with maize the staple food and a vast variety of plants and animals either raised in the fields or taken in the highly managed forests. The area was at that time quite prosperous by rural Mexican standards, and lands were still held collectively under the ejido system. This has eroded since 2000, and private property is now general (Anderson and Anderson 2012). A national law passed in 1993 allowed ejidos to privatize, but those in central Quintana Roo were slow to do it; Chunhuhub did not even begin to break up its ejido landholding system until 2005, and after that privatization proceeded gradually.
My research focused on ethnobiology, including agriculture, forest management, and traditional medicine (Anderson 2003, 2005, 2010a, 2010b, 2011, 2013; Anderson and Medina Tzuc 2005). In addition to widespread questioning of people from all walks of life, I worked intensively with two hmeen (traditional healers and ritual specialists), Don Marcos Puc Batab of Presidente Juarez and Don José Cauich Canul of Polyuc. They were very different individuals. Don Marcos was extremely traditional, essentially monolingual in Maya, and also a darkly saturnine person. Don José was friendly, outgoing, eager to teach, fluent in Spanish, and highly eclectic in his curing.
In and around Chunhuhub, I recorded 350 herbal substances (almost all plants, but a few animals) used medicinally. This compares well with the 360 recorded by Ankli (Ankli 2000; Ankli et al. 1999a, 1999b) and with the few hundred medicinally used that are listed in Arellano Rodriguez et al. (2003).
Dimensions of Yucatec Maya Medicine
Yucatec Maya medicine is well described. Robert Redfield and Margaret Park Redfield recorded an astonishing amount of data about it in the 1920s and on through the 1950s. In particular, their work in the town of Dzitas is a neglected gem
of ethnography and ethnology—one of the finest medical ethnographies of all time, unfortunately buried in an obscure report (Redfield and Redfield 1940).
More recently, Hernán García et al. (1999) have produced a fascinating synthesis of a relatively elite, intellectualized form of Yucatec Maya medicine and compared it with Chinese medicine. The Quintana Roo Maya theory of sicknesses and medical problems is fairly simple by comparison to that described in their work. (The following is summarized from Anderson 2003; see documentation and references there.) The most obvious are direct naturalistic problems that anyone can identify as to cause and nature: stings, bites, rashes, minor injuries, broken bones, childbirth, and the like. Then come the many diseases caused by imbalance of hot and cold. This is an indigenous medical theory that has been influenced by Renaissance Spanish medical theory introduced shortly after the Conquest (Foster 1994).
Both theories built on the recognition that extremes of environmental heat and cold can damage the body, and that extremes of bodily heat (fever) and cold (chills, hypothermia) are signs of sickness. Both made the logical connection, especially given the frequent observation that too much exposure to cold is very often followed by chills or fever or both, and that drinking cold liquids when overheated can bring vomiting or cramps or worse. Another observed result of overheat is that overexertion in the blazing Yucatan heat depletes salt very fast, and the result of sudden hyponatremia is weakness, shivering, a feeling of extreme chill, and— without quick relief—collapse or even death. Being quite aware of the problem, the Maya eat a high-salt diet, take in a lot of salt with almost every meal, and carry salt with them to the fields when they work there. Unsurprisingly, indigenous theories of heating and cooling tended to fuse with Spanish ones though differences can still be observed.
With all these observations, it is reasonable that the Maya explain almost all internal conditions, from rheumatism to cancer and from stomach ache and diarrhea to heart attacks, by being suddenly chilled when overheated. Drinking a very cold drink when overheated usually causes stomach and digestive problems and is the usual cause of them. Cold air striking one’s knees can produce rheumatism in the knees.
Here, the line between naturalistic and personalistic theories becomes blurred. Winds, ik’ in Yucatec, range from purely natural and easily felt gusts of air to what anthropologists would call supernatural beings. Even the rain gods (chaak) are thought of as winds. More common and dangerous are the k’as ik’, “bad winds,” which are disembodied harmful or evil forces. Some are not evidently conscious and are bad merely in their effects; others are actively malevolent. Mysterious winds that may be, but are not clearly, physical or conscious include the bok’ol ooch “demon opossum” and the taankas ik’ “frenzy wind” or “paralysis wind,” both recorded by Robert and Margaret Redfield in Dzitas and Chan Kom as well as by myself in Chunhuhub (Redfield and Redfield 1940:63; Redfield and Villa Rojas 1934). In the Rituals of the Bacabs (Arzápalo Marín 1987), tankas is associated with parrots and other birds, and that association is probably still current. Birds such as owls and nightjars are still bad omens, and the gentle little nightjars (puhuy) that call all night are sometimes thought to be k’as ik’.
More clearly personalistic are sicknesses sent as punishment by gods and saints (again a fusion of Maya and Renaissance Spanish ideas) and the very, very many sicknesses sent by witches. Witchcraft (brujería) and witches (brujos/as) apparently abound in the Yucatan, as noted by the Redfields and other observers. They usually send chronic, especially chronic but intermittent, conditions. They may be way, “transformers,” who appear as goats or other animals. They work their evil especially on Tuesdays and Fridays. This is a purely Spanish reckoning that goes back to Roman paganism: those were the days of Mars and Venus, troublesome and unlucky deities. Thus, anti-witch charms also are often best done on those days.
Finally, more ordinary, less harmful magic can be worked by ordinary people, as when a love-stricken youth tries to sprinkle dried and powdered hummingbird or flycatcher head in his girlfriend’s hair to make her love him. This widespread bit of Mexican folklore may have reached the Yucatec after the Spanish Conquest though the identification of hummingbird with love and flycatchers with passion is apparently very ancient.
Imperfectly blended with all this are varying degrees of knowledges of outside medical traditions. Most important, naturally, is biomedicine—specifically, the form of it taught and used in clinics in Quintana Roo, which runs largely to shots, antibiotic pills and salves, aspirin and other mild analgesics, and necessary surgical interventions in cases of difficult childbirth, major accidents, cancer, and the like. Not only the concepts of germs and infection have been learned; more important in most people’s lives is the coming of awareness of diabetes and its alleged origin from eating sweets and overly processed foods. As in so many other parts of the world, diabetes has gone from virtually unknown to rampantly abundant in Maya towns in the last two generations, as comida chatarra (“junk food”) replaces wholegrain maize and nutrient-rich vegetables in the diet.
In 2007, a fully stocked and beautifully appointed clinic came to Chunhuhub, and modern biomedicine has swept the town (Anderson and Anderson 2012). The other communities of my research do not have such facilities, but they can come to Chunhuhub. Traditional midwifery is all but dead; hmeen lore is being forgotten. Don Marcos and Don José have taught their sons, but their sons are active in other realms too, and do not preserve all the old knowledge. Younger people rely more and more on biomedicine, less and less on traditional healing, every generation now.
Family herbal medicine continues, however, because it is cheaper, easier to access, and often more effective than the medicine from the clínica. My work has had a modest share in this, since the herbal medical data in my 2003 book was drawn on by a group of local healers during the brief career of their natural-medicine clinic (Marín Martínez et al. 2008). It flourished briefly, providing good herbal products, massage, and the service of one of the parteras, but local residents knew the herbal medicine well enough to prevent the clinic from making a living.
Biomedicine is not the only external influence, however. Folk medicine from all over Mexico and some parts of the Caribbean is available. Spiritualism, in the version introduced to Mexico especially by Allan Kardek in the nineteenth century, is known in the towns, and is an indirect but important influence on Don José Cauich Canul. Conspicuously absent from Mayaland are the botánicas (traditional herbal
and spiritualist stores) so extremely abundant elsewhere in Mexico, but anyone visiting a large city has access to them; they supply spiritual and spiritualist remedies, and herbal remedies from all over Mexico.
The most striking thing about Maya medicine is that in practice these varied theories of disease have little effect. They have, in most cases, limited relevance because the Maya have learned empirically over thousands of years which herbs actually work for which conditions.
