Mary's Gardens Developmental Correspondence
Letters from John Stokes to Bro Seán MacNamara, Ireland
1980 - 1996
This "book length" correspondence, and similarly extensive
correspondence (in long process of posting to Website) with
Bonnie Roberson of Hagerman, Idaho; Jane McLaughlin of Woods
Hole; and Nanette Sears of Annapolis, represent Mary's "in house"
developmental activity from 1980 (following that of Bonnie,
who had carried it forward from 1968 until then) through 1965,
when the Internet website and general e-mail correspondence
were initiated.)
Because of the book length and unediting of the letters, a
listing of letter contents has been prepared .
John Stokes
January, 2005
LETTER TOPICS
July 31, 1983
- Bonnie Roberson Dies - Her Madonna Lily Blooms in Woods Hole
August 16, 1983
- Bonnie Roberson Remembered - Taping - Heavenly Communion
September 30, 1984
- Knock Shrine - Spiritual Quickening by Flower Symbols
March 25, 1985
- Simultaniety of the eternal present - Computers
June 11, 1985
- Rose Petal Circulations of Grace - Heavenly Descents and Ascents
July 4, 1985
- St. Joseph's Church, Woods Hole, Garden of Our Lady update.
July 14, 1985
- Spiritual Fire of the Pentecostally Descending Holy Spirit
July 22, 1985
- Flower Pneums - Mystical Flower Symbolism
August 11, 1985
- Spiritual Illumination of the Night - Transfiguration
August 15, 1985
- Mystical Anchoring of our faith in the Spiritual Rocks of Heaven
September 8, 1985
- Upwards Opening Flowers as Symbols of Spiritual Yearning
September 29, 1985
- Angelic assistance in our spiritual intuitions and elections
October 2, 1985
- Angelic Descents, Ascents through Mary and Jesus - Woods Hole
October 22, 1985
- Nature's Glories from Michaelmas to Christ the King.
November 1, 1985
- Halloween Reminders - All Saints - Their Heavenly Intercession
November 21, 1985
- The Tree of Love - Mary's Presentation - Heavenly Blossoming
November 24, 1985
- Interior Kingdom of God - End of Liturgical Year
December 8, 1985
- Winter Beginnings of New Liturgical Year - Rose Beneath the Snow
December 12, 1985
- Our Lady of Guadalupe - Symbolism of Stars and Flowers
January 5, 1986
- The Sun, Moon, Planets and Stars in Christianity
January 12, 1986
- Baptisal Descent of The Holy Spirit on Christ - Flower Symbols
January 25, 1986
- The Heavenly Rose and the Movement of the Nations Towards Kingdom
February 14, 1986
- The Animus Mundi as Kingdom-matrixing World Soul
March 9, 1986
- The Pope's Rose - Corporate and Political Action for Kingdom
March 25, 1986
- Spring Mary Garden Reflections - School Support of Mary's Gardens
May 18, 1986
- Mary's Months of May and October - Re-creation in the Book of Life
June 7, 1986
- Circulation of Spirit in the Secular Personal and Business Worlds
June 29, 1986
- Further on Secular Channels of Spirit Circulation
July 3, 1986
- Visit to Woods Hole Garden of Our Lady - New Planted Area
July 16, 1986
- Secular Periodicities Mirror the Holy Spirit's Earthly Spirations
August 5, 1986
- Parable of the Talents in Today's World - World Transfiguration
August 22, 1986
- Rose Petal Spiritual Upliftings - Computer Graphical User Interface
August 28, 1986
- The Heavenly Uplifting of the World at the End of Time.
September 8, 1986
- How to Open up Discovery of the Mystical life of the Spirit?
October 27, 1986
- Nature as God's Face, and thus Interface, with us
December 12, 1986
- From Flower Symbolism to City Symbolism
December 27, 1986
- Move to Rome - Mediterranean Climate - Italian Reearch
(further Postings in Process)
THE LETTERS
1980 to June, 1983 lettera still to be copied from photo-
copies of longhand originals
+
Woods Hole, MA
July 31, 1983
Ignatius of Loyola
Dear Brother Seàn,
Today is the 53rd anniversary of the blessing ceremony for the
Angelus Tower of St. Joseph¹s Church in Woods Hole.
This year the Bells have been silent again, due to mechanical
difficulties, but shortly after our arrival here on the afternoon of
July 28th, we were overjoyed to hear the ringing of the evening
Angelus.
Later that evening, I telephone Hagerman to tell Bonnie the
good news about the bells, but Ernie answered the phone and gave me
the news that Bonnie had died at 2:00 a.m., that morning.
She had contracted an intestinal flu infection about a week
before, which she was too weak to fight off. Through swelling of
her body, her vital functions were impaired and she was in a coma
for about three days before she died. This mercifully saved her
from the protracted diminishment and pain she would have experienced
from her cancer.
I learned later on that the Angelus Bells had rung again the
first time at 7:00 a.m., that morning just three hours (Eastern US
time) after Bonnie died.
I last spoke with Bonnie, by phone on July 13th to tell her of
the parish praying of the Rosary in the Garden of Our Lady, led by
Father Dalzell, Pastor, at 7:00 p.m., that evening. After the
prayers, in which Jane McLaughlin also participated, I lingered in
the Garden, and as I walked over to where the most magnificent stand
of foxglove had bloomed in June, in the right border; and had then
gone to seed, I suddenly noticed a single Madonna Lily blooming
behind the stalks.
In a flash, I realized this had bloomed from one of the bulbs
from Bonnie Jane had planted in the Fall of 1981 - planted in a
special place, so it would be recognizable separately from the
commercially processed bulbs to be planted later, or which may have
already been planted, in the central bed in the location called for
in the planting plan.
Due to the late planting, with no opportunity for the
characteristic September growth of foliage, none of the Madonna
Lilies bloomed in 1982, and there was little show of foliage at
Bonnie¹s planting, although the central bed planting had two most
vigorous plants and also several others showing.
The week of the July Parish Rosary, the Madonna Lillies in the
central bed were magnificent fifteen lillies blooming
simultaneously on each of two plants at either side of the sculpture
of Our Lady. But with our focus on these plants, I completely
forgot about Bonnie¹s Lily - until I saw it humbly blooming there,
with its trumpet facing the figure of Our Lady (One of the¹miracles¹
of Bonnie Hagerman Mary Garden was that all the lillies, in whatever
part of the Garden they were, faced toward the statue of Our Lady
which visitors noted time and time again, with astonishment).
As I said, I phoned her to tell her about her lily, and how
through it, she was there praying the Rosary with us. She was
extremely weak, but as we talked she strengthened, and we ended up
talking for half an hour, as we reminisced on many things, and she
spoke of her triple joy this year of the Herbarist article; the
starting of the Mary Garden of Knock; and the magnificence of the
restored Woods Hole Garden of Our Lady, in which her Lily so
touchingly participated.
I have much more to write, Brother, but will get this in the mail
without further delay.
Sincerely, Your friend, in Our Lady,
+
Woods Hole, MA
August 16, 1983
Dear Brother Seán,
Today I received your letter of August 9th just as, after some
delay, I was mailing you my letter written August 11th - which I an
thus able to send today to your new address in Galway.
I have already conveyed your sympathy to Ernie and your
assurances of prayerful remembrance, including your arrangement for
the offering of a Mass for Bonnie at Knock. I was able to have a
Mass said for her yesterday, the Feast of the Assumption, at the
St. Francis Chapel I attend in Boston.
Your mention that you felt you knew Bonnie well from the
moment you received your first letter from her is evidently
representative of a wide-spread phenonemon. Just the other evening
when I was talking with Ernie by telephone, he mentioned, 'Bonnie
had a way of reaching people through her letters - even a simple
answer to an inquiry.' She had a combination of love, joy,
fidelity and forthrightness that was immediately apparent in her
letters, as well as her conversations. People sensed that she
loved and cared and wanted to deal with them with total directness,
honesty and self-giving.
Back in the 1960's she introduced me to the audio-taping of
our communications, which we intermingled with our letters
thereafter. Knowing of her loving, accepting, non-judgemental
quality gave me the sense of total freedom and spontaneity and not
holding back anything when I taped or wrote her, so that we would
freely share everything from the most trivial to the most profound.
Over the twenty-five years of our friendship and work together we
exchanged some 200 tapes, and perhaps twice that many letters.
One of the special beauties of taping was that we could tape
each other, using portable battery-operated tape recorders, while
walking in the garden, or driving along in a car. One of my sons
transcribed on typewriter over 80 pages from some tapes I made or
Bonnie from my Mary Garden in Philadelphia in 1965, 1966 -
meditating on the different plant symbolisms, and discussing
manifold aspects of Marian devotion. It was her loving interest
and acceptance which made this possible - and by 'this', I mean a
spiritual communion. I felt that by entering into such communion,
we opened ourselves to the Holy Spirit, so that He could flow
through us - imperfect as our instrumentatality was - in extension
of his procession and spiration on earth.
Another development was that of tapes in which Ed McTague, for
example, or others, and I would tape a conversation 'for Bonnie',
in which, together, we would, for example, review the history and
idea of Mary's Gardens at length. Within the past year, for
example, I taped the 'plant labeling party' at the Garden of Out
Lady in Woods Hole in June of 1982, including messages from Jane
McLaughlin; and also some other messages from Jane in the Garden.
My last tape to her was from the Garden of Our Lady on July 17th,
telling her of the discovery of her Madonna Lily in bloom there -
after which I telephoned her to tell her about it immediately. I
don't know whether the tape reached her in time for her to listen
to it. We always kept copies of our tapes, so they could be
replaced if lost in the mail, or accidently erased. When I visited
her in Hagerman in 1968 we taped 4 hours of conversations about the
research, in her library - and when my copies were subsequently
stolen (for re-use), she was able to replace them for me. If I
recall correctly, she told me she taped a letter to you on one
occasion.
