More Musings on St. Joseph

A few days ago I wrote about how I hoped that St. Joseph would help me sell my house. People weighed in with their opinions about why I hadn't had any luck yet.

My mom thought that putting him next to the playhouse might have confused him, and might be causing him to work on selling the playhouse, not the rest of the property.

My dad offered to give me a statue of Willie Mays to bury along with St. Joseph. I appreciate the sentiment, but seeing as Willie Mays is not dead, I don't think he's capable of performing miracles. (His catch in the 1954 World Series not withstanding.) Plus I worried that burying his statue might hasten the actual man's death, and I'd feel really guilty about that.

My friend Anne thought maybe I needed to have the statue blessed, but I figured he came pre-blessed out of the box. She also suggested that maybe he's a one-time-use item: Since I already used him to sell one home, maybe he can't do another.

This idea intrigued me, so I typed "can I reuse St. Joseph" into google and got two relevant hits. The first was worthless, but the second was a wealth of information. It was a link to EcoJoe (photo above), a company that sells environmentally friendly St. Joseph kits. See, people forget to dig up the plastic relics, which can eventually ooze toxins into the soil. EcoJoes are made out of clay, so if you don't dig them up, no problem.

One of the questions asked on their site is whether you can use St. Joseph more than once. Their answer: Why not? Plus it's the environmentally friendly thing to do!

(As an aside, whether or not you're selling your house, you have got to check out the EcoJoe website. It's cheeky--but not disrespectful--and you'll learn about other neat things like Paul, the octopus who predicts the future.)

I decided my mom was probably right about needing to move St. Joe away from the playhouse. Another friend of mine in Utah had her house on the market for two months with no activity. Then within days of burying St. Joseph, her house was sold. Coincidence? I think not. So I asked her where and how she buried her statue. She said that she put him head down, with his face toward the home, in the flower bed farthest away from the house.

As much as I didn't want to disturb St. Joseph again, I decided that today I would unearth him--just this one last time--and rebury him in the front yard, far away from the house but facing it, and upside-down. A few minutes after I made that decision, Steve came in from doing yardwork to say that he had reburied St. Joseph for me. He did put him in the front yard, but not in the position or location I would have chosen. Rather than bother him again, though, I'm going to let him be. Maybe Steve will have better luck with him than I did.

And if we go another week or two without a sale, I'm burying EcoJoe. After all, my plastic St. Joe is more than six years old now. Maybe he's expired.