Thus, for instance, the fact that a skin rash may be due to a plant’s itchy hairs or leaf oils or to a bad wind striking the skin or to drinking cold liquid when overheated has little effect on the treatment; what does matter is that if it is a simple itch like a mosquito bite, it can be treated by tea of bark of chakmoolche’ (Erythrina standleyana, extremely tannin-rich). Other tannin-rich barks are used to make skin washes, and apparently work reasonably well. Skin sores and rashes that hurt and continue without clearing up are treatable by k’anaan (Hamelia patens, which has an antibiotic in its leaves; Arvigo and Balick 1993:143); its virtues were already noted in the early Yucatec/Spanish dictionary Calepino de Motul around 1600 (Arzápalo Marín 1996:409). Similarly, infected rashes and other infections can be treated by siipche’ (Bunchosia swartziana). Anita Ankli found this tree contains a very effective antibiotic (Ankli 2000; Ankli et al. 1999a, 1999b). Ankli also found medicinal values in many other Maya healing plants. More have turned up subsequently. Still others need more study. (See also Berlin and Berlin 1996; Berlin et al. 2000, for the highland Tzeltal and Tzotzil, linguistic relatives of the Yucatec but inhabiting a quite different ecosystem.)
Worms are treated with epazote (Chenopodium ambrosioides), which is highly effective. Canker sores (fogajes) are effectively treated by a mash of the root of oon ak’ (Gouania lupuloides); the root sap contains a soothing and drying chemical (apparently a saponin; personal observation). Kakaltun (wild basil, Ocimum micranthum) works well for stomach aches. Diabetes is effectively treated by tea of buds of Cecropia, by eating nopales (Opuntia spp.), by tea of certain grasses, and other local foods. The bark of chakah (Bursera simaruba) makes a tea effective as a skin wash for rashes caused by contact with chechem (Metopium brownei), a huge tree closely related to poison ivy and having the same irritant capacities. The abundant ha’abin (Piscidia piscipula) has bark and roots with toxic compounds and also tannins, and the bark is rasped to make a rash for skin infections, for which it is very effective, with strong antibiotic action (Ankli 2000).
Arnica (here Tithonia spp.) is used, as elsewhere, in a tea or alcohol infusion for bruises, skin infections, arthritis, and other pains, as well as itching and mange. Box elemuy (Malmea depressa), used so widely that it is smuggled up to Maya in Los Angeles, seems to be effective for kidney medicine (Salvador Flores Guido, personal communication), but confirmation is needed. Chaya (Cnidoscolus chayamansa) is an effective diuretic. Of several apparently effective stomach-ache remedies, allspice (Pimenta dioica, a fairly common native tree) is known in biomedicine to be effective. The irritating, pungent, somewhat toxic sap of euphorbia (notably hobon k’ak’, E. heterophylla) is put on skin and eye infections and the like.
A semi-medical use is the placement of the extremely sticky leaves of Martynia annua to catch fleas, hence its Maya name of chukch’ik, “catch-flea.”
Foods are not considered medicines per se, but are known to be nourishing and to prevent malnutrition states of various kinds. There is not, however, the clear recognition that certain foods cure certain states, as in Chinese medicine, in which green vegetables are known to cure scurvy, red meats treat anemia, and many other food cures are well known. The Maya treat anemia with herbal teas, some of which may be iron rich (no one really knows).
All these cures are verified by my experience and the Mayas’ and/or by biomedical science. They are widely used for the straightforward reason that they work, in some cases better than drug store remedies. In general, it is obvious that the Yucatec have an herbal medicine that is outstandingly effective in biomedical terms, probably about comparable to the ancient Greek herbal lore of Dioscorides, and apparently more often effective biomedically than Chinese herbs are known to be. Yucatec remedies not known to be effective may actually be ineffective, or may simply not have been studied enough. For instance, wako ak’ (Aristolochia maxima), a medicine so popular it is even brought in some quantity to Los Angeles by migrant Yucatec, has not been studied, but is part of a genus widely known for medicinal but sometimes toxic effects. Like others of its genus, it contains aristolochic acid, which has uncertain effects and is under study. The other plant important enough to be massively shipped to Yucatec Maya in the United States is kambalhau (Dorstenia contrayerva), used for stomach troubles, and also for snakebite (hence the species name), but its value has not been assessed.
Some clearly ineffective remedies persist because they are easily confused visually or in taste with effective plants. Others may have apparently “worked” for someone and been adopted on the chance that they might work again. Testing is by individuals and the results are shared by word of mouth, so opportunities for error are high and opportunities for verifying are relatively low. Sometimes, dramatic “medical” effects make a plant popular when it has little biomedical effect. Tankasche’ (Zanthoxylum caribaeum) has a dramatic numbing effect on the tongue and mouth, similar to but stronger than that of its close relative Chinese brown pepper. This has given tankasche’ a reputation as a magically powerful plant, and it is used to deal with sorcery, witches, and evil winds. My experience and studies of the genus do not disclose much non-magical value.
It is astonishing how much biomedically accurate information is there, and how widespread it is. Roys and the Redfields, and even the early dictionaries, report knowledge that is, today, still widely shared all over the Yucatan Peninsula. Most Maya cures have not been tested in biomedical laboratories, and no doubt many of them work well, but the problems of “biopiracy” (Shiva 1997) and loss of rights to their own plants by the Maya and by the Mexican nation have led to a shutdown of experimentation and testing, so we will never know.1
1 See my posting “The Morality of Ethnobiology” on my web site www.krazykioti.com for the Maya case and its relationship to the general question.
Maya midwives also have, or had, a phenomenal amount of empirical knowledge, including a number of strongly antiseptic plants for washing women and babies as well as techniques for delivery, including breech birth and other problematic cases (Anderson et al. 2004).
To these, after the Conquest, were added the most effective Spanish remedies, all of which go back to Greek, Roman, and Arabic medicine. These include mint (Mentha spp.), anise (Pimpinella anisum), citrus leaves (Citrus spp., usually C. sinensis, orange), and rue (Ruta graveolens, R. chalepensis), known to be effective in tea for stomach aches. Also used are wormwood (Artemisia spp.) for worms, aloe vera (Aloe spp.) for burns and wounds and open sores, old-world basil (Ocimum basilicum) as a lesser substitute for kakaltun, and many similar remedies. Garlic, known to be antiseptic and antifungal, is used for respiratory conditions. Cinnamon is used as a digestive or carminative, as elsewhere in the world. Roses, also well known for their very effective antibiotic and antiseptic properties, are widely grown and universally used for teas for sore throat and similar conditions (on the antiseptic and medicinal values of this and other spices and flavorings, see Billing and Sherman 1998).
These remedies were apparently adopted early, judging from Colonial-period dictionaries and herbals. They were probably propagated by Spanish missionaries (as they were elsewhere in Mexico). It should be noted that the Maya are inveterate borrowers and experimenters with plants. Some quite astonishing things turned up in and around Chunhuhub, including European grapevines and apples—hopelessly out of range and unable to fruit, but “interesting to try,” as their planters told me. There are nineteenth-century French rose varieties, almost lost elsewhere in the world, probably cuttings of plants brought to Merida in its golden days (the Maya are very fond of propagation by cuttings).
Many tried the introduced Hawaiian fruit noni (Morinda citrifolia); it was widely sold as a cure for diabetes and other conditions, but with imperfect and inconsistent results, according to my Maya friends. I watched over the years as this plant was enthusiastically adopted and propagated, integrated into the home and commercial orchards, and then somewhat neglected as it proved to be useful but no miracle cure. Such experimentation is typical of Maya medicine and agriculture.
Ordinary illnesses are treated by herbal remedies known to alleviate the actual symptoms presenting. A very different kind of curing is necessary for witchcraft and evil winds. These respond to ceremonies and rituals involving religious chants and prayers and to various patent medicines and similar preparations.
Even here, though, pragmatism is important. The favorite indigenous plant for such rituals is siipche’, which, as noted, has a strong antibiotic in its leaves and twigs (Ankli 2000). It was probably first taken into sacred practice because of its obvious practical value. The introduced equivalent is rue, widely used in rituals (it can, among other things, substitute for siipche’ in Maya healing) and similarly effective medically as a well-known stomach treatment. All the hmeen I know (the two noted above and several others) use herbal remedies as well as charms, prayers, rituals, candle-burning, and physical therapies. The herbal remedies always worked for me, and I gather for most customers.
Possibly less empirical is the value of ya’axhalalche’, “green reed tree” (Pedilanthus spp., pencil tree). This leafless tree, planted around a house, keeps away k’as ik’. Its strange, leafless, reedy appearance seems to make it a charm plant. More ambiguous is chaya (Cnidoscolus chayamansa; see Ross-Ibarra and MolinaCruz 2002; Ross was my student and did some of this work under my direction). Chaya is a known and potent diuretic, a highly nutritious green, and also a slightly uncanny plant, associated with witches. The reason for this association are unclear, but the link is well known, and has somewhat inhibited the efforts to spread the use of this plant for its nutritious values.