Whether these tapes are capable of 'communicating' to others,
I don't know, but, with our letters, they played a most important
part in our carrying forward of the work of Mary's Gardens. As I
wrote you, they will be filed in the archives of the Marian Library
in Dayton, Ohio.
After Bonnie passed on, I had the most unexpected experience,
Brother. I can envisage that what I experienced and am
experiencing may be a familiar part of living in a religious
community, as you do, but in my life this is the first time that
anyone has died with whom I was in the fullest spiritual communion
when we were both on earth.
What happned is that as soon as I learned Bonnie had passes
on, I reached out to her spiritually. I had an immediate sense
that she was now in heaven; and then a sense that when I reached
out to her, she was spiritually present with me, sharing in
spiritual modality what I was experiencing in my senses ad
thoughts, and also that to some extent I was spiritually sensing
some of what she was and is experiencing in heaven.
We had spent so much time discussing heaven, and our mystical
rising to heaven while in earth, that we in effect set up the
context and channels for communion between earth and heaven
following the passing of one of us from earth to heaven.
Others to whom I have been most close, have also passed on,
and I also have a sense of their heavenly existence, but since I
had not shared so full a mystical spiritual communion with them, we
did not share the context and channels for continuing a fuller
spiritual communion between earth and heaven.
This experience gives me a much fuller experience and
understanding of the Communion of Saints, and in particular an
appreciation of the relationship between the founders of religious
communities and orders, who have passed on, and the members of
these communities in earth. I can see how such members would have
a very concrete sense of the intercession and mediation of their
founders in heaven. Similarly, I can see the integral place that
miracles have in the process of canonization - in effect witnessing
the communion between heaven and earth.
In any case, I have a sense that as St. Theresa of Lisieux
said she would spend her heaven showering roses onto earth, so will
Bonnie spend her heaven rooting Mary Gardens on earth until they
cover the face of the earth.
Also, I now have a much fuller sense of the place the saints
in heaven have, together with the angels, in Mary's spiritual
intercession, mediation and distribution, in terms of communion
with those to whom they were close, or who became close to them, on
earth.
Thus, I feel that Bonnie's intercession, mediation and
distribution will have a great immediacy for those with whom she
had direct Mary's Gardens communication on earth, and for those
Mary Gardens with which she was so immediately involved - so many
in Idaho, for instance, and in particular for Woods Hole and Knock,
as holy places from which grace, light, word and power will flow
forth for the starting of other Mary Gardens. And this will be
especially true for you, Jane and myself. Everything I now
experience and do in connection with Mary's Gardens is with a sense
of Bonnie's presence, communion and participation.
This has been especially vivid for me, Brother, as I visit and
work in the Garden of of Our Lady here in Woods Hole; as I hear the
ringing of the Angelus Bells and pray the Angelus; as I pray the
Rosary; and as I carry forward our work. Thus, the other day as I
visited for the first time the New Alchemy Institute here near
Woods Hole - with its several solar greenhouses, experimental
vegetable gardens and fruit orchards, and herb gardens - I sensed
Bonnie with me experiencing it through my senses, intellect and
heart - that is, all the things I would have taped, phoned and
written her about, if she were still on earth.
For example, I saw a large patch of Galium verum that had
spread out perhaps 4 ft. in each direction from the roots of the
initial planting and had become somewhat woody, so that it was very
straw-like in appearance, and resembled a bed or manger of straw
surrounded by the green foliage and yellow flowers (somewhat past
their prime bloom) - giving a whole new dimension, for me, of the
Our Lady's Bedstraw symbolism.
I know that through our eyes, smell and touch, and the
movememt of our walking, Bonnie will visit Woods Hole and Knock
with us, Brother, in rejoicing, thanksgiving and praise -
especially as we raise ourselves spiritually into mystical
communion with her, as she rests at the feet of Mary and the Christ
Child in the heavenly Paradise, Rose Garden and Bower.
So, let us carry on, Brother, with our heavenly associate.
Sincerely, your friend in Our Lady,
+
Philadelphia, PA
September 30, 1984
Dear Brother Seán,
Many thanks for your letter of August 9th telling of your
marvellous opportunity to spend an entire week at Knock - July 8th
through 14th - and to participate fully in the spiritual program
there as well as to consult daily with Msgr. Horan regarding the
new planting scheme for the Mary Garden, of which you enclosed a
copy.
Thanks also for the article from the Galway Advertiser of June
21st regarding the indoor rock Mary Garden you deigned and
assembled at Ernie's Fruit and Vegetable Shop beside the Jesuit
Church. This sounds like a marvellous opportunity, which must have
brought the Mary Garden idea and devotion to the attention of
thousands for six weeks or so.
Two beautiful projects - at Shrine and Market Place!
Can you give me some idea of what kind of sense and
appreciation for the Mary Garden you are encountering? Are you a
'voice crying in the wilderness', or is there a broad visible
appreciation?
Through the years Ed, Bonnie and I had the characteristic
experience of small handfuls of persons who had a special 'sense
for these things', as Ed put it; and a broad-based, yet largely
verbally inarticulate, popular embrace, within a general context of
almost seeming alone in this work as far as our everyday life and
encounters went. A mystery and an act of faith all the way.
Then there are frequent periods - such as this past summer -
where we, I, have been drawn away from the work of Mary's Gardens,
practically and psychologically, although the spiritual continuity
and growth are always there.
Happily the second half of the British, AVE, article was
published in full - including the long quote and poem - so this is,
to me, a major event. I enclose a photo copy of the entire
article, with the two parts together. I believe I mentioned this
article was developed from the notes I prepared for a slide lecture
I gave at a Catholic church in Osterville on Cape Cod - one of two
lectures - together with the one at St. Joseph's Church in Woods
Hole - which I have given in the last 15 years.
I still have two unpublished articles at hand - of which I
believe I sent you copies last winter - Paradise of Our Lady and
Medieval Countryside in a Garden. Father Stanley, of Our Lady's
Digest, has suggested a magazine which might be interested in the
first. I don't think there is a 'writer's market' for the second
in the U.S., but I've been attempting to locate a British
gardening magazine, which features color photos, which might be
interested in the second.
...
One meditative insight I'e had which has been especially
helpful to me - in attempting to remain spiritually quickened midst
relentless mundane pressures - has to to with the symbolism of Our
Lady's Veil (headdress or hood), Smock (robe or dress) and Mantle.
Mary's Veil has come to signify for me in a special way her
overshadowing by the Holy Spirit, and our overshadowing by the Holy
Spirit, through her intercession.
Her Smock - particularly in reference to the representations
of her with her feet on the globe of the earth and her head
surrounded by stars in heaven - represents her protecting angelic
vessel, tower, column, cone or vortex which conducts our mystically
rising spiritual soul, heart, mind and body to heaven, as well as
our physical bodies at the Resurrection. This envisaging helps us,
too, to sense how our soul rises in union with hers, our hear with
her heart, our mind with her mind, etc..
Her Mantle has generally, in art and imagery, had the
connotation of her individual and social protection; but to me it
has more recently come to have a matrixing connotation as well - as
a sort of 'overlay' of our 'territory' and movements. In this
respect, its ornamentation with flowers, laves and vines (as in
the miraculous painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe) takes on a
special matrixing connotation - for our rose-petal spiritual
circulation of communications, exchange and errands of mercy, and
other movements, 'in the world, but not of it'.
Thus, when I behold or consider Our Lady of Grace - with her
Veil, Smock and Mantle - I see the entire mystical progression of
the Mass, Hours, Liturgical Year and Rosary, in a unified way that
I have not achieved with any other one symbol or figure.
This in turn has heightened my appreciation of the flower
symbols of Our Lady's Veil, Smock and Mantle - as augmented by
those of her Tresses, Eyes, Earrings, Fingers and Shoes.
This is important because - for the first time - when I have
left the 'Ivory Tower' or 'Enclosed Garden' of extended
contemplative writing - this summer - I have been able to remain
spiritually quickened even though immersed and submerged in
circumstantial pressures and demands on my attention - largely
through the unified, composite, symbolism of Our Lady's Veil,
Smock, Mantle, Tresses, Hands, Shoes, etc..
The Mary Garden Prayer has also been especially helpful in
this respect - being longer than a spiritual aspiration, but much
shorter than the Rosary, or the Hours. Also, longer than the
Angelus.
Another thing I have been able to do to maintain my spiritual
quickening - while doing computer work - is to work out religious
flower and symbol icons while working with fonts and bit-map
graphics. This has an interesting parallel and corollary to
traditional needle-point designs, many of which were flower designs
(of which Bonnie sent me a wonderful book several years ago). I
can see how important needlework religious symbols, drawn from
nature, were for the harsh life of the medieval rural countryside.
This, of course, culminated in tapestries, such as the famous 15th
century Unicorn Tapestries whose flower representations were vastly
superior - more accurate and more artistic - and more extensive
than the illustrations in botanical books of the same period.
(Later)
I lost the next continuity of thought here, Brother, through
interruptions, so will close.
Sincerely, your friend, ever, in Our Lady,
(Start of letters written digitally on computer)
+
Boston, MA
March 25, 1985
Annunciation
Dear Brother Seán,
Thank you for your St Patrick's Feast Day card, which arrived
just before the feast - and for your inquiry as to my well being,
communicated to me by Jane McLaughlin, by telephone.
I enclose a copy of an unfinished letter to you of last
September 30th, which I set aside to make a copy of my full English
AVE article as enclosure, and somehow six months went by - for
which I apologize. In any case, I now have the article copy, which
I enclose.
Mrs. Coyne's July 2nd shipment of 1984 Knock Shrine Annuals
reached here on February 26th - so let's just say this has been a
very slow period. I hope now to re-accelerate things at this end.
