The Patron Saint of Plumbers

or the surprising specializations of the dead

Just before the arrival of houseguests a year or so ago, my water stopped running. It was a Friday and we live in a busy tourist town with a lot of construction and its hard to get people to show up in these moments. I couldn’t reach our regular plumber and I was panicking. As I do in such moments, I wondered if there was anyone on the other side who might help. Google quickly revealed that there was: St. Vincent Ferrer is the patron saint of plumbers.

I looked at his picture, I found one of his traditional prayers and said it nine times, I lit him a candle, and I promised him I would tell his story. “Vinnie, if you can get my toilets flushing again, you will be my go-to guy.” Then I took action and posted a desperate plea in a local Facebook group. Someone responded immediately that there cousin was just out of rehab and looking for work and he was a great plumber. The dead have a way of weaving everyone’s prayers together. Less than an hour later this rough-and-tumble guy showed up and he was, indeed, a great plumber. He fixed the problem in minutes and charged me so little I was happy to give him a big tip. Bless you, Saint Vinnie!

The next week, after my guests had left, I got curious. Why was St. Vincent Ferrer, a monastic from almost a thousand years ago in an age with no indoor plumbing, the patron saint of plumbers?

It’s a little mysterious honestly. His biography describes the life of a tireless company man…converting the infidels, supporting popes and bishops, preaching, healing, none of his achievements particularly notable. But early on he got assocciated with builders because he “built the church” and that morphed more specifically over the centuries into plumbing. Now there are special prayers to him you can say to bless your toilets. His feast day, April 5th in case you are interested, is the day to also say an extra thank you to your plumber. No one really knows why.

In truth this whole specialization business of the dead can be very very unpredictable and strange—and it is in that strangeness that the magic lies.

Recently a beloved friend of mine, after a long and terrible illness, finally passed. She had been an early supporter of my writing (she commissioned me to write plays and wrote grants to get me paid for my work) and a theatrical genius, running a local children’s performing group that put on, truly, the best plays I’ve ever seen in my life. Many of her students went on to celebrity and fame. She died within days of my college theater professor and I had a feeling they were teeming up to help me integrate my own dramatic background with my current work and, in fact, they are showing me some exciting possibilites with my next book. (more on that later) But what happened next utterly surprised me.

Her funeral was very emotional for all of us, but most of all for her sons who spoke eloquently about her loss. I knew at some point that I wanted to tell them that there mother hadn’t just been a miracle worker in life…but that she was even more so from the other side. Wiping away my tears, I heard my phone buzz and glanced down. My daughter had just received an unexpected update about her health that upended our current plans. We had a crisis to deal with. We were going to need a team of the living and the dead.

And my friend who had just died was clearly on it. The news had arrived at her funeral after all. But this just didn’t seem like her balliwick. She was going to be the patron saint of theater and children and writing and creativity. Right? But the news didn’t arrive the day before her funeral or the day after; it arrived during it. She was making her desire to help known. She COULD help. I was certain of it.

On a hunch I put another saint on my daughter’s crisis, Eileen O’Connor of Australia. A friend is writing a book about her and she dealt with terrible pain and an incurable medical condition in her life. She is famous for curing someone of spinal meningitis and my daughter’s health journey was triggered by a terrible reaction to a meningitis vaccine. So okay. When I decided to read about her, however, I discovered that her birth day, February 19th, was the same as my friend’s death day. The two people I had put on my daughter’s team share a mysterious connection.

I don’t have a neat ending to this story yet. We are inside of it. But sometimes the dead have skills, from other lives and other adventures, that we don’t even know about until they are on the other side. Turns out Vinnie Ferrer wanted to be a plumber more than a priest. Turns out my friend is not just an impresario but a healer. Turns out she’s working with Eileen O’Connor in ways I cannot even imagine or understand.

The dead are always surprising me. They are privy to mysteries we can barely imagine. And I am humble and awed before those mysteries. When we step into them, the impossible becomes possible.

And a plumber shows up on a Friday afternoon on a moment’s notice and charges us less than a hundred dollars to fix our toilets.

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In April I will be offering a month-long workshop Saints Alive! How A Team of Holy Helpers Can Make Magic and Miracles. You can find out more and register here.

This has been the free version of my substack. I also offer a paid version that includes a monthly zoom conversation and excerpts from my current work-in-progress (and the book that is becoming an interactive theaterical event!)

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Perdita Finn is the co-founder, with her husband Clark Strand, of the feral fellowship The Way of the Rose, which inspired their book The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary. They are currently at work on their next book together Circles Not Lines: Spiritual Community Beyond Patriarchy.  To find out more about her devotion to “ecology not theology” visit wayoftherose.org

In addition to extensive study with Zen masters, priests, spirit workers, and healers, she apprenticed with the psychic Susan Saxman, with whom she wrote The Reluctant Psychic. Perdita Finn now teaches popular workshops on Getting to Know the Dead. Participants are empowered to activate the miracles in their own lives with the help of their ancestors and recover their own intuitive magic. Her book Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World is an intimate journey through her recovery of these lost ways. She speaks widely on how to collaborate with those on the other side, on the urgent necessity of a new romantic animism, and on the sobriety that emerges when we claim the long story of our souls. Her next book is The Body of My Mother.

She lives with her family in the moss-filled shadows of the Catskill Mountains.