The ya’axche’ (“green tree,” Ceiba pentandra) is the sacred tree of the Maya and has been for thousands of years, as shown in Classic art, but it too has some association with witches, especially the Xtabai or witch-woman. It continues to be highly regarded but sometimes slightly feared. Indeed, any large tree, and certainly the forest itself, can have protective yumilk’aax, Lords of the Forest, spirit beings who guard the forest from damage, just as the yumilkool, Lords of the Fields, guard the milpas.
Also, the ha’abin, probably the commonest tree in the Chunhuhub area, is sacred and medicinal. Since it flowers spectacularly at the end of the dry season and then leafs out with lush green leaves, it is a “natural symbol” for the coming of the rains. Its large green leaves decorate the sacred altars of rituals, especially the ch’achaak that calls the rain at the end of the dry season. Its roots are poisonous— not used in Yucatan (they are used in the Caribbean as fish poison, hence the scientific name). As noted above, its bark is antiseptic and tannin-rich enough to be used, ground, on wounds.
There is thus a sense that spiritual and ritual power are associated with strong physical effects. This is clear, for instance, in the use of the siipche’ for ritual cleansing (brushdowns and similar small healing rituals). “Siipche’” means “tree of the god Siip,” the old Maya god of deer and similar forest animals (rather charmingly called “Zip” in older literature). The strong antibiotic value of siipche’ made it a healing and cleansing plant, used internally and externally. Its healing power presumably caused it to be considered a divine tree. It is possible that the ancient Maya considered any actual healing benefit to be proof of spiritual power, and regarded plants accordingly. Another such case may be k’u che’, which literally means “divine tree” (cedro, Cedrela odorata). This tree’s leaves, wood (rasped up), and roots are all used for medicinal teas for internal or external use. Mild tannins are apparently the biomedically effective components, as is true for other plants used for external washes. The name of the tree indicates a now-lost (at least in Chunhuhub) spiritual interpretation of its effects.
It seems reasonably clear that the original medical theory was based on inherent spirits or spiritual powers in plants and other medicinal substances (including several animal species). The eminently pragmatic and hard-headed Maya of westcentral Quintana Roo now downplay religious and cosmological sides of medicine, but those aspects seem to persist farther east and north, judging from my limited experience. The erosion of spirit-based interpretations of plant medicines and of much of the theory of causation has left Maya medicine appear divided, rather like
medieval European medicine, into a strongly empirical herbal component and a strongly religio-magical component.
The divide is bridged, however, by the ceremonial, ritual, and spirit-based values of siipche’, ha’abin, rue, and a few other plants, and by several animal drugs (such as dried hummingbirds and flycatchers) whose value depends on ritual or magical usage rather than practical, no-nonsense brewing of teas. For instance, dried and powdered hummingbird or flycatcher may be thrown by a young man on the head of his inamorata, who will then fall madly in love with him—at least, according to some, if he has said the right spells.
The distinction between ordinary medical uses and magic are made by using the term secretos (“secrets”) for what in English would be called magic. More exactly, secretos are not only fairly secret, but they involve spells, special manipulations, and arcane knowledge as opposed to the highly routine and everyday brewing of teas, making of salves and washes, fixing of minor injuries, massaging, and other ordinary healing arts.
Healers and Using Medicines
Medicines are normally administered boiled into teas. These teas are used internally for respiratory and stomach conditions and other internal problems. They are used externally, as washes, for rashes, fevers, overheating, and the like. They are used as full-scale baths for fever, genital conditions, and some other conditions. Plants can also be dried, powdered, and taken as powder or capsules; veteran healers like Don José know that drying changes the effect of some plants. Herbs can be mixed into oils for salves, or made into poultices for wounds and sores. Rubbing medicine into the skin is possible, and herbs can be used in massage; Maya curers are superb masseuses.
Some herbs can cure with touch alone, as when bunches of siipche’ leaves are used to tap and then brush down a person to clear away evil influences. (The herbal brushdown is a very widespread but little studied Native American healing method.) Sometimes contact is not necessary; the ya’axhalalche’ mentioned above need only be planted in the yard near the front door to keep away evil winds.
The above account presents the bare bones of the system—the knowledge that any reasonably competent Maya householder would share. Beyond this come a wide range of variations. Don Marcos is strictly traditional, using only what he learned from elders and from experience. Don José is totally eclectic, combining a phenomenal knowledge of traditional herbal medicine and massage with a lifetime of working experience and also with patent medicines, modern biomedicine (he tells people to get their shots), magic (learned from travels to central Mexico), prophecy (a tradition in Quintana Roo), and sheer wild experimentation. I have no idea what possessed him to try an armadillo baked in an earth oven with 40 limes as a treatment for diabetes, but he says it had some effect; it is certainly not a traditional Maya cure. Other hmeen of my acquaintance were somewhere in between,
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fairly eclectic but generally following traditions, including those documented in the old literature.
On a less expert scale, my Maya friends are always trying new herbal formulas, new biomedical treatments, and new ideas about food, health, and lifestyle. No one I have ever known is more prone to experiment. The basic tenets of the system remain quite stable in people of the older generation, but young people combine a smattering of Maya lore with an increasing knowledge of biomedicine and public health, derived from the rapidly improving clinic and hospital situation in the Zona Maya as well as from public schools.
This all presents a picture of rapid change, but not random change, and not a simple case of modernization and globalization overwhelming tradition. Maya medicine was a well-structured (if simple) system of scientific theories and hypotheses, “incorrect” by biomedical standards but serving well to organize Maya knowledge. It is flexible and dynamic enough to incorporate biomedical techniques, cures, and even theories without collapsing. This is especially true since biomedicine as it is seen in Quintana Roo has little to say about many common problems, ranging from diabetes and cancer to mental illness. Biomedicine can rarely cure these, and folk remedies are not wholly ineffective, so Maya medicine stands.
This leads me to a position somewhere between structuralism and poststructuralism. Structuralism, whether the Levi-Straussian form or the form seen in the literature on cognitive models and cultural models, postulates more rigid, cut-and-dried, frozen structures than those observed. But the situation is not chaotic. Traditional structures and models accommodate new ideas, and whole new cultural models can be incorporated happily into the medical system.
These are not even necessarily biomedical models; Don José incorporates spiritualism and Hispano-Mexican magic with his practice, and sees no problems with doing so; not only do the procedures work (for him), but they work by unknown and unseen forces, comparable to the ik’ of traditional Maya belief. Germs, too, are unseen but apparently agentive beings, either k’as ik’ or very similar. So a unique belief system of a quite original healer can be seen as one instantiation of the dynamic, shifting, open, but well structured and well-theorized system that is Maya medicine. The plants have their actual powers, and thus are real parties in the interaction, and for at least some Maya the plants are active agents. I thus see Maya medical practice as a summation of complex interactions and encounters with nonhuman, but in a way active, beings that are part of their world. This brings me to a viewpoint quite similar to that of Bruno Latour (2004) and his “actor-network theory.”
In all this, Maya medicine is like biomedicine. International biomedical science has the same history of developing a framework (largely established by Koch and Pasteur) and then accommodating individual variations, new knowledge, new approaches, and even whole new paradigms—“incommensurable” in Thomas Kuhn’s terms (Kuhn 1962) they may have been, but incorporated they were anyway. Bringing germ theory, post-Liebig nutritional science, and medical genetics under one tent would seem impossible to a dogmatic Kuhnian, but it happened, and even substantial amounts of Chinese medicine have been incorporated into biomedicine.
If the only measure that matters is that the patient gets well (or dies), “incommensurability” on the theory front soon gets resolved.
As almost everyone since Kuhn has pointed out, science is a messier and more open process than he thought, but it does have structures, models, theories, approaches, viewpoints, and other identifiable systems of thought and practice (on all things scientific see Kitcher 1993). We may not find evil winds to fit with current biomedical knowledge, but then much of the biomedical wisdom of my childhood is just as dead now. Kuhn was right in his basic point: science advances by discarding over-aged theories.
Biocultural Approach
to Understanding Maya Medicine
The above observations on Maya medicine lead to an interpretation different from those currently typical in medical anthropology. Most (almost all) medical anthropology and ethnomedicine now does one of two things: it either describes an idealized form of the traditional system without evaluating it in biomedical terms, or it assesses the traditional methods and herbal products for biomedical value.