I also enclose a copy of the short article, "The 'Mary Garden'
of Old", by Joyce Rushen, from the Winter, 1984, issue of The
Flower Arranger - sent to me by by Mrs. Joan Lancaster, Book
Service Secretary of TFE. You will recall that I have been in
correspondence with Mrs. Lancaster since you sent me copies of TFE
pamphlet, "Plants of the Virgin Mary", based on the collection of
plants at the cloister garden of Lincoln Cathedral.
Have you ever heard further about the Lincoln Cathedral
garden? I have written them on several occasions, and also asked
Mrs. Lancaster about it, but have never learned when the Mary
Flowers were planted, who was responsible for them, whether the
plants are still maintained, etc.. Also, you will note that I made
mention of Lincoln in my "Flowers of the Virgin Mary" article -
hoping that this might stimulate some return information.
I do hope you have been well, Brother. You have been
constantly in my affections, thoughts and prayers.
Last November I received a most welcome letter from Anne
Hopkins, which I have finally just replied to.
It means so much to be in direct contact with her, as well as
you, after all you and she have done in founding the Knock Shrine
Mary Garden. I do hope she will want to correspond regularly.
Woods Hole and Knock are where the Mary's Gardens action now
is - although I remain hopeful that some underground germination -
if not above ground growth - is taking place in England with the
stimulus of my AVE article, and of the editorial interest which
accepted it for publication.
Every year it seems some little gardening gem comes my way.
One came in February this year, as I was looking at the first
snowdrop blooms in our neighborhood. (This year, although we had a
most mild winter the February chill delayed the snowdrop blooms
about two weeks past the Candlemas date for which they have bloomed
twice in recent years.) As I was standing there, somewhat rapt, a
woman came up to see what I was looking at, and said, "Ah yes, the
'hopefuls'"!
In Woods Hole a beautiful little Wayside Shrine type wooden
shelter was completed and put in place around the garden figure of
St. Joseph, Garden Workman. Jane and I are watching to see how the
hedge - which was cut back so severely last summer - will green up
this spring.
Spiritually, I find myself in a somewhat sanguine, or even
phlegmatic, mode. After following the mystical path for four
decades, I have come to the point where all the ways have been
opened up, and there is no longer the sense of search in that area.
All is in a sort of simultaneity of the eternal present - the Day
of God - so that my spiritual focus is no longer on some sort of
quest, but simply on seeking what is God's will at each moment, and
in endeavoring to remain open, attuned and responsive to it -
through mortification - and less prone to spiritual "ambushes".
Of course there are a number of projects awaiting my
attention, but I seem only to have a sense of urgency about what I
discern is brought to me by providence, grace and spiritual
prompting each day and each moment - rather than discursive
priorities.
What seems urgent now is to change the mode of my intellectual
work so that everything I originate can have maximum and quickest
availability to others, generally - rather than just as notes for
my own reference, or as individual communications. It's not that I
consider my ideas and insights to be any more important than anyone
else's, but that I consider we all need one another's thoughts, and
have an obligation to share our own. Privacy and confidentiality
are to be preserved, as always, but there is much that emerges in
particular communications of a non-private and non-confidential
nature which may warrant wider communication.
Previously, I thought in terms of writing notes and letters,
and then, later, drawing on them to write articles etc.. Now, with
the availability of portable personal computers, smaller than a
typewriter, anything we write as notes or correspondence can be
"cut and pasted" to any other "document" so that original,
spontaneous, text can - with or without editing - become part of
articles, or of other organizations of notes, or of other
communications, with great facility.
Before, my notes were intended for my own assistance, in my
own subjective working out of ideas and the paths of interior
spiritual growth. Now, I feel I should turn outwards to others in a
much more direct, immediate and ongoing basis - so that my written
notes and expression can be more immediately and more fully usable
by them - rather than going from "private" notes to public
translation.
What is involved here, in general terms, is a step towards
heightening our instrumentality of the earthly renewing circulation
of the processing, spirating Holy Spirit - which I perceive to move
in "rose-petal" loops, as the world is transfigured and
transformed.
In this connection, Brother, I have found the "Mary Garden
Prayer" I worked out over the past three or four years to be most
useful in re-quickening myself to a spiritual perspective midst
even the most intense mundane pressures
In respect to Mary's Gardens, I am retracing my steps, so to
speak, by transcribing my (largely unreadable and unintelligible for
others) chronological random notes, for electronic copying and
"pasting" into topical organization. This will of course
facilitate, and be a step towards, writing of further articles, and
some books, God willing.
Anyway, Brother, this is my present focus, and I hope it will
bear much fruit for Mary's Gardens.
I feel from Anne's letter that she is highly committed to
following your bed planting plans in the Knock Mary Garden; and she
speaks very modestly of the Small (!) beginnings.
Hoping that you have had a spiritually fruitful Lent, and will
have a Joyful Easter season, I remain,
Sincerely, your friend, in, Our Lady,
+
Boston, MA
June 11, 1985
Dear Brother Seán,
I enclose two earlier letters which never were mailed, for
which circumstance I apologize.
The trouble is that I mention I am going to enclose some
article copies, and then can't find the articles . . . and then 6
months go by.
At present the basic Mary's Gardens files are in New Hope; and
in January I moved just about everything else from Boston to Woods
Hole, thinking I was going to be spending a lot of time there - and
I haven't been there since.
However, I do have in front of me the articles I want to copy
for you, and will make a major effort to get all this in the mail
this time.
Yesterday I had the interesting experience of flying over both
the Woods Hole Garden of Our Lady and the sites of my three major
Philadelphia Mary Gardens - Meadowbrook Lane (my original Mary
Garden (1951-1955), Chestnut Hill Ave. (my more developed one
(1955-1972), and the OMC Parish Mary Garden (1965-1972) - all
within an hour, as I was flying from Boston for a business meeting
in Suburban Philadelphia (Blue Bell, Pennsylvania).
Also, I flew over St. Joseph's Meadow and the Morris Arboretum
- the site of the Galega officinalis naturalization, about which I
wrote in the Morris Arboretum Bulletin in 1965. (The areas of
densest establishment - the rivulet section and W. ditch of
Stenton Ave in the location marked [4], have all been bulldozed
over and filled, so there are no longer any water or plants there,
but I'm sure there are still many along the major portion of the
stream [5] which now connects with the creek [1] in a new channel
about 50 ft. East of Stenton Ave. I observed these changes - made
when a new Stenton Ave. bridge was built over the creek - when
driving past about 2 years ago, but they had just been made then
and I didn't have an opportunity to make an inspection on foot.)
Seeing all these places dear to my heart in one close
continuity gave me - in addition to joy - a sense of what the
simultaneity of heaven must be as we see in the Book of Life, and
move instantly to, places of love of our earthly lives, and of
world and earth history generally.
I continue to have a very real sense of communion with Ed and
Bonnie. In the last several days, for example, I raised a question
of earthly priorities to them, and the words came to me:
"Open up, in love, the earthly Rose-Petal circulations
of grace - filled through Mary's open arms, and channeled
by her footsteps - from which ascend the rising spirations
of the Holy Spirit through which all things are lifted up."
Also, I had a question about the liturgical seasons in nature.
As I wrote in my Knock Shrine Annual article, and have mentioned in
my letters, I endeavor to remain attuned to the mystical
progression of descents and ascents of spiritual grace, light,
wisdom and power, culminating in the reign descents and ascents, as
quickened by the seasons - as well as by the Mass, the Hours, and the
Mysteries of the Rosary.
I was having a little difficulty seeing the seasonal
correspondence for the Power Descent (the Power Ascent having for
its correspondence the growing of grains, vegetables and healing
herbs, and their offering at the Feast of the Assumption).
As I communed with Ed and Bonnie about this, the insight came
to me that the correspondence was that of the hot, solstitial,
summer sun, associated with the Feast of St. John (and all the St.
Johnsworts).
This brings to mind the poem quoted by Marzell in connection
with Mullein, Verbascum, "Heavenly Fire", "Mary's Candle":
"The Virgin Mary moves over the Land
With Heaven's Fire in her hands."
(I wonder, also, how the Mullein will make out this year in
the Garden of Our Lady in Woods Hole. Last year Jane and Fred
planted two - for the first time in some 40 years, - but they
were knocked over or something, and didn't quite make it to bloom.)
I also saw that the Reign Ascent was symbolized by the
Fall-blooming flowers (Michaelmas Daisies), midst the glorious
symbols of the Reign Descent (goldenrod, yellow leaves, etc.).
For completeness, a review of the other correspondences, about
which I believe I have written before:
Grace Descent - First, low, Spring flowers: Snowdrops (for
purification); Crocus, "Penitent's Rose",
for mortification)
Grace Ascent - Taller Spring flowers: Daffodils, Tulips,
etc.
Light Descent - Illuminative greening of the Earth: Grass
and Trees
Light Ascent - Flowering of Shrubs and Trees: Forcythia,
Crab Apples; Dogwood
Wisdom Descent - Sowing of annuals seeds (Wisdom of the
Cross: "Unless the seed falls to the ground
and dies . ."
Wisdom Ascent - "Resurrectional" growth from sown seeds
o O o
As always, I have the hope of resuming my Mary's Gardens
writing - now, this Summer. The present disarray of my life
(according to conventional, rational norms), never stops me from
living by hope. In God we trust. I marvel at how my life seems to
move back and forth between the extremes of quiet meditation and
contemplation, on the one hand, and total, electional, involvement
with mundane pressures and secular trends, on the other.
I hope this finds you well, Brother, and that you will
continue to write despite my erratic responses.
As always, I remain sincerely, your friend, in Our Lady,
+
Boston, MA
July 4, 1985
Dear Brother Seán,
Thanks very much for your postcard from Fatima. Wonderful that
you could make the pilgrimage. Many thanks for your prayers, which
are always much needed.
One of the things about Mary's Gardens, in the order of
Providence, which I have always wondered at, is that whenever I
take any smallest initiative, there is always an escalated
providential return, or summons.
