Chat and Photos
Meditation Flower Cards
22 Feb, 2001
Paula Mucha, Framingham, MA
Almost functional on marys-garden-shoppe.com without a storefront -
. . . anyway here's a new card.
This is from the Pritchard Calendar. Decided to offer this as a
card, perhaps for Mother's Day, primarily. . .
Getting there.
Reply, Mary's Gardens, 22 Feb, 2001
Thanks for your message that you have added the Fumitory, "God's
Little Fingers & Toes" flower card to the offerings of the
marys-garden-shoppe.com website under construction.
This water color and the others from the full Katherine Pinchard
kalendar you are offering should indeed also be made available in
flower card format.
I hope you will be able to develop a full offering of flower cards
on the website, as they are important means for introducing the
Flowers of Our Lady to persons, parishes and schools that may not
be familiar with them - as well as for use in personal reflection.
In addition to familiarizing individuals with the Flowers of Our
Lady so they can be recognized on sight in the Mary Garden, they
are a means for reflecting on flowers (such as Fumitory, an English
wildflower) not regularly available for the Mary Garden, unless
started from hard-to-obtain seeds.
I envisage two formats for the cards:
1. An illustration (art or photo) of the flower, with
common and religious name(s), on the front; and a
quote or short meditation on the back (as with the
Fumitory and Iris cards).
Here (for content, not style - and in the format of
a meditation on Mary's life, and then an application
to ours) is a sample of a short meditation for the
similar Snapdragon, "Infant Jesus' Shoes" symbolism
(from the 12 meditations for the Introductory 12
Annuals Mary Garden on the mgardens.org website):
"As the shapes of snapdragon blooms bring
to mind little shoes, we envisage in our
imagination the little feet and shoes of Jesus,
and Mary's loving motherly sharing and bonding
with him as she cared for him in their Nazareth
home. In imitation of Mary, may we ever nurture
and protect the innocence and purity of our own
children as we instruct them in the truths and
virtues of the Faith.
Some other sample meditations are to be found in
"Dish Mary Gardens For the Blind".
2. An artistic representation of Mary with the object
symbolized, in her life, assisting us in our meditation -
as in the "Our Lady's Pincushion" Medeci Press flower
card reproduced on the mgardens.org web site
These cards are of special assistance for teaching quickening to
meditation by the symbolism of Our Lady's Flowers as they found
actually growing in the Mary Garden.
I envisage that the cards can be formatted in both the familiar
small holy card format, and the larger folded greeting card format,
with envelope.
I hope these suggestions are helpful.
Further Reply, Mary's Gardens, 23 Feb, 2001
I attach a Giant Mullein, "Mary's Candle", further sample card
format, using the Pinchard watercolor (abbreviated height) and, on
the back, a couplet inspired by the candle symbolism (as I remember
it, my translation, from Marzell's "Deutsches Wrterbuch Der
Pflanzennamen", not at hand, which gives a dozen symbolic names -
see German research on the website).
This serves to epitomize my concept of what Flower Cards can do to
quicken illuminative flower meditation. In addition to giving an
alternate imaginative context for "Mary's Candle" - suggested by
others to symbolize the large candle before Mary's altar in
pre-Reformation English churches - the "Heaven's Fire" symbolism
makes it, envisaged in Mary's hand as she moves over the world,
also a symbol of her universal spiritual mediation. Thus, each
time we see it in the Mary Garden, it quickens both our reflection
and meditation in our active imagination on Mary's mediation, and
also our prayerful recourse to Mary for this mediation, for world
needs according to the Divine Will.
As we behold this flower over and over in the Mary Garden (or in
the countryside) during its two months bloom period, and then the
candle-like seed stalk standing until frost, we find this, midst
all the preoccupations and distractions of daily life, much more
quickening to prayer for Mary's mediation - so needed by the world
today - than repeating the words of Marian prayers from memory,
reading books of Marian mediations, or attending prayer meetings,
etc..
From thus experiencing the quickening of its many symbolic flowers,
we develop the full life of Mary Garden prayer.
And, thanks to you, I've come to fuller appreciation of the
important and unique contribution made to this by flower cards,
such as you are developing at marys-garden-shoppe.com - themselves
quickening us to reflection, mediation and prayer as we behold
them.