I employ a biocultural approach, which does something quite different. I look at both the traditional system as a whole (complete with variants and dynamic changes) and the biomedical effectiveness of traditional healing. The purpose of this is to try to understand not only the traditional system, but also the reasons why that traditional system took the form it did and developed the way it did.
This in turn comes from a particular philosophic perspective. We all know, now, that human perception is partial and biased. We cannot even see infrared or ultraviolet. We cannot smell more than the tiniest fraction of what a dog can smell. Moreover, we ignore or gloss over or miss most of what we could see, hear, and smell. Powerful heuristics and biases, such as discounting the future and seeing only things that are consistent with our expectations (confirmation bias), distort what we perceive.
In medical circles, there are two overwhelmingly important heuristics resulting from the confirmation bias: seeing what is congruent with prior beliefs while ignoring or distorting challenges, and celebrating successes (at that or at any task) while explaining away failures. Taken together, these mean that when one believes Herb X works for Condition Y, one first sees dramatic effects where there were really only small effects, and then remembers this as a hit while forgetting the 10 times when Herb X did nothing. Any theory one has—based on whatever initial inferences—will be confirmed by observation, simply because people expect that and are biased to see what they expect. Other forms of confirmation bias, and other heuristics (see Kahneman 2011), also have their effects.
Thus, people stick with their theories because these are always being confirmed—supposedly. People will also develop an herbal with a great many useless plants in it because anything that happened to be taken when the individual was spontaneously recovering from an ailment is apt to be credited with having cured it. Failures are written off: the herb was gathered at the wrong season, the patient did not have enough faith, the stars were unpropitious, or sheer bad luck intervened.
However, this is not the end of the story. If biased perception and deluded inference were all that mattered, the “strong program” in science studies would be correct, and all knowledge and belief about the world would be arbitrary guesswork. In that case, we could never choose nourishing foods, avoid cars, stay out of the hot sun, or cure ourselves. Demonstrably, people have learned to survive in a very difficult and dangerous world, and that survival requires an enormous body of verified and thus verifiable knowledge.
This knowledge comes initially from experience. Old books speak of “trial and error,” but it is unlikely that people try new medicines without any prior sense of what to look for. Any innate tendencies left over from our primate past, including, for example, our fondness for sweets, have some guiding function. Built-up cultural experience also guides interaction. For example, many or most cultures share an idea that bitter-tasting plants are apt to have strong physiological effects, and many have learned that minty plants are apt to be medicinal (Moerman 1986, 1998).
The Maya are used to seeing tree bark as medicinal, and thus look to bark for cures. Yucatan trees often adapt to a dry tropical climate by depositing large amounts of tannins in the bark, and these often have a soothing and clearing effect on skin conditions, hence the generalization. I believe, but have not confirmed, that bark is specifically sought out for new cures. Herbs are; new plants in Mayaland often come with reputations for healing, and whether they do or not, they will be tried out, and used if they seem to have an effect. Maya medicine is highly traditional, but it is an open system, perfectly capable of incorporating new medicines and new approaches. Tradition does not mean stagnation.
This is, in large part, because one of the firm traditions of Maya medicine is empiricism. The Maya rule is to try anything that might work, keep using it if it seems to work even occasionally, and drop it only if it is either actively harmful or too expensive to be cost-effective. This keeps in play many remedies that seem to have very minimal effect, but the stated idea in response to questioning is that they may work sometime for someone, and probably have done so. Conversely, it leads to a search for cheaper alternatives to cures that are, or become, expensive.
Since the medicine is basically empirical, the fact that Yucatec Maya medical theory underdetermines the knowledge of botanicals is not surprising. It is true of biomedicine too. Until recent advances in genetics and cell biology; until the last several years, we had no idea how antibiotics killed bacteria or why olive oil seemed to be associated with longevity. Theory lags behind experience. Biomedicine can now predict that certain families of drugs will probably all, or mostly, work, but much remains to be learned. The Maya can predict that barks and aromatic leaves are good places to look though they do not know the mechanisms involved. Inferring what is in the “black box” between trying a leaf and evaluating its medicinal benefit is not an easy task even for a modern lab scientist.
It is therefore quite reasonable to understand Maya medicine in its own terms on the basis of its own theories, and also to understand its empirical values in the light of modern biomedicine. It is also perfectly reasonable to assess Maya medicine in the light of Chinese traditional medicine, as done in a quite brilliant tour-de-force
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by García et al. (1999). These are not closed systems, they are not static, they are not culture bound, and they are not “incommensurable” in the way that matters, i.e., in their effect on people. They cure or they don’t. Either the skin sore rapidly dries up and disappears or it doesn’t.
Conclusion
Looking at the context of Maya medicine helps understand its theories. As noted, the focus on hot/cold and on cold winds is clearly related to the prevalence of fevers, chills, and hypothermia (over time from chronic illness, or in the short term from hyponatremia or cold rain). It seems reasonable to extend the recognition that stomach cramps come from drinking cold liquid when overheated, and assume that similar pains in the knee or ankle come from cold winds striking overheated limbs. Other traditional explanations in Maya medicine run either to direct, simple, observable cause-and-effect (broken bones, stings, bites, and the like) or to spiritual causes: bad winds, punishing deities, evil magic worked by wizards, or bad influences from ill-omened beings in the natural world. The latter causes are invoked for longrunning conditions with no obvious explanation and no very credible hot/cold etiology, especially mental conditions. Mental conditions are rather effectively treated by good advice, help from elders, massages, and rough-and-ready but quite good psychotherapy by sensitive healers. (I have some training and experience in lay psychotherapy and was struck by how well some hmeen parallel good therapists in the United States. Don José, in particular, questioned his patients sensitively and in proper psychotherapeutic manner about their lives, and designed cures with their answers fully in mind.)
All these theories of sickness are simple, straightforward, and reasonable. They are especially clearly resonant with the ontology of the Maya, which sees a world where everything has its spirits that take care of it and guard it, and where everything has winds (both real and spiritual) constantly blowing back and forth over and through it. Spirits, including spirit winds, can be good, bad, neutral, or changeable with circumstances, like humans. Since temperature variations are associated with winds, not only in Maya thought but in meteorological science, it makes sense to associate winds with chills and fevers. It seems likely that the Maya once thought all plants had spirits, and the values of the useful ones were due to spirits that had effective engagements with humanity.
The clearest difference between Maya medicine and biomedicine is that the former is based on an ontology in which spirits exist and in which many winds are agentive beings with a certain amount of will. Whether evil winds are conscious or not, let alone persons or not, is unclear, but they do have enough agency to work damage.
In Yucatec Maya ontology, the cosmos is a highly dynamic, constantly changing place, where grand forces are apt to be as dynamically shifting as the daily weather. All this takes place over a deeper structural stability provided by the directions
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(symbolized by color), the stars and planets, the earth, and the innate qualities of extant beings (see García et al. 1999; Sosa 1985; and the cited Redfield publications for the full ontology behind Maya medicine).
Anthropologists have learned over time to take traditional ontologies seriously. Understanding them is necessary for any real understanding the people and cultures that hold them, but, also, they have a great deal to offer when taken seriously as philosophies. Recent work on tropical Native American ontologies by such researchers as Eduardo Kohn (2013, 2015) and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2016) add much to our understanding, and are very useful in interpreting Yucatec Maya culture, which has clear ties to the cultures they study as well as to North American Indigenous worldviews.
This Mayan ontology is based on direct experience and is a pragmatic and realistic one. Whatever the outsider may think of the gods and spirits postulated, they are reasonable black-box assumptions to explain the often unpredictable changes in the world. They are not modern science, but they are at least as reasonable as the black-box assumptions of early modern science, from phlogiston and aether to Freudian psychodynamics, the “selfish gene,” and, of course, the hot/ cold medical theory that the west broadly shared with the Maya and which has by no means been totally replaced by the germ theory. Both the Maya theories and the now-abandoned western ones had a history, grounding them firmly in wider belief and knowledge systems within their respective societies. Theories about black-box variables tend to reflect the society that produced them, not the real thing in the black box. This is natural, and one reason why we always need scientific advancement.
The main conclusion of this project is that the Maya believe in the effectiveness of their herbal medicines because their herbal medicines are effective—or, at worst, look, smell, or taste like medicines that are effective. Reality matters. Ontology does, after all, concern itself with reality, and thus go beyond the extreme “social construction” positions of the 1990s. Eduardo Kohn “argue[s] that the best way to reconfigure anthropology’s relationship to language is through the ethnographic study of how humans communicate [or interact] with a whole host of nonhuman beings in a world that is itself communicative but not symbolic or linguistic” (Kohn 2015:315).
