Way of the Rose Novena
A Series of ..
novena posts for a Facebook group I am am in based on Perdita Finn and Clark Strand’s book, The Way of the Rose.
Instead of piecing them into separate posts, I think I will just share them all hear. During that novena I focused on the Joyful Mysteries.
We will see how it goes.
Novena 1/9: Joyful Mysteries The Annunciation
February 10, 2020
When I volunteered to write for this novena, I specifically asked to be on the back end…during one of the nine-day gratitude novenas. See, gratitude is my comfortable place. Even in the midst of so much that breaks my heart in our world today, I am, on most days, equally overwhelmed by the good (like my deep appreciation for this community). Gratitude is a response to something we have received or witnessed or experienced. It is in relation to something else. Gratitude is dialogical.
As a young girl, Luke’s rendition of the Annunciation terrified me. I didn’t see where Mary was able to make a choice. That might be when my problems with an omniscient and transcendent male God took root in me. I was afraid. What if my “vocation” I was called to was something I didn’t want to do? I mean did Mary really want to be the Mother of God? (Years later I found Botticelli's Annunciation....I can feel uncertainty, fear and ambivalence in his rendition. See below)
This undercurrent of fear was with me all through elementary school and it reached a crescendo in 6th grade when I had this feeling I was supposed to become a sister (a nun). And one day in Religion class I opened the Bible and there was a bookmark that said “Listen to the call of the Lord.” I almost fainted I was so afraid I was being asked to sacrifice everything I had dreamed of being – especially being a mother.
It took years to unwind these early beliefs, thoughts and fears about God and God’s plan for me. Mary didn’t offer me much comfort during this time…she was just another means to measure my goodness and worthiness. And after all, she did what God's messenger Gabriel declared for her:
Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38)
It is one of the reasons I sometimes envy those in this Way of the Rose group who can meet Mary without all the trappings I had as a child and young woman. I love reading your thoughts, insights and stories.
My heart’s desire for this novena has been to “know and claim my heart’s desire.” Whereas gratitude is relational, stating my heart’s desire requires that I take the risk to be vulnerable and open and ultimately to surrender. I don’t have a deep intimacy with Mary…but I want to. Perhaps that is the desire I have been praying for in this novena – to freely state I want this connection with Mother Mary and to let that desire flow from the deepest parts of me.
I want intimacy, to know and be known, to feel held and loved and blessed just as I am. I want to surrender this ridiculous belief that somehow I need to "do it all...all by myself."
Novena 2/9: The Agony in the Garden and the Comfort of Women 2/9
SorrowFUl Mystery
February 11, 2020
I was a Religion teacher for an all girls high school in NYC over 20 years ago. After one of our particularly robust conversations, a student came up after class.
Miss Wewers, I want to tell you a story about my grandmother.
During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in World War II, all the girls were scared of being hurt or raped or kidnapped by the soldiers. One day my grandmother had to go to the store. She was terrified and didn’t know what to do. She was very beautiful. She tried to think of what she could do to make herself unappealing.
She was on her period and decided to use her blood to cover her skin and face to protect herself from the Japanese soldiers. She left the house and the soldiers stayed away. She returned home safely. Her blood protected her.
I think about this story so often. The blood that we think about in these sorrowful mysteries is the blood of a man. Men do not have the same relationship to their bodies and to the earth that women do. We bleed every month, but we don’t die. When we give birth, our children are born covered in our blood. This is not the blood that shames us but the blood of creation and birth.
Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
“we need a god who bleeds now
a god whose wounds are not
some small male vengeance
some pitiful concession to humility
a desert swept with dryin marrow in honor of the lord
we need a god who bleeds
spreads her lunar vulva & showers us in shades of scarlet
thick & warm like the breath of her
our mothers tearing to let us in
this place breaks open
like our mothers bleeding
the planet is heaving mourning our ignorance
the moon tugs the seas
to hold her/to hold her
embrace swelling hills/i am
not wounded i am bleeding to life
we need a god who bleeds now
whose wounds are not the end of anything”
― Ntozake Shange
Post Script: It is believed that 1,000 Pilipino women and girls were forced into sexual slavery as “comfort women” for the Japanese soldiers. In 2017, a statute was erected in Manilla to honor these women. The Japanese government pressured Manilla and five months later the statue was removed. Protests ensued.
NOVENA 7/9: Joyful Mysteries The Visistation
February 15, 2020
A few months ago I shared a story from my trip to Mary's House in Ephesus. That story began when we took the overnight ferry from Samos to Kusadasi, Turkey which is the excerpt below.
(I had a fundraiser for work today and just didn't have time to write. Thanks for understanding and for letting me share this part of my story.)
The overnight ferry from Samos, Greece to Kusadasi, Turkey was packed when Bob and I boarded around 11:30pm. It seemed impossible to find space to sleep. Bodies sprawled everywhere. The acrid smoke of cigarettes suffocated us. Bob carved out four seats and I tried to sleep on the floor in front of them by building up a mattress of backpacks and towels. I wouldn't say it was very comfortable, but nestling below the seats and so close to the floor combined with the gentle swaying of the ferry felt private and safe.
It seemed like only seconds later Bob vigorously shook me and seemed to yell,
“Stop it Jen!…Stop!”