Thus, last Sunday, June 30th, I made my first trip to Woods
Hole since January, and of course visited St. Joseph's Church and
the Garden of Our Lady - signing the guest register and making a
small replenishment of the supply of reprints in the Angelus Tower
room. This followed on finally, after about six months, getting
letters off to you, Jane and Anne - my first direct work for Mary's
Gardens during this period.
The first thing was joy at discovering a marvellous six foot
high Mullein - Our Lady's Candle - in the West, St. Joseph's
Garden, as well as a replenishment of the Mullein in Our Lady's
Garden, one or two of which look as though they will bloom.
Actually, I should say that the first thing was joy at finding
how well the severely pruned Garden hedge, about which I wrote you,
had started to grow back. Even though the pruned branches are all
about one inch in diameter, all sorts of little six to twelve inch
shoots have sprouted out at various places, including below the
points of pruning. There is definitely an impression of soft green
now, instead of a field of sticks, and I would say that by
mid-summer, or next spring at the latest, a rounded shaping can be
made.
Very striking, in the Garden of Our Lady, were Bonnie's two
Madonna Lilies - both five feet or more in height, and about to
bloom. (I should mention that a few months before she died, Bonnie
sent me a "Holy Spirit" philodendron, which she very much wanted me
to have. It has grown well in a vase of water in our living room,
and I have started a second from a piece of root that broke off.)
This living plant link - of the lilies and philodendron - with
Bonnie means a great deal to me, and I'm sure she had this in mind
when she gave them to the Garden and to me. I pray to her very
specially whenever I behold these plants. I enclose a little
snapshot I took of Bonnie's lilies.
Then, the next day, Monday, there was your postcard from
Fatima, and that evening we received a phone call in Boston from
Jane in Woods Hole, with all sorts of good news. (I did not have an
opportunity to see or contact her when I was in Woods Hole.)
First, there has been a heightening of interest in the Garden
within the parish, in that several younger couples have volunteered
to participate in caring for the Garden (which I see as a
providential answer to some remarks I had made my letter to Anne
about my hope for a new, younger generation of committed Mary
Gardeners). Jane perceived the wisdom of reorganizing the work of
the parish Garden society so that instead of having one person
caring for the Garden each week, she now calls for volunteers to
assume responsibility for different parts or aspects of the Garden
for the entire season - which provides a much better continuity. It
was in response to her call for such commitments that these younger
people came forth.
Also, the Society members had some additional reprints made of
the HERBARIST article, the supply of which had been depleted.
Jane told me that several inquiries have come in from very
distant places -one last year from Australia, and several this year
from other countries.
The, there has been a contact from an author, recently
returned to Woods Hole, who is writing a book on plants with
religious names, which she plans to illustrate with color
photographs. The immediate purpose of Jane's call was to tell me to
expect a letter from this author, whom she had given copies of
Mariana I and a number of my articles (and also to ask for advice
on operating the automatic slide projector, with sound, which had
been used for the Garden of Our Lady Centennial/Jubilee exhibit at
the Woods Hole Historical Society exhibit three years ago).
The lesson I draw from all this, Brother, is that I should do
more for Mary's Gardens.
I should mention, also, that, after writing you about the
liturgical season and plant symbols of the spiritual Power Descent
- the hot, solstitial sun, the St. Johnswort plants and "Heavenly
Fire (mullein) - I was especially aware of the beginning bloom of
the roadside St. Johnsworts on the drive to Cape Cod; and then, of
course, of the magnificent mullein in St. Joseph's Garden.
Also, of course, the Fatima "Miracle of the Sun" is the
ultimate testimony to the sun as symbol of spiritual power - so
your pilgrimage and postcard are the culmination of this
providential mystical episode.
I trust, Brother, that by this time you have received my
3-in-1 letter with reprint enclosures - and I continue in my
resolve to be a better correspondent.
I am especially interested in hearing how things have gone
with the Knock Mary Garden this season - both the installation of
your planting plan, and general matters of responses and attitudes
relative to the Garden. For example, is there an interest in the
Mary Flower and Garden symbolism, or is it considered "pretty
landscaping", and "interesting information" etc.?
Hoping this finds you well, Brother, and that you have a good
summer, I remain your friend in Our Lady,
+
Boston, MA
July 14, 1985
Dear Bother Seán,
Thank you for your letter of June 26th, which arrived just
after I wrote to you on July 4th.
Your opportunity to spend a good stretch of time at Knock this
month sounds marvellous.
I well know how much is involved in locating and procuring
many of the plants, and also in getting the beds in just the right
proportion; so with both you and Anne working, your extensive
planting plan has an excellent prospect for fulfillment.
I do hope someone can send me some color slide photos of the
Garden, as these give so much more of a sense of being there than
photo prints. (I can make color slide copies of photos, but they
never have the depth and subtlety of color of an original
transparency.).
As we proceed in this liturgical season of the Pentecostal
Descent of spiritual power - (how much more appropriate it was when
we entered on the weeks "After Pentecost", rather than returning to
those "In Ordinary Time") - some terrifying symbols of the descent
of spiritual fire on earth have appeared. Hundreds, or even
thousands, of brush and forest fires, in the Western United States
and Canada, causing massive damage. Many of these are believed to
have been started by lightning (in further Pentecostal symbolic
correspondence).
I recall a few years back, while being entertained by our host
on a quick business trip to Toronto, that we saw a promotional
movie on Canada - on one of those giant screens with full audio
accompaniment - which included close-up views of a forest fire,
with all its tremendous, awesome, almost supernatural power.
These consuming fires serve to quicken us to the even greater
power of the Fire of the Holy Spirit, which we are called upon to
distribute instrumentally - through our purification and spiritual
attunement - on earth.
It is through our pneumatic matrix, conduit, column or tower
of wisdom - by which our spiritual soul, heart and mind rise to
heaven - that also the Pentecostal spiritual power descends on us,
focally, with the Gifts of apostolate, prophecy, teaching,
service, healing, miracles and governance - culminating in the
uplift of our spiritual bodies, also, in our mystical assumption,
that we may be even more perfectly empowered for the forwarding of
God's Plan on earth.
To this end, after our mystical assumption, the matrixing
pneumatic column of our spiritual tower of wisdom, which conduits
us from earth to heaven, opens up from the ascensional matrixing of
Mary's robe or smock - as she stands with her feet on earth and her
star-crowned head in heaven - to the distributive matrixing of her
mantle, for our instrumental mediation of heavenly grace, light,
pneuma and power throughout the world, for the kingdomal reign
descent and ascent. And now, the light which drew our souls to
heaven in the luminous ascent of Candlemas goes before us on earth
as a pillar of fire to "guide our feet on the way of peace"
With all prayerful best wishes to you, Brother, and to Anne,
for fruition of the spiritual blessings and outpouring of this
liturgical season, I remain, as ever, sincerely, your friend in Our
Lady and the Communion of Saints,
+
Boston, MA 02199
July 22, 1985
Dear Brother Seán,
In writing you in my last letters about the spiritual nature
symbolism for these days after Pentecost, - the strong growth of
crops drawn by the hot summer sun, as symbol of the updrawing of
our spiritual bodies by the power of the heavenwards returning Holy
Spirit, after His Pentecostal descent - I should have mentioned one
of my favorite poems by Thomas Merton, 'Landscape: Wheatfields':
' . . . You fierce and bearded shocks and sheaves
. . . shake your grain spears,
And know no tremor in your vigilant
Your stern array, my summer chevaliers!
* * *
'Rise up, like kings out of the pages of a chronicle
And cry your courage in your golden beards;
For now the summer-time is half-way done,
Gliding to a dramatic crisis
Sure as the deep waters in the sedentary mill.
'Arise like kings and prophets from the pages of an
ancient Bible,
And blind us with the burnish of your message in our June:
Then raise your hands and bless us
And depart, like old Melchisedech, and find your proper
Salem.
'The slow hours crowd upon us.
Our days slide evenly towards the term of all our liturgy,
And all our weeks are after Pentecost.
'Summer divides his garrisons,
Surrenders all his strongest forts,
Strikes all his russet banners one by one.
And while these ancient men of war
Casting us in the teeth with the reproof of their surrender
(By which their fruitfulness is all fulfilled,)
Throw down their arms,
'Face we the day when we go up to stake our graces
Against unconquerable God:
Try, with our trivial increase, in that time of harvest
To stem the army of his attributes!
'Oh pray us full of marrow, Queen of Heaven,
For those mills, His truth, our Glory!
Crown us with alleluias on that day of fight!
* * * *
'Oh pray us, Lady, full of faith and graces,
Arm us with fruits against that contest and comparison,
Arm us with ripeness for the wagons of our Christ!'
As always, I seek ever greater spiritual meaning and relevance
of flowers for our times.
What needs to be more fully realized, I believe, is how our
prayer and worship generate sheets of spiritual pneuma for the
building of our House of Wisdom - in preparation for the reception
and seating of our angelically lowered Tower of Wisdom.
But, more pertinent to our Mary's Gardens work are the
flower-pneums generated by our prayers and aspirations - from the
very first stirrings of grace. Conduited heavenwards by angels at
first, they are subsequently conduited by our angelically installed
tower of wisdom.
(I have always been struck by the symbolism of Christian
church architecture: the main body of the church building
symbolizing our house of wisdom, and the spire or steeple our
tower, piller or column of wisdom.)
It is from nature and artifacts that we learn, through our
senses, to discern the spiritual nature and architecture though
which we rise to and return from heaven. And this very discernment
helps us envisage and generate, instrumentally, the pneumatic
spiritual flowers and architecture through which we rise and
descend.
The praying of the Rosary is not just spiritual sentiment and
words, but the generation of flower pneums which rise to heaven,
for augmentation, embellishment, filling and return, with heavenly
light, grace and power - opening up and preparing the way for the
eventual rising and return of our spiritual soul, heart, mind and
body, as we work instrumentally for the culmination of God's
Kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven.
How different this is from the secular view of worship as some
sort of abject obsequiousness!