All the different ontologies in the world have to deal with the fact that a day working without salt can be fatal, or that a tea made from a certain bark can instantly and thoroughly relieve the maddening itch of chigger and mosquito bites. Whether it does this because of complex tannin molecules, powerful tree spirits, good winds, or saintly blessings, the point is that it works. Understanding that and explaining it in detail is a worthwhile goal of science and of the study of traditional ontologies.
Acknowledgements All gratitude to the people of Chunhuhub, Polyuc, Presidente Juarez, and neighboring towns, and especially to Don José Cauich Canul, Aurora Dzib Xihum de Cen, Don Felix Medina Tzuc, and Don Marcos Puc Batab; also to Barbara Anderson.
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Anderson, E.N. 2003. Those Who Bring the Flowers: Maya Ethnobotany in Quintana Roo, Mexico With José Cauich Canul, Aurora Dzib, Salvador Flores Guido, Gerald Islebe, Felix Medina Tzuc, Odilón Sánchez Sánchez, and Pastor Valdez Chale. Chetumal, Quintana Roo: ECOSUR. Spanish edition: Las Plantas de los Mayas: Etnobotánica en Quintana Roo, México. Tr. Gerald Islebe and Odilón Sánchez Sánchez. Chetumal: Colegio de la Frontera Sur (successor to ECOSUR).
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Anderson, E.N., and Felix Medina Tzuc. 2005. Animals and the Maya in Southeast Mexico Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
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Becoming-Plant: Jamu in Java, Indonesia
Julie Laplante
Abstract Jamu is a lively practice of mashing, pounding, and rolling fresh plants into healing beverages that has been going on for centuries in various islands of the Indian Ocean. My anthropological study pays attention to the ways it is done in Yogyakarta and its peripheries. Java and the practice of jamu are situated in the scientific literature and a Javanese notion of rasa is introduced as a lens for the intimate ways people and plants, as open bodies of winds and flows, can interweave. Rhythmic movements, gestures, and stained yellow hands obtained through pressing turmeric and tamarind indicate deepened engagements with vegetal life found to be done through all sorts of animist, Hindu-Buddhist, Islamic, and scientific lines permeating the island. How deleuzoguattarian rhizomatic thinking further enables to understand jamu as becoming-plant is discussed as well as offered as a way to take people-environment entanglements seriously in a much broader sense.
Introduction
My interest is the human–plant nexus in healing. I wish to explore lively humanplant enmeshments or the improvised spaces created when people and plants entangle—the rhizomes and lines of becoming that emerge in-between. To do so, I propose to consider humans and plants not as subjects or objects, yet rather as openended life forms that can correspond to each other. I propose to explore such entanglements as they appeared through an anthropological study I conducted in Java,
Another way of putting this… is to think of ourselves not as beings but as becomings—that is, not as discrete and pre-formed entities but as trajectories of movement and growth. Ingold 2013: 8
J. Laplante (*)
School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada
e-mail: Julie.Laplante@uottawa.ca
© Springer International Publishing AG 2016
E.A. Olson, J.R. Stepp (eds.), Plants and Health, Ethnobiology, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-48088-6_2
Indonesia with people and plants involved in a lively everyday practice called jamu. 1 Jamu is the mashing of fresh plants into healing beverages, a practice that has been going on for centuries in various islands of the Indian Ocean. Java gives onto the Indian Ocean to the South and onto the Java Sea to the North, with Borneo on the horizon. With its neighboring islands, Sumatra to the West and Bali to the East, Java shares Malayo-Polynesian ancestralities. Contemporary Javanese thrive through these animistic histories and presents, through time entangling with Ayurvedic Hindu-Buddhist, Islamic, Taoist, colonial biomedical histories and presents. With the exceptional fertility and rainfall of the island giving rich vegetal life all year round, the practice of jamu continues to emerge through both new and old “traditions.”2 It is within these lively contexts that I propose a way of attending to these human-plant “zones of copresence,” learning from the open-ended ways jamu ministers to health in the everyday.
I begin by situating Java and the practice of jamu as it broadly stands in the scientific literature, and more specifically as it has been studied by anthropologists. In a second section, I introduce the Javanese notion of rasa as a lens for the intimate ways people and plants, as open bodies of winds and flows, can interweave. Third, I introduce the fieldwork I conducted in 2013, following the intricate ways jamu is practiced in Yogyakarta (Jogja) situated in the Special District of Yogyakarta on the island of Java in Indonesia (bordering Central Java to the West). In the fourth section, I continue to explore diverse lines or offshoots through which jamu is made to appear throughout the city and its peripheries. In this picture I paint of jamu becomings , one is not to expect a taxonomical (ethno) botanical account since this account would break up the continuously emerging and very dynamic flows at the heart of the practice. To the contrary, jamu becomings are found to be less about ingredients, plant identification-isolation and related symptoms in a causal logic, than about successful entanglements of human-plant movements, moods, and timing. These entanglements are what I hope to pull out of these everyday practices. The final section explores how deleuzoguattarian rhizomatic thinking further enables to understand jamu as becoming-plant, 3 as well as offers ways to take people-environment entanglements seriously in a much broader sense.
1 The anthropological film Jamu Stories (64 min) https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=CMRZRw1z2Fw produced for this study can be watched to accompany this written account. The research was made possible with the financial support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council in Canada, in collaboration with the University of New Brunswick, the University of Ottawa and the University of Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta.
2 “Tradition” is here understood in the original sense of retracing the trails of predecessors to find ways to carry on (Ingold 2015: 136–137).
3 See Houle and Querrien (2012) and Laplante (2015a, b, In press) on this notion. Also discussed in the Rhizomes section of this article.
J. Laplante
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♦ “it” replaced with “them” per Errata
I give thee my credit and reputation: may I never value it, but only in respect of thee; nor endeavour to maintain it, but as it may do thee service and advance thy honour in the world.
I give thee myself and my all: let me look upon myself to be nothing, and to have nothing out of thee. Be thou the sole disposer and governor of myself and all; be thou my portion and my all.
O my God and my all, when hereafter I shall be tempted to break this solemn engagement, when I shall be prest to conform to the world, and to the company and customs that surround me; may my answer be, I am not my own; I am not for myself, nor for the world, but for my God. I will give unto God the things which are God’s. God be merciful to me a sinner.
Have mercy, O Father of the spirits of all flesh, on all mankind. Convert all Jews, Turks and Heathens to thy truth. Bless the Catholic church; heal its breaches, and establish it in truth and peace. Preserve and defend all Christian princes, especially our sovereign and his family. Be merciful to this nation; bless the clergy with soundness of doctrine and purity of life; the council with wisdom, the magistrates with integrity and zeal, and the people with loyalty. Bless the universities with learning and holiness, that they may afford a constant supply of men fit and able to do thee service.
Shower down thy graces on all my relations, on all my friends and all that belong to this family. Comfort and relieve those that labour under any affliction of body or mind: especially those who suffer for the testimony of a good conscience. Visit them, O gracious Lord, in all their distresses. Thou knowest, thou seest them under all. O stay their souls upon thee; give them to rejoice that they are counted worthy to suffer for thy name’s sake, and constantly to look unto the author and finisher of their faith. Supply abundantly to all their souls who are in prison, the want of thy holy ordinances, and in thy good time, deliver them and be merciful unto them, as thou usest to be unto them that love thy name. Those that love or do good to me, reward seven-fold into their bosom: (――)¹ those that hate me (――) convert and forgive: and grant us all, together with thy whole church, an entrance into thine everlasting kingdom, through Jesus Christ; to whom with thee and the blessed Spirit, three persons and one God be ascribed all majesty, dominion, and power, now and for evermore. Amen.
¹ Here mention the particulars you would pray for.
F R I D A Y M O R N I N G.
ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, I bless thee from my heart, that of thy infinite goodness thou hast preserved me this night past, and hast with the impregnable defence of thy providence protected me, from the power and malice of the devil. Withdraw not, I humbly intreat thee, thy protection from me, but mercifully this day watch over me with the eyes of thy mercy; direct my soul and body, according to the rule of thy will, and fill my heart with thy holy Spirit, that I may pass this day, and all the rest of my days, to thy glory.
