Celebrate St. Urho's Day

"Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen!"

St. Urho’s Day – the day before St. Patrick’s Day – is recognized in all 50 states, although it is commemorated principally in Minnesota.

Here’s why: Legend has it: St. Urho (allegedly pronounced Errrrh–Hoe with a long trill of the “r” to represent his strength) battled giant grasshoppers in pre-Ice Age Finland.

The legend proclaims that he used his “splendid and loud voice” to drive out the vermin and in so doing saved Finland’s grape harvest and the jobs of Finnish vineyard workers. He did this by uttering the phrase: "Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen" (roughly translated: "Grasshopper, grasshopper, go to Hell!").

A number of roadside-attraction-sized statutes depicting the hero with a giant grasshopper impaled on a pitchfork stand on highways in Minnesota. In the town of Finland, Minnesota, an estimated 2,000 people will turn out for a parade, dancing, ethnic food, and a beauty pageant.

Oh, by the way: St. Urho and his legend are completely made up.

They were dreamed up in the 1950s largely as a joke and popularized by Minnesota locals. From these humble beginnings the legend has spread around the country.

Takeaway #1: St. Urho and such are, by and large, harmless fun. Other misrepresentations put forward as “truth” are not so benign. Google “St. Urho’s Day” and skim quickly through the early listings and you might easily miss its made-up-ness. Imagine what intentional prevaricators or deceivers can slip past.

ACTION IDEA #1: You must examine the information that’s out there with a skeptical eye. Facts need checking and confirming before they are incorporated and passed along. Be thorough and discerning.

Takeaway #2: Be alert for the surprise lesson. As I’ve insisted here and elsewhere many times (and will again) I believe that life-long learning – adding wisdom daily – is an imperative. And hand in hand with that goes gaining understanding in the bargain.

Case in point: Digging deeper into the St. Urho legend I came across an online essay entitled “The Gospel According To St. Urho” by Suzelle Lynch where she talks about her search for her Finnish roots and her discovery of a unique Finnish concept called Sisu.

Sisu is a Finnish word that, she says, defies translation. It's a word that stands for the philosophy that “what must be done will be done, regardless of what it takes.” Sisu is a special strength and stubborn determination to continue and overcome in the moment of adversity.

I guess it’s what St. Urho conveyed in his splendid and loud voice ... “an almost magical quality … a combination of stamina, perseverance, courage, and determination held in reserve for hard times.”

Another, more picturesque definition: Sisu is the ability to hold onto the end of the rope, while dangling over a precipice, for five seconds longer than you thought you could. Then going for five more hours.

How cool is that? What a neat bit of information to have and use to inform your mindset when you feel at the end of your rope – even if you don’t think you have Finnish ancestors.

Even better: Suzelle Lynch says she feels her mother, without realizing it herself, raised her in a Finnish way with Finnish attitudes and customs. And so knowing more about her ancestry and claiming it for her own made her more honest, more grounded, more connected to what she calls “the deep center I long for.”

Here’s the point: When we know who we are, both our own unique selves, and the various sources that contributed to that self, we can more honestly and completely “be ourselves” and grow from that point and knowledge.

Who are you becoming? What is different and special about you? Suzelle Lynch asked herself those questions and suggests others would benefit by doing the same. She says:

“There are things about all of us that are hidden from others, and there are other things about us that we may not even be consciously aware of, or able to accept, about ourselves. We may have a unique ability or gift buried within us.... All of us, if we are growing, will learn new things about ourselves from time to time.

“This is the gospel of St. Urho as I read it -- that in knowing ourselves, revealing what is hidden, even if it seems less-than-wonderful to us, we become more open to accepting one another.”

I agree, don't you?

ACTION IDEA #2: Dig deep and discover who you are, what you believe and why. Know it. Understand it. Accept it. We each need to become congruent with who we are inside and who and what we show ourselves to be to those around us. Be real. Then get on in the daily process of growing and becoming who you are becoming.

And celebrate every day.

Geoff Steck

Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing
8 Depot Square
Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373

tgimguy@gmail.com   

P.S. “The belief that becomes truth for me ... is that which allows me to the best use of my strength, the best means of putting my virtues into action.” Nobel Prize winning author André Gide (1869-1951) said that.