After it 'comes to rest' on and seats in the interior, Tree of
Jesse, inflorescence of our luminous ascent, the pneuma of the
descending Holy Spirit of Wisdom, our spiritual seal, fortifies,
purifies, articulates, generates and severs earthly strands, and
uplifts.
The Wisdom Descent of the Holy Spirit is a spiritual seal in
that it makes an impress on our spiritual hearts - an articulation
augmenting our interior inflorescences, so as to matrix them for
the building of our House of Wisdom in our spiritual mind, for the
seating of the descending Tower of Wisdom.
Interesting that the (Angelus) Tower of Wisdom of St. Joseph's
Church, in Woods Hole (which otherwise has no spire or steeple)
'descended' in the Garden.
While ruminating on these things, I noted the Second Reading
day before yesterday, Saturday, from 2 Kings 2, in which Elijah's
Chariot is so clearly a type of Assumptional, power ascent.:
'A flaming chariot and flaming horses came . . . and Elijah
went up to heaven in a whirlwind.'
Striking, also, is the spiritual power given to Elisha through
Elijah's mantle, which he left behind - prefiguring Mary's mantle,
which becomes the matrix for our instrumental distribution of
spiritual power, after our Assumptional, power ascent within the
matrixing of the pillar, column or vortex of assumed Mary's robe,
or smock.
We are quickened to all of this as we behold Our Lady's Smock
and Our Lady's Mantel, in countryside and Mary Garden - both
blooming, fittingly, in this spiritual season of the year.
It is so clear that the pressing problems of our time -
breakdown of family relations, drug addiction, crime, exploitation,
hunger, civil strife, the arms race, etc. - cannot be solved
through political, economic or psychological actions, which are
necessarily only discursive and dialectical. This is because they
all derive from the social and psychological reductionism into
materiality and discursiveness which come from greater and greater
loss of faith.
What is needed is a restoration of faith, through Pentecostal
infusion of the power of spiritual grace and light - water and fire
- faith through which all may be lifted up in the communion of
acceptance, forgiveness and cooperation, in the Holy Spirit. And
this in turn requires our spiritual purification and attunement.
Spiritual purification, through self-examination and
confession, is well understood, but spiritual attunement less so.
Flowers are of utter and unique importance to this attunement
because of the correspondence of their forms to the unfolding and
inflorescence of our interior spiritual vine or tree of life, so
that we may bear a flower on which the descending Spirit of God can
come to rest and seat itself, impressing on us the seal upon which
our tower of wisdom can be seated, for fuller flow of the power
needed to bring about the massive conversion required to meet the
secular and material reductionism of our times.
I am always effusively over-verbose about this - in which I
ask you to bear with me, Brother - but I am convinced that simple
clarity can be attained about this, so that Gardens and Flowers
will become important means to our preparation for the
instrumentation of this power.
Hoping this finds you well, Brother, and that your and Anne's
work on the Knock Shrine Mary Garden was a joy,
I remain, your friend in Our Lady,
+
Boston, MA
August 11, 1985
Dear Brother Seán,
I hope you received my letters of July 14 and 22 which I
mailed to you in care of Anne at the Knock Shrine.
I am sending this to your Dublin address, assuming that you
have returned there or will return shortly.
Yesterday, the Feast of St. Lawrence, I received one of those
special little providential joys which come so unexpectedly. I
was making a computer download of some telecommunications messages,
when suddenly the following message - completely off the subject -
was interjected:
"On August 12 there will be a meteor shower over this
hemisphere . . . called St. Lawrence's Tears (which)
appears every August sometime. The first time it appeared
was 535 AD after the death of...St. Lawrence. The people
thought it was his tears coming down from heaven. . . .
The best time to see it will be just before sunrise on
the (U.S.) east coast."
(Actually, St. Lawrence was martyred in 258, so perhaps the
writer got the date wrong; or maybe the meteor shower was named
because it was first observed on St. Lawrence's feast day in 535.)
Then I was delighted to note the antiphon for the Evening
Prayer of the feast:
"Blessed Lawrence said: the night is not dark for me, all
things shine as in the noonday light."
This illumination of the night is fitting in this liturgical
season of pre-assumptional transfiguration, in which the we are
reminded of Christ's revelation of his Transfigured spiritual body
- as an inducement to our disposition for the earthly liberation of
our spiritual bodies, in preparation for our mystical assumption.
I am always deeply moved by the first blooming of goldenrod,
here, at the time of the Feast of the Transfiguration on August 6th
- as a first sign of the approaching Fall, and the mystical season
of the Reign Descent, which will follow our Spiritual Assumption.
Each day I read the Hours in awe:
Assumptional, Power, Ascent:
Ps 24:
"O gates, lift high your heads;
grow higher ancient doors.
Let him enter, the king of glory . . .
The Lord, the mighty"
Reign Descent:
Hymn, Evening Prayer, Thursday, 18th Week:
". . . His light goes before us,
A pillar of fire shining forth in the night:
Till shadows have vanished and darkness is banished,
As forward we travel from light into Light."
Hosea 6:
"The Lord's judgement shines forth like the light of day."
Ps 67:
"O God . . . let your face shed its light upon us.
So will your ways be known upon earth
and all nations learn your saving help."
Per the Morning Prayer Intercessions today, our prayer for others:
"Light of nations, remember those who remain in darkness,
Open their eyes and let them recognize you, the only true
God."
Truly, there is no remedy for all our problems but total
conversion.
In continuation of the Wisdom thread of my last letter: the
Tower Library/Oratory at Woods Hole is a fitting symbol of our
House of Wisdom - generating from the Garden, as it were, and
forming the Seat or foundation into which the descending Tower of
Wisdom comes to rest.
In a way, the proportions of the small House and large Tower
are more reflective of the actual proportions of our spiritual
architecture than Church and Steeple.
At Knock, the Mary Garden symbolizes the garden of our
spiritual heart, and the Blessed Sacrament Chapel resting in it the
House of Wisdom of our spiritual mind built from and upon it -
while the main Apparition church represents Mary's Reign Descent.
I just haven't been able to get down to Woods Hole for any
period of time this summer. "So near, and yet so far". But I do
have all the wonderful little front yard gardens here in the city -
which prompt me to the Mary Garden Prayer as I walk past them.
Also, the St. Francis Garden at Trinity Episcopal Church in the next
block.
Last night, in a phone call, our son, John, told us of the
wonderful stand, or almost "forest", of Our Lady's Candles in his
yard, in Pennsylvania. Also, his large colony of Assumption Lilies
- from divisions made from plants in my former Chestnut Hill Mary
Garden many years ago - has begun to bloom. His Our Lady's Thistles
(Silybum) were spindly this year, perhaps due to the excessive
dryness in June and July. But he was able to obtain several large
seed heads for use next year.
So, Brother, as we move ahead in this - for me - most
spiritually poignant period of the natural/liturgical year, I send
all prayerful best wishes for the fruitfulness of your spiritual
harvest this Fall.
It is said that we are especially moved and quickened by the
season of the year in which we were born, so I expect it is the
same with you each Fall.
As ever, I remain sincerely yours, in the spiritual communion
of our friendship in Jesus and Mary,
+
Boston, MA 02199
August 15, 1985
Dear Brother Seán,
Here we are again, thank's be to God, at the Wonderful Feast
of Our Lady's Assumption.
I don't recall whether I highlighted for you the providential
circumstance that it was almost to the day of Pope Pius XII's
proclamation of the dogma of the Assumption in the Fall of 1950
that Ed and I undertook our commitment to the work of Mary's
Gardens, as an act of faith.
We were not fully conscious of this "timing" just then, but
later on we came to see how the world had entered on the Age of the
Assumption, and that Mary's Gardens was in a very special way a
work of this Age.
Did Bonnie ever mentioned to you (I alluded to this in "Our
Lady's Solar Greenhouse") that she, and Ernie, had a life-time
interest in rock collecting, and spent many days camping out in the
wilderness on rock hunting expeditions? One of my treasures, which
I have in my box of correspondence from Bonnie, is an agate rock
(which has a special name) which when split open and polished
reveals an image of the standing Virgin.
One of the books which I found in the folklore stacks of the
Widener Library at Harvard, during my research there a few years
back, spoke of "Rocks and Flowers", or perhaps "Stones and Plants"
(the research files are in Woods Hole, and I can't check it right
now) as the preeminent nature symbols of the medieval period.
I didn't pay too much attention to the "stones" then, but as
time has gone on I have come to have a deepening appreciation of
the importance of their symbolism. (An interesting confluence of
the two areas of symbolism is one of the South African
Mesembreanthemums , which are known in places by the name
"living stones", after the reference from Peter, because of the
resemblance of their color and variegation to the rocks among which
they grow (I have a color photo somewhere which demonstrates this).
Of course the Rock has always been a symbol of the Church
("Thou art Peter . . ."), but it is in terms of the mystical
assumption of our spiritual bodies that I have come to appreciate
the symbolism of the rock or stone more fully - spiritually and
psychologically.
It is when, while still on earth, we become truly rooted or
anchored in heaven - through this mystical assumption - that
heaven becomes the rock in which we are grounded. And it is this
which gives the key to the passage from the Psalm, referred to
Christ, that "The stone which has been rejected has become the
cornerstone".
One consequence of this is that our feelings and emotions
become more fully united with those of Christ, so that in earthly
terms we become spiritually phlegmatic. One of the Rahners, in a
biography of St. Ignatius of Loyola, mentions how spiritually
phlegmatic the Saint became in his later years - citing his
statement to the effect that even if the entire Jesuit order were
destroyed or disbanded he would regain his spiritual composure
within fifteen minutes.
It's not that we are to have "less" feelings than others - we
all are endowed with feelings - but that we are to have feelings
conformed to Christ, rather than to the world. In the Station of
the Cross where Jesus meets the Women of Jerusalem he tells them
not to weep for him and his suffering, but for the unconverted (as
he himself had wept earlier over Jerusalem).