O Saviour of the world, God of Gods, light of light, thou that art the brightness of thy Father’s glory, the express image of his person; thou that hast destroyed the power of the devil, that hast overcome death, that sittest at the right-hand of the Father, thou wilt speedily come down in thy Father’s glory to judge all men according to their works: be thou my light and my peace; destroy the power of the devil in me, and make me a new creature. O thou who didst cast seven devils out of Mary Magdalen, cast out of my heart all corrupt affections. O thou who didst raise Lazarus from the dead, raise me from the death of sin. Thou who didst cleanse the lepers, heal the sick, and give sight to the blind, heal the diseases of my soul; open my eyes, and fix them singly on the prize of my high-calling, and cleanse my heart from every desire, but that of advancing thy glory.
*O Jesus, poor and abject, unknown and despised, have mercy upon me, and let me not be ashamed to follow thee. O Jesus, hated, caluminated and persecuted; have mercy upon me, and let me not be afraid to come after thee. O Jesus, betrayed and sold at a vile price, have mercy upon me; and make me content to be as my Master O Jesus, blasphemed, accused and wrongfully condemned, have mercy upon me and teach me to endure the contradiction of sinners. O Jesus, clothed with a habit of reproach and shame, have mercy upon me, and let me not seek my own glory. O Jesus, insulted, mocked and spit upon, have mercy upon me, and let me run with patience the race set before me. O Jesus, dragged to the pillar, scourged and bathed in blood, have mercy upon me, and let me not faint in the fiery trial. O Jesus, crowned with thorns and hailed in derision; O Jesus burthened with our sins, and the curses of the people; O Jesus, affronted, outraged, buffeted, overwhelmed with injuries, griefs and humiliations; O Jesus, hanging on the accursed tree, bowing the head, giving up the Ghost, have mercy upon me, and conform my whole soul to thy holy, humble, suffering Spirit. O thou who for the love of me hast undergone such an infinity of sufferings and humiliations; let me be wholly “emptied of myself,” that I may rejoice to take up my cross daily and follow thee. Enable me too, to endure the pain and despise the shame; and if it be thy will, to resist even unto blood.
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, I miserable sinner humbly acknowledge that I am altogether unworthy to pray for myself. But since thou hast commanded me to make prayers and intercessions for all men, in obedience to thy command, and confidence of thy unlimited goodness, I commend to thy mercy the wants and necessities of all mankind. Lord, let it be thy good pleasure to restore to thy church Catholic, primitive peace and purity: to shew mercy to these sinful nations, and give us grace at length to break off our sins by repentance: defend our church from all the assaults of schism, heresy and sacrilege, and bless all bishops, priests and deacons with apostolical graces. O let it be thy good pleasure to defend the king from all his enemies spiritual and temporal; to bless all his royal relations; to grant to the council wisdom, to the magistrates, zeal and prudence, to the gentry and commons piety and loyalty.
Lord, let it be thy good pleasure, to give thy grace to the universities; to bless those whom I have wronged, (――)¹ and to forgive those who have wronged me (――): to comfort the disconsolate, to give health and patience to all that are sick and afflicted (――).
¹ Here mention the particulars you would pray for
Vouchsafe to bless my father and mother with the fear of thy name, that they may be holy in all manner of conversation. Let them remember how short their time is, and be careful to improve every moment of it. O thou who hast kept them from their youth up until now, forsake them not now they are grey-headed, but perfect them in every good word and work, and be thou their guide unto death. Bless my brethren and sisters, whom thou hast graciously taught the gospel of thy Christ; give them further degrees of illumination, that they may serve thee with a perfect heart and willing mind Bless my friends and benefactors, and all who have commended themselves to my prayers (――). Lord, thou best knowest all our conditions, all our desires, all our wants. O do thou suit thy grace and blessings to our several necessities.
Hear, O merciful Father, my supplications, for the sake of thy Son Jesus, and bring us, with all those who have pleased thee from the beginning of the world, into the glories of thy Son’s kingdom: to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all praise for ever and ever!
Our Father, &c. F R I D A Y E V E N I N G.
Questions relating to mortification, see before the prayers for Wednesday evening.
OGOD the Father, who canst not be thought to have made me only to destroy me, have mercy upon me.
O God the Son, who knowing thy Father’s will didst come into the world to save me, have mercy upon me.
O God the Holy Ghost, who to the same end hast so often since breathed holy thoughts into me, have mercy upon me.
O holy, blessed and glorious Trinity, whom in Three persons I adore as One God, have mercy upon me.
Lord, carest thou not that I perish! Thou that would’st have all men to be saved! Thou that would’st have none to perish! And wilt thou now shew thine anger against a worm, a leaf! Against a vapour that vanisheth before thee! O remember how short my time is, and deliver not my soul into the power of hell! For, alas, what profit is there in my blood? Or, who shall give thee thanks in that pit? No; let me live in thy sight: let me live, O my God, and my soul shall praise thee. Forget me, as I have been disobedient, provoking thee to anger, and regard me as I am distrest, crying out to thee for help. Look not upon me as I am a sinner; but consider me as I am thy creature. A sinner I am, I confess, a sinner of no ordinary stain: But let not this hinder thee, O my God; for upon such sinners thou gettest the greatest glory.
O remember for whose sake it was that thou camest from the bosom of thy Father, and was content to be born of thine own handmaid. Remember, for whom it was that thy tender body was torn and scourged and crucified! Was it not for the sins of the whole world? And shall I be so injurious to thy glory, as to think thou hast excepted me? Or can I think, thou diedst only for sinners of a lower kind and leftest such as me without remedy? What had become then of him, who filled Jerusalem with blood? What of her, who lived in a trade of sin? Nay, what had become of thine own disciple, who with oaths and curses thrice denied thee?
O how easy is it for thee to forgive? For it is thy nature. How proper is it for thee to save? For it is thy name! How suitable is it to thy coming into the world? For it is thy business. And when I consider that I am the chief of sinners, may I not urge thee farther, and say, Shall the chief of thy business be left undone? Far be that from thee? Have mercy upon me!
I ask not of thee the things of this world, give them to whom thou pleasest so thou givest me mercy. O say unto my soul, Be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee. O that I might never sin against thee more! And whereinsoever my conscience accuses me most, be thou most merciful unto me!
Save me, O God, as a brand snatched out of the fire.
Receive me, O my Saviour, as a sheep that is gone astray, but would now return to the great shepherd and bishop of my soul!
Father, accept my imperfect repentance, compassionate my infirmities, forgive my wickedness, purify my uncleanness, strengthen my weakness, fix my unstableness, and let thy good Spirit watch over me for ever, and thy love ever rule in my heart, through the merits and sufferings and love of thy Son, in whom thou art always well pleased.
Give thy grace, O holy Jesus, to all the world, and let all who are redeemed by thy blood, acknowledge thee to be the Lord. Let all Christians, especially those of this nation, keep themselves unspotted from the world. Let all governors, and especially our sovereign, rule with wisdom and justice; and let the clergy be exemplary in their lives, and discreet and diligent in their labours. Let our universities enjoy freedom from violence and faction, and excel in true religion and sound learning. Be an help at hand to all that are afflicted, and assist them to trust in thee. Raise up friends for the widow and fatherless, the friendless and oppressed. Give patience to all that are sick, comfort to all troubled consciences, strength to all that are tempted. Be gracious to my relations (――)¹ , to all that are endeared to me by their kindnesses or acquaintance, to all who remember me in their prayers, or desire to be remembered in mine (――). Sanctify, O merciful Lord, the friendship which thou hast granted me, with these thy servants (――). O let our prayers be heard for each other, while our hearts are united in thy fear and love, and graciously unite them therein more and more. Strengthen the hearts of us thy servants against all our corruptions and temptations: enable us to consecrate ourselves faithfully and entirely to thy service. Grant that, we may provoke each other to love and serve thee, and grow up together before thee in thy fear and love, to thy heavenly kingdom. And by thy infinite mercies, vouchsafe to bring us, with those that are dead in thee, to rejoice together before thee, through the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost, the blessed and only Potentate, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, be honour and power everlasting.
¹ Here mention the particulars you would pray for.
S A T U R D A Y M O R N I N G.
