Chat and Photos
Talking With Mary In The Garden
Thomas & Mary Hadfield,
Nashua, New Hampshire
20 Jun, 2003
We thought we should send along these pictures of our
grand-daughter.
These pictures were taken after the ones of the little girl in the
newspaper but; like her, our little one has been chatting to, and
keeping company with, the Blessed Mother in our gardens for a long
while.
Our daughter has snapshots of her when she was able to make her
way down to the Blessed Mother's statue in the back yard.
It has been a great joy to us in a world short on good news.
08 Jul, 2003
Since our "garden" is VERY modest we didn't identify our location
which is Nashua, NH. Our granddaughter is Brigid.
We all prayed to Our Lady a long time with our daughter and
son-in-law that a baby would become available to adopt. From
early on, Brigid was interested in pictures and statues of the
Blessed Mother and called in her baby way to the image - even tho'
they were all different: The Madonna of the Streets in her own
room, Our Lady of Gaudalupe, a Chinese image of Mary and the
Infant, and statues of Our Lady of Grace, Our Lady in the same
pose as at Lourdes etc..
We mentioned in our e-mail that our daughter has snapshots of Brigid
in her garden at home when she was able to crawl around. She would
spend time chatting away to the statue and offering it pine needles
and toys. She started out calling her "Beeree" then "Reeree" and
finally "Mary" and what sounded like Jesus when the image included
Him. All of this gives us great joy.
The pictures were taken the day Brigid put a crown on the statue
early in May this year. We don't know just when the pictures were
taken by our daughter in her garden.
Reply, John Stokes, 15 Aug, 2003
Apologies for the delay in replying to your messages and in
posting them and the photos of your grandaughter Brigid to CHAT
to share with others.
Posting was made today, with indexing under NEW on the website
Home Page.
If they are available I would like to add a photo or two of those
you mention that your daughter took of Brigid approaching and
talking with Mary, on her own initiative, at the statue in her
home yard.
As with Anna Maria DiMaggio's "Tip-toeing to Mary", I am awed at
this early Marian devotion and spiritual communion - nurtured in
home and church, and then spontaneosly expressed, as you describe,
through entering into spiritual communion with Mary before her
statues in the flower borders of her home and yours.
There remains to be ascertained whether Brigid and Anna Maria are
special in this respect, or whether one- and two-year olds
genenerally - boys and girls - may likewise display such early
devotion to Mary when they, too, are nurtured in devotional family
backgrounds, and have the opportunity to express this devotion
before readily approachable garden statues of Our Lady.
You state, "my 'garden' is VERY modest"; but there is somthing
essentially symbolic in a figure of Mary in a simple flower border
- as the "Flower of flowers" and "Fairest Flower of them All",
recalling the prophecy by Isaiah of the Virgin Birth of the
Redeemer under the imagery of the miraculously blossoming Rod of
Jesse (Isaiah 2:11), from which the Church Fathers saw all flowers
as symbols or "signatures" of Mary.
Further, the Fathers envisaged Mary - in her union with God,
entered into at the Annunciation, and now assumed body and soul
into heaven - as present with God, in "the retroactivity of
eternity", at the very creation of the world, as "Our Lady of
Creation"; - applying to her the passage from Proverbs 8:22-32,
"The Lord begot me, the firstborn of his ways . . .
"I was the first, before the earth . . .
"When he established the heavens I was there . . .
"Then was I beside him as his craftsman,
and I was his delight day by day,
Playing before him all the while,
playing on the surface of the earth;
and I found delight in the sons of men."
A figure of Mary in a simple flower border such as yours, as
distinct from a more formal Mary Garden, recalls the artistic
representations of Our Lady of Creation, such as that of the
renowned tapistry in Notre Dame de France Church (off Leicester
Square) in London.
Further, while the primary representation of Mary is with the Child
Jesus, as the Mother of God; representations of her alone, as in
Our Lady of Creation, the Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of
Lourdes and Our Lady of Grace, and as she has characteristically
come to us in her apparitions, are important in representing her
divine prerogatives as our Spiritual Mother, Advocate and Universal
Mediatrix of God's grace, through which God shares with her the
fullness of the divine action for the world, in accordance with the
purpose of Creation of showing forth and sharing the divine
goodness and action with humans.
Then there is the challenge to parents and guardians as to how to
preserve and nurture such initial devotion to Mary through
children's various stages of religious growth in the home, and
continuing as they move from home to "world".
In thinking about this I set down a condensation of some further
thoughts separately - to keep down the size of this message - as,
"Assisting Children in Moving from Garden to World", to which I refer you.