"Jesus...wept over Jerusalem because by her unwillingness
to believe she was bent on her own ruin" - Office of the
Readings, Mon, 19th week in Ordinary Time (Aug 12th)
We are to weep over the lack of conversion which leads to so
much suffering, while being no less, and even more, compassionate
over all immediate suffering. "Jesus wept" for Lazarus.
Interesting that Peter, the "Rock" on whom the Church was to
be built, is the one who calls us all to be "living stones".
But it is primarily the new spiritual strength we receive from
this mystical grounding in heaven that the Rock signifies for me.
" . . . a faith firm and immovable as a rock, through
which we are to remain tranquil and steadfast midst the
crosses, toils and disappointments of life . . . "
- as we pray in the Legion of Mary Prayer.
Related to this is the symbolism of the Heavenly City, built
of Jewels - which, largely, are translucent rock crystals. Thus
the Heavenly Jerusalem has the spiritual solidity of rock - as does
the interior mountain of ascetical/mystical growth we must climb to
reach it. Mountains are essentially mountains of rock. The Ascent
of Mt. Carmel.
Our earthly cities, built of rock (iron and glass, as well as
bricks and concrete, come from rocks), are such striking symbols of
the Heavenly City.
And all of this is culminated in our mystical assumption,
because it is through this that our very spiritual bodies become
grounded in the spiritual rock of heaven, that we may proceed more
effectively with our work, instrumentally, of transfiguring,
transforming and lifting up the world to meet the Heavenly Jerusalem
in its culminating, pleuromic, parousaic descent.
So, Brother, these are some thoughts I wish to share with you,
in communion, on this feast day commemorating Mary's bodily rising
from the Terrestrial Paradise to the Heavenly City.
Sincerely, your friend, in Our Lady,
+
Boston, MA
September 8, 1985
Birth of Mary
Dear Brother Seán,
Thank you for your card of August 22 from Knock, with good
wishes from Anne and your beautiful blessing, "May you shelter
under Mary's Mantle".
I will look forward to hearing from you in due time about
your and Anne's work at the Knock Mary Garden. I'm sure that
despite the daily rain and the cold you were able to carry the
planting forward significantly. Good weather for establishing
transplanted plants, in any case.
Today is the culmination of the wonderful period of Lady
Days which started with the Assumption. During this time I have
been especially quickened to the way in which all flowers open,
and reach, up to heaven, yearning, as it were, to be filled ever
more fully with the Spirit. Each time I have walked past a bed
of flowers I have sensed this opening, yearning and filling
within me.
In Germany, Impatiens is known in some places as "Mother
Love" - which I have seen as a basis for associating it with
Mary. Marzell suggests that this naming comes from the constancy
of its bloom. It occurred to me that a more spiritual way of
putting it would be that - in terms of spiritual motherhood - the
constancy of its bloom represents the constancy of opening to
heaven for filling with ever more grace, light, pneuma and power
to be distributed in the love of spiritual motherhood.
This in turn gave me new insight into the fuller
significance of Mary's title as Mystical Rose - with application
to Knock. All the flowers in the Knock Mary Garden in their
upwards opening and reaching, mirror the upwards opening and
reaching of Mary as Mystical Rose - signified by the rose at her
forehead - as she is filled with and distributes ever more grace
to us, her spiritual children.
This morning I awoke with the realization that the yearning
induced in me these past weeks by upwards reaching flowers is the
yearning of the liturgical season - following on the Assumption -
for the Reign Descent, which, in our interior spiritual
liturgical cycle is inaugurated at today's Feast of the Nativity
of Mary.
Mystically, this is the liturgical time of the earthly
return of our spiritual bodies - after their Assumptional
heavenly purification and filling - for the final work, in this
liturgical cycle, of building Christ's Kingdom on earth.
This work is culminated in the Reign Ascent, of Michaelamas
tide, and with the pleuroma and parousaic of the Feast of Christ
the King - extending into the anticipation and celebration of
Christ's comings - first and second - in Advent/Christmas.
I am ever mindful of the reading from St. Bernard in the
Hours some time early in Advent which speaks of Christmas as
signifying not only the first and second comings of Christ - in
world history - but also his third coming, in our hearts.
In a parallel sense, the Nativity of Mary can be seen as
signifying not only Mary's earthly birth, but also her comings to
earth - at Guadalupe, Lourdes, Knock, Fatima etc. - as the Dawn
which precedes the Day of Christ's Second Coming; and also her
coming to our hearts to prepare them for Christ's coming there.
Today's Midday Hour:
"Mary shines forth like the noonday sun"
I am reminded that it was during the Lady Days period of
1946 that I received the grace of conversion to the Church on
September 1-2-3, over our Labor Day weekend. I had pressed my
intellectual quest for truth to the utter natural limits -
dissolving the spiritually protective "great wall" of
psychological and social norms, and was prepared to make a leap
of faith to embrace the universe pantheistically, projecting my
soul into the spiritual abyss, to embrace its totality of good
and evil - when gratuitously my soul was filled, instead, with
spiritual grace.
I had no Catholic friends or acquaintances at hand, and
didn't even know where the nearest parish church was. However, I
had read St. Augustine's Confessions several months previously,
and knew that I should turn to the Church. Accordingly, I looked
up the address of the nearest Catholic church in the phone book,
went over, and rang the rectory doorbell, requesting instruction
and baptism.
From this personal conversion route (I remember that Father
Michael Peoples, R.I.P., who received me, after hearing my story,
said, humorously, "You'll probably write a book about it. Most
converts do, but born Catholics never read them"), I have always
had great attraction to persons of total secular intensity -
feeling that they, too, will receive the gift of conversion -
"Seek and you shall find". In this connection I am ever mindful
of the Gospel teachings of the Good Samaritan, the Woman at the
well, and the Roman Official - "I have not found such faith in
all Israel".
I have always yearned for the emergence of numbers of
individuals who will seek to act on spiritual elections, in the
world, with the same intensity that is manifested by those of
total secular commitment.
One of Ed McTague's lifetime yearnings was for the extension
of Catholic religious intensity - of the Religious life - into
secular areas. He was much criticized by his family and
neighbors for attending the Wharton School of Business at the
University of Pennsylvania, instead of attending one of the local
Catholic colleges. His vision was that secular intensity could
be transformed, through infusion, into Catholic intensity. When
he found that this didn't seem to happen in his milieu, he tried
to discern what the barriers were, and came up with his
(Catholic) Postulates of Economics course - to which I was
attracted by its title, and then by his intense analytical
commitment to it, which quickly led to our friendship, in the
Communion of Saints. For his part, I expect he saw me as one who
had moved from secular intensity to Catholic intensity.
Come to think of it, this casts some light on why we were
both attracted by the Catholic intensity of Frances Crane
Lillie's establishment of the St. Joseph's Angelus Tower and
Garden of Our Lady in Woods Hole. Ed applied to Mrs. Lillie the
biblical designation of "valiant woman"
This summer I saw a television 10-part dramatization of the
life of "Sydney Reilly, Ace of Spies" - one of the most intensely
committed persons, secularly, who has ever come to my attention.
I was interested to see that Caroll Houselander - the
English Catholic mystic, psychic, artist and poet - was deeply
attracted to and loved Sydney Reilly because of his Christ-like
(though secular) utter intensity of commitment. Her communion
with his spirit was so intense that she foretold his death (at
the hands of Stalin) in a painting, and later experienced in her
person - for which she had to be hospitalized - his actual
beating, torture and death; and the ultimate release of his soul.
One of the problems for Catholics is that intense
involvement - of Kingdom Building efficacy - in matters of
social justice frequently leads to the abandonment of Providence,
Grace and Teaching for non-electional immersion in instrumenting
the determinism of secular dialectics - as, for example the
Catholic Worker Priests whose activities had to be curtailed by
Pope Pius XII in the 1940's; and excessive priestly involvement
in various revolutionary activities and "liberation theology".
Pope John Paul II has addressed himself, with great anguish, to
the quest for wisdom and counsel in this area, with much
illumination for all of us.
In any case I continue to seek and pray for the wedding of
intense life of Faith with the intensity of utter secular
involvement - especially in this season of the Reign Descent, and
coming Reign Ascent.
Despite a number of attempts - (including backslides into
exaggerated secular humanism) - I have never been able to bring
the intensity of Mary's Gardens to equivalent fruition in my
social, political and economic involvements. I know that Ed and
Bonnie felt the same way about their lives - although they were
not blessed with being able to work their way through to the
peace I have found. In his later years Ed used to say, "Well, I
guess our task is to remain a pure source for Marys Gardens."
I have come to appreciate more profoundly the reply that St.
Francis is said to have given to someone who asked him, while he
was gardening, what he would do if he learned the world was about
to come to an end: "I would keep on hoeing my garden".
Your utter commitment and fidelity to the Flowers of Our
Lady and Mary Gardens mean so much to me, Brother.
Sincerely, your friend, in Our Lady,
+
Boston, MA
September 29, 1985
Michaelmas
Dear Brother Seán,
Thank you for your letter of September 1st and its
enclosures, and especially for the blest rose petals from Fatima,
with accompanying prayer and leaflet.
As I have written previously, rose petals have become for me
the preeminent symbols of the spirations of earthly procession
and circulation, and heavenly return, of the purifying,
inspiring, transfiguring and transforming Holy Spirit - as, with
our instrumentality, he recreates us and renews the face of the
earth, that we and it may be lifted up to meet the descending
Heavenly Jerusalem, in the parousaic new heaven and new earth,
that Christ, in the fullness of his reign, may present them to
the Father, for all eternity.
Thus, your gift of the blest rose petals of the Rosary from
Fatima is especially thoughtful and inspiring. I shall treasure
them with the blest miniature white and red roses Bonnie sent me
from those which first bloomed in Our Lady's Solar Greenhouse, in
time for its dedicatory blessing on the Feast of the
Annunciation.