OGOD, thou great Creator and Sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, thou Father of angels and men, thou giver of life and protector of all thy creatures, mercifully accept this my morning sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, which I desire to offer with all humility to thy divine Majesty. Thou art praised, O Lord, by all thy works, and magnified by every thing which thou hast created. The sun rejoiceth to run his course, that he may set forth thy praise who madest him. Nor do the moon and stars refrain to manifest thy glory, even amidst the silent night. The earth breathes forth each day perfumes, as incense to thee her sacred King, who has crowned her with herbs and trees, and beautified her with hills and dales. The deep uttereth his voice, and lifteth up his hands on high to thee, the great Creator, the universal King, the everlasting God. The floods clap their hands, and the hills are joyful together before thee; the fruitful vales rejoice and sing thy praise. Thou feedest the innumerable multitude of animals which thou hast created; these all wait upon thee, and thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou madest light for our comfort, and broughtest forth darkness out of thy treasures, to overshadow the earth, that the living creatures of it might take their rest. The fire and hail, snow and vapour, wind and storm fulfil thy word, and manifest thy glory. Inanimate things declare thee, O Lord of life; and irrational animals demonstrate their wise Creator. Amidst this universal jubilee of nature, suffer not, I beseech thee, the sons of men to be silent; but let the noblest work of thy creation pay thee the noblest sacrifice of praise. O pour thy grace into my heart, that I may worthily magnify thy great and glorious name. Thou hast made me and sent me into the world to do thy work. O assist me to fulfil the end of my creation, and to shew forth thy praise with all diligence, by giving myself up to thy service. Prosper the work of my hands upon me, O Lord; O prosper thou whatever I shall undertake this day, that it may tend to thy glory, the good of my neighbour, and the salvation of my own soul.
Preserve me from all those snares and temptations which continually sollicit me to offend thee. Guide me by thy holy Spirit in all those places whither thy providence shall lead me this day; and suffer not my communications with the world to dissipate my thoughts, to make me inadvertent to thy presence, or lukewarm in thy service: but let me always walk as in thy sight, and as one who knows this life to be the seed-time of an eternal harvest. Keep me, I beseech thee, undefiled, unblamable, and unreprovable unto the end; and grant, that I may so diligently perform thy will, in that station wherein thou hast been pleased to place me, that I may make my calling and election sure, thro’ Jesus Christ our blessed Lord and Saviour.
Hear also, O Lord, my prayers for the whole race of mankind, and guide their feet into the way of peace: reform the corruptions of thy Catholic church, heal her divisions, and restore to her, her ancient discipline: give to the clergy thereof, whether they be bishops, priests or deacons, grace as good shepherds to feed the flocks committed to their charge. Bless King George and all the royal family and all that are put in authority under him. Let them exceed others as much in goodness as greatness, and be signal instruments of thy glory. Grant that in the universities, and in all other places set apart for thy service, whatsoever is praise-worthy may for ever flourish. Keep, O Lord, all the nobility, gentry and commons of this land, in constant communion with thy holy Catholic church, in humble obedience to the king, and in Christian charity one towards another.
In a particular manner, I beseech thee to be gracious to my father and mother, my brethren and sisters, and all my friends and relations. Pardon all their sins, and heal all their infirmities. Give them that share of the blessings of this life, which thou knowest to be most expedient for them; and thy grace so to use them here, that they may enjoy thee eternally.
With a propitious eye, O gracious Comforter, behold all that are in affliction: let the sighings of the prisoners, the groans of the sick, the prayers of the oppressed, the desire of the poor and needy come before thee (――)¹ . Give unto my enemies (――) grace and pardon, charity to me and love to thee: remove the cloud from their eyes, the stony from their hearts, that they may know and feel what it is to love their neighbour as themselves. And may it please thee to enable me to love all mine enemies, to bless them that now curse me, to do good to them that hate me, and to pray for those who despitefully use me and persecute me Be pleased, O Lord, of thy goodness, shortly to accomplish the number of thine elect, and to hasten thy kingdom; that we, with all thy whole church, may have our perfect consummation of bliss, through Jesus Christ our Lord, by whom and with whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honour and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, now and for ever.
¹ Here mention the particulars you would pray for
Particular questions relating to thankfulness.
1. Have I allotted some time for thanking God for the blessings of the past week?
2. Have I, in order to be the more sensible of them, seriously and deliberately considered the several circumstances that attended them?
3. Have I considered each of them as an obligation to greater love, and consequently to stricter holiness?
OMost great and glorious God, who art mighty in thy power, and wonderful in thy doings towards the sons of men, accept, I beseech thee, my unfeigned thanks and praise, for my creation, preservation, and all the other blessings, which in the riches of thy mercy, thou hast from time to time poured down upon me. Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thine hand. Thou createdst the sun and moon, the day and night, and makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to praise thee. Thou formedst man of the dust of the ground and breathedst into him the breath of life In thine own image madest thou him, capable of knowing and loving thee eternally. His nature was perfect, thy will was his law, and thy blessed self his portion. Neither after he had left his first estate didst thou utterly withdraw thy mercy from him; but in every succeeding generation, didst save, deliver, assist and protect him. Thou hast instructed us by thy laws, and enlightened us by thy statutes. Thou hast redeemed us by the blood of thy Son, and sanctifiest us by the grace of thy holy Spirit. For these and all thy other mercies, how can I ever sufficiently love thee, or worthily magnify thy great and glorious name? All the powers of my soul are too few to conceive the thanks that are due to thee, even for vouchsafing me the honour of now appearing before thee and conversing with thee. But thou hast declared thou wilt accept the sacrifice of thanksgiving, in return for all thy goodness. For ever therefore will I bless thee, will I adore thy power, and magnify thy goodness: My tongue shall sing of thy righteousness, and be telling of thy salvation from day to day. I will give thanks unto thee for ever and ever; I will praise my God while I have my being. O that I had the heart of the seraphim, that I might burn with love like theirs! But tho’ I am upon earth, yet will I praise, as I can, the King of heaven; though I am a feeble, mortal creature, yet will I join my song with those that excel in strength, with the immortal host of angels and arch-angels, thrones, dominions and powers, while they laud and magnify thy glorious name, and sing with incessant shouts of praise.
Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts! Heaven and earth are full of his glory! Glory be to thee O Lord most high. Amen. Hallelujah.
Accept, O merciful Father, my most humble thanks, for thy preservation of me this day (――)¹ . O continue thy loving-kindness towards me, and take me into thy protection this night. Let thy holy angels watch over me to defend me from the attempts of evil men and evil spirits. Let me rest in peace, and not sleep in sin, and grant that I may rise more fit for thy service.
¹ Here mention the particulars you would pray for
O thou whose kingdom ruleth over all, rule in the hearts of all the men whom thou hast made: reform the corruptions, and heal the breaches of thy holy church, and establish her in truth and peace. Be gracious unto all priests and deacons, and give them rightly to divine the word of truth. Forgive the sins of this nation, and turn our hearts, that iniquity may not be our ruin. Bless king George and all the royal family, with all those blessings which thou seest to be most expedient for them; and give to his council, and to the nobility and magistracy, grace truely to serve thee in their several stations. Bless our universities, that they may be the great bulwarks of thy faith and love, against all the assaults of vice and infidelity: may the gentry and commons of this realm, live in constant communion with thy church, in obedience to the king, and in love one towards another
Be gracious to all who are near and dear to me. Thou knowest their names and art acquainted with their wants. Of thy goodness be pleased to proportion thy blessings to their necessities. Pardon my enemies, and give them repentance and charity, and me grace to overcome evil with good. Have compassion on all who are distressed in mind, body or estate, and give them steady patience and timely deliverance.
Now to God the Father, who first loved us, and made us accepted in the Beloved: to God the Son, who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood: to God the Holy Ghost, who sheddeth the love of God abroad in our hearts, be all love and all glory in time and to all eternity. Amen!
A COLLECTION OF
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S U N D A Y M O R N I N G.
ALMIGHTY and eternal God, we desire to praise thy holy name for so graciously raising us up, in soundness of body and mind, to see the light of this day.
We bless thee in behalf of all thy creatures; for the eyes of all look unto thee, and thou givest them their meat in due season. But above all we acknowledge thy inestimable benefits bestowed upon mankind in Christ Jesus. We thank thee for his miraculous birth, for his most holy life, his bitter agony and bloody death, for his glorious resurrection on this day, his ascension into heaven, his triumph over all the powers of darkness, and his sitting at thy right hand for ever more.