“What? What are you talking about?” I asked, jarred from the deepest sleep.
“You are dreaming…You keep yelling Mommy! Mommy!”
“Nuh huh.”
“Yes, you did.” He laid back down, readjusting his pillow on the armrest of the chair.
Usually when I awake from the depths of a dream, an image or fragment lingers and helps me own this gift from my psyche. But this time, I felt no connection to the intensity that led Bob to wake me. No resonance. No congruence. I couldn’t believe the word, mommy, had escaped from my mouth. As I nestled back into my small space, I wondered about the meaning of this nighttime puzzle. Was my yearning for mommy coming from such a deep place that I wasn’t conscious enough to recognize the longing as my own? Shaken and out of balance, I kept revisiting that word - mommy.
Mommy is the affectionate name we call our mothers when we are small and depend on them for everything. It is the name for the one who loves us more than anyone else in the world. The one who created and nurtured us into being. I know this is not everyone's truth, but it was mine. My mom had wanted nothing more than to be a mother. My grandfather and grandmother made her wait two years before getting married. As soon as she was married in October 1967, I was born the following October.
But which mother was I calling for? I knew it wasn’t my mom back in Kansas. Had it been her, there would have been something in the dream that felt familiar. Some recognition of the woman who gave birth to me. My dream did not guide me that way. My thoughts kept circling back to mommy, mom, and mother. The root of the word, ma, means breast. The "ter" made it into "breast-feeder." The ma sound is believed to have its origin as the sound of a baby nursing at the breast and it just might be the oldest word root in the world. Even in languages not related to each other, ma forms the basis of Mother in many tongues, from English and Greek to Chinese and Sanskrit.
Nicholar Roerch, Mother of the World, Warm Colors.
When the author lived in NYC, the Roerch Museum was a favorite escape for the city. For more info: https://www.roerich.org/
The word itself ties the human family together, both past, present and future. Mother is a powerful archetype and the gentle rocking of the Aegean, perhaps, had reminded me of that primordial time when I was formed in the sea of Mother. My mother, yes, but also the Sacred One who holds the entire world in her pelvic floor.
I had always assumed my experiences in Turkey would be memorable. I had been called to this land rooted in the feminine. It had been one of the last places where She was worshipped openly. I did not understand why I needed to be in Turkey. I just knew I needed to there.
My dream marked the beginning of a special journey. As the waves rocked me back to sleep, it seemed I was being called, as a daughter, to remember the Divine Mother who had seeded our dreams for centuries, who had borne all of us, and who now was inviting me into a deeper connection with her.
Photo: Library of Celsus in Ephesus, Sophia Statue, 1998
Novena 8/9: Sorrowful Mysteries: Carrying the Cross
February 16, 2020
When we gather that water at the head waters – so pure and clean – and carry it all the length of the river. When we get to the mouth, we give the river a taste of herself. And we say to her - This is how you began – pure and clean – and this is how we wish for you to be again.
Sharon Day, Nibi Walks Leader
The Nibi Walks are Indigenous-led, extended ceremonies to pray for the water:
Every step is taken in prayer and gratitude for water, our life-giving force. We walk for the water, and as we heal the water, we heal all of life. We are not a protest. We are a prayer for the water. We invite all people to join us in caring for the water.
In 2017, a dear friend, who I had not seen for 20 years was participating in the Nibi Walk along the Missouri River. They began in Montana where they dipped a copper bucket into the headwaters and covered it with a cloth so the water didn’t splash out on their 54-day journey. Through large cities, small towns, and everything in between they carried Her until they reached the point where the Missouri joined the Mississippi.
The days are filled with songs and prayers. The walkers follow a path as close to the river as possible. Only women carry the water. Men carry the eagle staff if they are present.
Friends, family, and folks who are curious, will join in the walk and help to support it. The various native communities along the path open their homes and hearts to the walkers.
I had made plans to meet Sara on the walk and got up early on a Sunday and drove about an hour east to Buckner, Missouri. It was the sweetest reunion with Sara. And for that day I felt wrapped in the Mother’s embrace through the love these women shared with me and the example of their love for the water.
I had the honor of carrying the water for one of the miles that day. The community saged me and prayed for me before taking the bucket. I was terrified during the pass off because the goal is for the water to keep moving just like the river. I feared dropping the bucket. But I didn’t (Phew). Sara and I walked in silence. As my mile was coming to an end, I prepared to hand the copper bucket off to the next woman. During the hand off you say,
Ngah izitchigay nibi ohnjay
Which translates from Anishinabe as “I do it for the water.”
There is much about the Nibi walks that is sorrowful if we acknowledge how we destroy our waterways, polluting the sacred veins and arteries of Mother Earth. And yet, as Sharon said “We give the river a taste of herself” when they release the water at the journey’s end. The walkers, and those who encounter them, experience a transformation and a deepening of their connection to the water and to Mother Earth.
Carrying the water in a ceremonious way every day creates transformation. The water is a living entity and as such, it has a spirit. This spirit responds to the love shown to it. In this way, we have changed the way we think, feel and act toward our mother earth and the water.
I plan to continue walking the rivers that are endangered. I believe love is the healing grace. I choose to move forward in the spirit of love and bring people along with me in ceremony. The spirit lives in love, love is where the spirit lives.
- Sharon Day