This liturgical period from the Birth of Mary to Michaelmas
is a time for me for focusing - in our interior, mystical,
liturgical cycle - on the heightening of our call to instrument
this transformation of the earth, in the Holy Spirit, according
to the vision of it transfigured, that it may be prepared for its
ultimate lifting up.
This year I have had a special appreciation of our need for,
and God's gift of, angelic assistance in the quickening of our
spiritual intuitions and elections for this work of earthly
transformation.
I have spent so many years yearning for mystical ascent that
until recently I shortsightedly limited my perception of angelic
ministry to the microcosmic phase of mystical life.
Now, as I seek tangible instrumentation of the transforming
macrocosmic earthly spiration of the Holy Spirit, I see, and
urgently feel, the need for angelic guidance, under God's
governance and providence, in the elections of daily activity.
As I communed with Ed and Bonnie about how, in more
practical, concrete, terms, we are to instrument the rose petal
spirations of the transforming Holy Spirit, the words came to me:
"The rose petal spirations of the renewing Holy Spirit
are transformed for us into tangible, pneumatic,
channelings by angels."
We know from scripture that God established the original
boundaries of the nations through angels, and that angels
instrument his mercy by restraining the natural course of
earthquakes, plagues and floods, etc.. But more than this, they
open up and adjust the ever-moving grids and networks of the
channels and conduits of the mundane pneumatic matrix - of the
world soul - through which, when properly attuned, we are
coordinated in instrumenting God's ever adapting plan of renewal.
Our task, especially in this age, is, assisting one another
in prayer, to develop a heightened spiritual sensitivity and
attunement to these angelic pneumatic channelings, under the
mantle of Mary, Queen of Angels.
I am reminded of the words which came to St. Teresa of
Avila:
'Henceforth your conversation is to be with angels.'
Fortunately, in this, for my own part, I have the precedent
of previous angelic assistance in mystical ascension, which
hopefully I can now extend to this new dimension.
Six years ago, just around this time of year, I received
some very helpful insights while driving - one beautiful, golden,
September day - from New Hope to Boston.
Having prevuously become aware of the mystical building of
our interior House of Wisdom, and installation and opening of our
ladder, corridor, vortex or Tower of Wisdom rising to heaven (to
which I alluded in a previous letter) I was then experiencing an
initial lifting of my soul upwards by the waters of grace welling
up from my heart - with an accompanying deep yearning for its
mystical rising to heaven itself.
During the trip, this affective yearning of grace was
augmented by a soul-drawing attraction of spiritual light. As I
beheld the beauties of the goldenrod, yellow bur marigolds and
wild sunflowers, and beginning yellowing of the trees (there was
an early frost that year), I experienced awe, and was raised in
contemplation to the beauty of God. This in turn seemed to
impart an added aura to the flowers and leaves, serving to raise
my soul still further, before the shining of God's countenance.
This, then, brought a new outburst of radiance to nature, now
seen as a reflection, mirroring or imaging of God's face, in
utter resplendence.
At the end of the journey, as I drove onto the elevated
section of the east-west turnpike into Boston, I was dazzled by
a tall building (the Prudential Tower, containing the Franciscan
Chapel I attend) sparkling with the reflection of the late
afternoon sun behind me. Then, just as the buildings of downtown
Boston came into view, like a heavenly city, bathed in sunlight,
the sun burst through the rear window of my car, reflecting in
the rear-view mirrors and the glass of the dashboard in an
explosion of glory. I knew inwardly that the apex of my soul had
risen mystically to the lower, empyrean heaven.
It was somewhat later - and this is why I have mentioned the
foregoing experience as a sort of background - that I came to
appreciate the place of the angelic hierarchies in mystical life
and growth.
And the discernment of this angelic ministry bestowed on us
by God, in his loving providence, enabled me better to seek it
and to become consciously attuned and responsive to it.
I came to see that each of the seven angelic hierarchies, as
perceived by St. Thomas (actually 21, with 3 sub-hierarchies in
each hierarchy - sometimes considered as 9, with the seraphim,
cherubim and thrones sub-hierarchies (only) listed, instead of
just the 7th hierarchy of thrones) performed a distinct ministry
for our mystical ascent:
- Angels - protecting, guiding, cultivating,
infusing
- Archangels - summoning, calling, instructing,
illuminating
- Principalities - ordering, governing, channeling, building
- Powers - welling, vortexial uplifting
- Virtues - spiritual strengthening for ascent
- Dominations - heavenwards drawing
- Thrones - heavenly service and glorification of the
Trinity
For most of our lives our ministry is from (our guardian)
angels, and the archangels. Thus, we all have experienced an
angelic nudge in a certain direction that prevented us from being
run over by an automobile, etc.; and gratuitous spiritual
callings or vocations at certain junctures of our lives.
The archangels, whom we celebrate today, are unique among the
angels in that - as we are reminded by the reading of today's
daytime prayer - they both minister unto us on earth and serve
before God in heaven, and as such, have a special ministry or our
ascents and descents.
It wasn't until I experienced, and then reflected on, my
conversion, and, over thirty years later, on the mystical upwards
welling of grace, that I appreciated the ministry of the angels
in this - and specifically the ministry of my own guardian angel,
whom I sensed was named, and whom I invoke as, St. Malachy.
This angelic ministry - in addition to protecting and
guiding - is one of plowing, furrowing and cultivating the
worldly encrustation of our souls that they may become more
pliant and mellowed and, thus, receptive of grace; and then, at
the proper moment of conversion, of opening the 'angel gates' of
our souls for the massive infusion of grace - that we may be both
converted, and made affectively responsive to the subsequent
summoning of the archangels.
In summoning Mary to the Divine Motherhood, the Archangel
Gabriel hailed her as 'Full of Grace', and then called her to the
luminous 'hill country' of the Magnificat.
I won't belabor your reading of this letter by ramifying
upon my experience of the other ministries of the angelic
hierarchies to mystical ascent - with which you are surely more
familiar than I - but I will return to proclaiming again the joy
of my discovery, at this Michaelmastide, of their equally
indispensable ministry to us as we respond to our call to the
task of the macrocosmic transformation and lifting up of the
entire world.
I should mention, however, that my initial 'discovery' of
the angelic ministries to mystical ascent led me to appreciate
and benefit from praying the seven-decanate rosaries - such as
the Franciscan Rosary of the Seven Joys of Our Lady and the
Servite Rosary of the Seven Sorrows of Mary. And I found it most
helpful to envisage each immediate ascetical task or mystical
step illuminatively in correspondence to the ministeries of the
seven hierarchies, so that I could pray my seven decanate Rosary
beads in invoking angelic assistance. I have noted down several
hundred of these.
Later, while reading a book by a Boston College professor
spiritually assessing the life of the poet, John Donne, I noted a
reference to an entire book on the seven decanate Rosaries, by a
Jesuit author, so (while I haven't looked it up) I felt I was in
good company in this practice.
And, all of this gives still greater meaning to the Angelus
Tower at the Garden of Our Lady in Woods Hole.
I pray for special divine blessings of your teaching work
with souls this year.
Paraphrasing this morning's hymn for Michaelmas: May you
have the zeal of angels.
In thanks for your friendship which affords me the
opportunity to share the joy of these matters, I remain,
Sincerely yours in Our Lady and the Communion of Saints,
+
Boston, MA
October 2, 1985
Guardian Angels
Dear Brother Seán,
It so frequently happens that when I undertake some special
spiritual initiative or focus in the thought or work of Mary's
Gardens, something related to it is mirrored or opened up
providentially.
Thus, after writing you three days ago on Michaelmas about
my striving for heightened attunement to angelic ministry and
providence, a need and opportunity to visit Woods Hole opened up
today, the Feast of the Guardian Angels - for the first time
since early July.
I had been ruminating on the scriptural passages, from the
Hours of Michaelmas, relative to Jacob's Ladder:
"A stairway rested on the ground, with its top reaching
to the heavens; and God's messengers were going up and
down on it"
(Genesis)
and, to Christ's Second Coming:
"You will see the heavens open up, and the angels of
God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man."
(John)
This morning I awoke with some further insights into these
passages - which became the focus of my thoughts in the
opportunity for meditation provided by the hour and a half drive
from Boston to Woods Hole.
With the help of the familiar representation of Mary in
religious sculpture and art, I have long been able to visualize
her standing with her feet on earth and her head in the starry
heavens - mediating grace, light and power to us through her
outstretched arms, and through her veil, robe and mantle. And in
particular, I have perceived how her mantle is both an
overshadowing protection, and also a matrix - a Ladder to Heaven
- for the ascent and descent of the angels (a perception enhanced
by the huge Christmas Tree at the Prudential Center here each
year, as its hundreds of lights undulate up and down in the
wind).
But I had never quite seen how to move from this spiritual
tableau to that of the angels ascending and descending on the Son
of Man. It was insufficient for me to envisage Christ standing -
with his feet on earth and head in heaven, beside or in front
of Mary in some way.
What emerged this morning was the perception (which I
suppose should have been obvious all along) that in his Second
Coming Christ will come to us through his Mother, as he did in
his First Coming. This time he will come to us enthroned in
glory in Mary's lap, as prefigured, in art, by the Madonnas in
Majesty of the tympana of the Gothic cathedrals, and by the
medieval reliquary Madonnas of the Auvergne tradition, with their
austere frontality.
Adé Bethune's Seat of Wisdom, which Bonnie and I had in our
own Mary Gardens for so many years, is a contemporary figure of
that tradition. Commentators have pointed out that in these
figures Christ is presented in scale as a child or boy, but his
face or visage is more that of an adult - as distinguished from
representations of the Nativity or of the Epiphany.
In other words, the image which took form for me was that of
the Son of Man (his sonship testified to by his enthronement in
his mother's lap) - with the angels ascending and descending, as
before, on Mary's mantle, which now encompasses both mother and
child.