O God, how great was thy love to the sinful sons of men, to give thy only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him, might not perish, but have everlasting life! How great was that love which hath committed our souls to one so mighty to save! Which hath chosen us to be thy sons and heirs, together with Christ Jesus, and set such an high priest over thy house and family, to make intercession for us, to pour thy blessings upon us, and to send forth his angels to minister unto them who shall be heirs of salvation! O the riches of thy grace, in sending the Holy Ghost, to make us abound in hope, that we shall one day rise from the dead, and after our short labours here, rest with thee in thy eternal glory.
O that we could begin this day, in devout ♦ meditations, in joy unspeakable, and in blessing and praising thee, who hast given us such good hope and everlasting consolation! Lift up our minds above all these little things below, which are apt to distract our thoughts; and keep them above, till our hearts are fully bent to seek thee every day, in the way wherein Jesus hath gone before us, tho’ it should be with the loss of all we here possess.
♦ “mediations” replaced with “meditations” per Errata
We are ashamed, O Lord, to think that ever we have disobey’d thee, who hast redeemed us by the precious blood of thine own Son. O that we may agree with thy will in all things for the time to come! and that all the powers of our souls and bodies may be wholly dedicated to thy service! We desire unfeignedly that all the thoughts and designs of our minds, all the affections and tempers of our hearts, and all the actions of our life, may be pure, holy, and unreproveable in thy sight.
Search us, O Lord, and prove us; try out our reins and our heart. Look well if there be any way of wickedness in us, and lead us in the way everlasting. Let thy favour be better to us than life itself; that so in all things we may approve our hearts before thee, and feel the sense of thy acceptance of us, giving us a joy which the world cannot give.
Make it our delight to praise thee, to call to mind thy lovingkindness, and to offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving. Help us to take heed to ourselves, lest at any time our hearts be overcharged with surfeiting or drunkenness, or the cares of this life: to have our conversation without covetousness, and to be content with such things as we have: to possess our bodies in sanctification and honour: to love our neighbour as ourselves, and as we would that others should do to us, do even so to them. To live peaceably, as much as lieth in us, with all men: to put on the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit: and to take those who have spoken in the name of our L , for an example of suffering affliction and of patience; and when we suffer as Christians, not to be ashamed, but to glorify thee our God on this behalf.
And accept, good Lord, of all the praises of all thy people met together this day. O that thy ways were known upon all the earth, thy saving health among all nations! And that all Christian kings especially, may be filled with thy holy Spirit, and be faithful subjects of the Lord Jesus the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. O that thy priests may be cloathed with righteousness, and thy saints rejoice and sing; that all who are in distress may trust in thee, the help of their countenance and their God. O Lord, hear us, and make thy face to shine upon thy servants, that we may enter into thy gates with thanksgiving, and into thy courts with praise: that we may be thankful unto thee and bless thy name. Amen, for Jesus Christ’s sake, in whose words we conclude our imperfect prayers, saying, “Our Father, &c.”
OTHOU high and holy one that inhabitest eternity Thou art to be feared and loved by all thy servants. All thy works praise thee, O God; and we especially give thanks unto thee, for thy marvellous love in Christ Jesus, by whom thou hast reconciled the world to thyself. Thou hast given us exceeding great and precious promises. Thou hast sealed them with his blood, thou hast confirmed them by his resurrection and ascension, and the coming of the Holy Ghost. We thank thee that thou hast given us so many happy opportunities of knowing the truth as it is in Jesus, even the mystery which was hid from ages and generations, but is now revealed to them that believe.
Blessed be thy goodness for that great consolation, and for the assistance of thy holy Spirit. Blessed be thy goodness, that we have felt it so often in our hearts, inspiring us with holy thoughts, filling us with love and joy and comfortable expectations of the glory that shall be revealed. We thank thee, that thou hast suffered us this day, to attend on thee in thy public service: and that we have begun in any measure, to pursue after that eternal rest which remaineth for the people of God.
We offer up again our souls and bodies to thee to be governed, not by our will, but thine. O let it be ever the ease and joy of our hearts, to be under the conduct of thy unerring wisdom, to follow thy counsels, and to be ruled in all things by thy holy will. And let us never distrust thy abundant kindness and tender care over us; whatsoever it is thou wouldst have us to do, or to suffer in this world.
O God, purify our hearts, that we may intirely love thee, and rejoice in being beloved of thee; that we may confide in thee, and absolutely resign ourselves to thee, and be filled with constant devotion toward thee. O that we may never sink into a base love of any thing here below, nor be oppressed with the cares of this life; but assist us to abhor that which is evil, and cleave to that which is good. Let us use this world as not abusing it. Give us true humility of spirit, that we may not think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think. Keep us from being wise in our own conceits. Let our moderation be known to all men. Make us kindly affectioned one to another; to delight in doing good; to shew all meekness to all men; to render to all their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honour to whom honour; and to owe no man any thing, but to love one another. Make us so happy, that we may be able to love our enemies, to bless those that curse us, to do good to them that hate us; to rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. Compose our spirits to a quiet and steady dependance on thy good providence, that we may take no thought for our life, nor be careful for any thing, but by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, still make known our requests to thee our God. And help us to pray always and not faint; in every thing to give thanks, and offer up the sacrifice of praise continually; to rejoice in hope of thy glory; to possess our souls in patience; and to learn in whatsoever state we are, therewith to be content. Make us know both how to be abased, and how to abound: every where, and in all things, instruct us both to abound and to suffer want, being enabled to do all things through Christ which strengtheneth us.
O that the light of all Christians did so shine before men, that others might glorify thee, our Father which art in heaven! Send forth thy light and thy truth into all the dark corners of the earth; that all kings may fall down before thee, and all nations do thee service! Bless these kingdoms, and give us grace at length, to bring forth fruits meet for repentance. O Lord, save the king, and establish his throne in righteousness. Prosper the endeavours of all those who faithfully feed thy people, and increase the number of them. O that the seed which hath been sown this day, may take deep root in all our hearts; that being not forgetful hearers, but doers of the word, we may be blessed in our deeds. Help us in all the week following, to set a watch before our mouth, and keep the door of our lips. And let not our heart incline to any evil thing, or to practise wicked works with men that work iniquity. But as we have received how we ought to walk and to please thee, so may we abound more and more.
Protect us, we beseech thee, and all our friends every where this night, and awaken in the morning those good thoughts in our hearts, that the words of our Saviour may abide in us, and we in him; who hath taught us, when we pray to say, “Our Father, &c.”
M O N D A Y M O R N I N G.
WE humble ourselves, O Lord of heaven and earth, before thy glorious Majesty. We acknowledge thy eternal power, wisdom, goodness, and truth; and desire to render thee most unfeigned thanks, for all the benefits which thou pourest upon us. But above all, for thine inestimable love, in the redemption of the world, by our Lord Jesus Christ.
We implore thy tender mercies, in the forgiveness of all our sins, whereby we have offended either in thought, word, or deed. We desire to be truly sorry for all our misdoings, and utterly to renounce whatsoever is contrary to thy will. We desire to devote our whole man, body, soul and spirit, to thee. And as thou dost inspire us with these desires, so accompany them always with thy grace, that we may every day, with our whole hearts, give ourselves up to thy service.
We desire to be so holy and undefiled as our blessed Master was. And we trust thou wilt fulfil all the gracious promises which he hath made to us. Let them be dearer to us than thousands of gold and silver; let them be the comfort and joy of our hearts. We ask nothing, but that it may be unto thy servants according to his word.
Thou hast mercifully kept us the last night: blessed be thy continued goodness. Receive us likewise into thy protection this day. Guide and assist us in all our thoughts, words, and actions. Make us willing to do and suffer what thou pleasest; waiting for the mercy of our Lord, Christ Jesus, unto eternal life.
Blessed be thy goodness which hath not suffered us to wander, without instruction, after the foolish desires of our own hearts; but hast clearly shewn us where our happiness lies. O may we receive with all thankfulness, those holy words which teach us the blessedness of poverty of spirit, of mourning after thee, of meekness and gentleness, of hungering and thirsting after righteousness, of mercifulness and purity of heart, of doing good unto all, and patiently suffering for doing the will of our Lord Christ.
O may we always be in the number of those blessed souls! May we ever feel ourselves happy in having the kingdom of God within us, in the comforts of the holy one, in being filled with all the fruits of righteousness, in being made the children of the highest, and above all, in seeing thee, our God. Let us abound in thy love more and more; and in continual prayers and praises to thee, the Father of mercies and God of all consolation, in Jesus Christ our Lord.