In terms of flower symbolism, this enhanced for me the
richness of the imagery of Arum maculatum, and of the visually
equivalent Jack-in-the Pulpit here in the U.S., as 'Lady-Lords' -
with the sheath symbolizing Mary and her mantle, and the pistel
the enthroned Christ.
The abstractness of this plant representation of the
Madonna and Child enthroned in Majesty is helpful for envisaging
the Second Coming because the almond shape of the sheath
resembles the aura or mandorle surrounding the images of Our Lady
of Guadalupe, and Christ in Judgement, etc.. (While Christ comes
to us the second time in judgement, he initially appears
enthroned in his mother's lap, blessing the world).
As I started on my trip (the first cross country trip in my
car since my early July trip to Woods Hole), I was soon reminded
that this was the wonderful first week in October of the blooming
of roadside asters - Michaelmas Daisies - in several species,
with small white and lavender-white blooms of heath aster, and
the larger lavender and purple blooms of New England aster. Also,
it is the time of bloom of the second wave of goldenrod - the
shorter, late-blooming species. (I have written before how the
appearance of these asters midst the glory of the goldenrod at
Michaelmas introduces a symbolic distinction of color signifying
for me the movement in liturgical season from the Reign Descent,
initiated at the Nativity of Mary, to that of the Reign Ascent,
initiated at Michaelmas)
How appropriate, too, are the occurrences of the seasonally
culminating Feasts of St. Theresa and the Rosary. "There are
seasons of nature, and seasons of grace", and how wonderful when
they are concurrent!
I was quickened also to the phrase from the Mary Garden
Prayer, which came to me while communing with St. John of the
Cross:
"The spiritual countryside of the soul's mystical
journey of love",
as in concrete terms I experienced how the religious symbolism of
the roadside flowers helped in transfiguring and transforming a
practical trip into a mystical trip, as well - in the
interpenentration of heaven and earth.
Then, while in Woods Hole, I of course visited the Garden of
Our Lady. Happily, there didn't appear to be any garden damage
from hurricane 'Gloria' of September 27th - the center of which
hit the coast of Connecticut about 100 miles to the West -
although there were many trees and large branches down in both
the Boston area and Cape Cod generally, and several hundred
thousand homes were without electricity for a day or more, due to
the damage to wires from the falling trees. We lost two trees in
front of our building here in Boston, and it seemed almost a
miracle that the large glass windows in our unit were not broken
as the hurricane gusts buffeted them - the same gusts snapping
off a tree 20 feet away 12 feet above the ground. We lost one
large pine tree in Woods Hole - again, snapped off 16 feet or so
above the ground.
The most prominent blooms in the Garden of Our Lady were the
Michaelmas Daisies next to the small figure of St. Dorothy,
'bestower on earth of heavenly flowers and fruits', although the
annual marigolds and petunias were still in good bloom in the bed
next to the sea wall. Also there was a single Fall-blooming
Vinca, Virgin's Flower, and just a few Fall-blooming roses in the
sea wall hedge. Bonnie's Madonna Lilies showed excellent
September foliage growth, and seemed to be multiplying. Also, the
Angelus Tower room has been painted as nice fresh cream white,
and seemed much brighter and fresher. The Bells did not ring the
Angelus - I was there at noon - because the electrical ringing
device had been turned off, until it could be re-timed after the
power outage. (In driving back to our house from the Garden I
had this confirmed by Steve McGinnes, Keeper of the Bells, whom I
encountered at the roadside).
After a visit to St. Joseph's and with Father Dalzell - who
blessed the enclosed rose petal and Bible Leaf (Chrysanthemum
balsamita) from the Garden for you - I returned to the house and
took a little walk around the yard. We had not planted any
flowers this year (due to not being able to be there), so I was
startled when I saw several striking red blooms in the bed by the
south wall. On examination, I found that some of the
Impatience, Mother Love, had either survived the winter or (more
probably) seeded itself - the first time I have ever experienced
this. There always seem to be these joyous little flower
surprises.
I recall a book, "The Garden of a Commuter's Wife" (written
many years ago when daily commuting to work by rail was a new
thing), in which the wife and husband used to make little secret
plantings of bulbs in the Fall with which to surprise each other
when they emerged in the Spring. This sort of thing keeps
happening to me providentially.
I looked through the masses of materials stored in Woods
Hole, but was not able in the time available to find the rock
Bonnie gave me, about which you inquired, or some color slides I
had taken of it, but will keep this in mind for a future trip.
Hoping this finds you well, Brother, I remain,
Sincerely, your friend, in the rose-petal circulations of
spiritual love,
+
Boston, MA
October 22, 1985
Dear Brother Seán,
In writing you earlier of the "Reign Descent" period of the
Liturgical Year - from the Birth of Mary to Michaelmas - I
neglected to share with you an insight I recently had about
single and double flowers.
I mentioned to you that this year I had understood more
clearly how - during the period from the Assumption to the Birth
of Mary - the upwards opening-reaching of flowers heightened my
sense of seasonal yearning for the transfiguring Reign Descent.
But I neglected to say that this was especially so for single
flowers, which are those most characteristically facing upwards.
Then, during the actual period of the mystical Reign
Descent, I perceived how the petals of double flowers - which
reach downwards and outwards, as well as upwards - convey a sense
of the diffraction, dispersion and distribution of the now
descending empowered, earth-transfiguring heavenly light.
This is much as we perceive the distinction between the
upwards outstretched arms of Mary 'orante' and the downwards
distributing arms of Our Lady of Grace - or between the priest's
receiving and distributing arm and hand movements in the 'drama'
of the Mass.
The striking thing about the reports and representations of
Our Lady at Knock during her Reign Descent appearance there is
that the unique position of her hands - together with her upwards
facing visage and the rose at her brow - convey a sense of her
mediation of both the Descent and Ascent of spiritual grace,
light, pneuma and power. And the rose is represented as a double
rose.
In gardening practice here, hybridized Tagetes marigolds are
perhaps the most striking bearers of this Fall double-flowered
symbolism, because, as annual flowers, they reach their full
growth at this time, and seem to "take over" from the dominant
upreaching, single-flowered, Mother-Love, Impatiens of the late
Summer.
I remember how fondly Ed used say, after a summer of good
moisture: This year we'll have a 'Marigold Fall'.
Then, as we move into mid-October, the leaves of the trees,
generally, in the countryside, pick up the Reign Descent and
initial Reign Ascent gold of the wild sunflowers and bur
marigolds and cultivated Tagetes marigolds - so that a point of
symbolical "critical mass" is reached wherein the whole world is
bathed in golden light, symbolizing the final, movement of the
Reign Ascent, in which Heaven on Earth becomes Earth in Heaven,
and the two become one in the New Heaven and New Earth:
culminating in the Feast of All Saints.
In the "old", pre-Vatican II liturgy, the Feast of Christ
the King used to come at this time also - if I recall correctly,
on the last Sunday in October - and I think something was lost in
transferring this feast to the last Sunday of the liturgical
year. On the other hand, something was gained also, in
'stretching out' the glory of the liturgical period of Heavenly
Reign from All Saints to the Last Sunday of the liturgical year.
A week ago I had an opportunity to travel through the
Pennsylvania countryside, on a hundred mile business trip from
the Philadelphia area to the small city of York, and return, at
the height of the Fall color, which gave me a special sense of
the fullness of the heavenly transformation of earth.
This sense of transformation was heightened, after the
initial air leg of the trip from Boston - over an early morning
East Coast fog which obscured the ground and its colors - in that
when the sun burned off the fog near the beginning of the land
trip, the colors were suddenly revealed.
From my recent ground traveling in eastern Massachusetts
where, for example, I can see only one farm - with barns, silos
and cows - on the entire trip from Boston to Woods Hole, I had
temporarily forgotten about the richness of Pennsylvania
Lancaster County farmland.
As my father use to say, 'The trees grow twenty feet taller
in Pennsylvania'.
Also, as a result of all the farmland, there was a much
broader profusion of field, as well as roadside, fall-blooming
white asters - bringing to mind my favorite lines from Helen Hunt
Jackson's 'October's Bright Blue Weather':
'When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields, still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;
* * *
'When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers, hour by hour,
October's bright blue weather.'
Also, Thomas Merton's 'Two States of Prayer':
'Our prayer is like the thousands in the far,
forgotten stadiums,
Building its exultation like a tower of fire,
Until the marvellous woods spring to their feet
And raid the skies with their red-headed shout.'
In the course of the business part of the trip, I was
reminded in a very immediate sense of our constant, urgent need
for angelic ministry.
This particular business, which some associates and I
started some ten years ago within an engineering and
manufacturing company, and which is now a separate company,
offers the commercial service of neutralizing toxic wastes from
other companies. I, for one, wouldn't have risked undertaking
this business if I didn't have faith that the face of the earth
WILL be renewed; combined with a sense that this renewal won't
just happen all by itself, but has to be undertaken through human
instrumentality and initiative, with confidence in providential,
angelic ministry to this end, in the Divine Plan.
The need for purification is both material and spiritual in
our fallen, yet redeemed, world.
I recall the lines in Gerald Manley Hopkins' 'God's
Grandeur':
"Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
"And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."
October 23
After I wrote the above (in early morning) yesterday, we
took a midday round trip to Woods Hole on another day of
"October's bright blue weather".
Now there have been some colder nights here, and the leaves
are at their height of Fall color here in eastern Massachusetts.
I didn't mean to detract from the Massachusetts countryside
in my foregoing remarks. Massachusetts may not have the farms and
taller trees of Pennsylvania, but it has its own incomparable
beauty. The richness, or, as one writer put it, the "divinity"
of diversity.
We recently saw some people on a TV talk show who belonged
to a group called "Ethical Environmentalists", or something like
that. The idea was that by learning to love the goodness and
rich diversity of nature, as it is, instead of attempting to
impose on it egocentric, judgemental perceptions, one can come to
love the rich diversity of people, likewise.
Do to a breakdown of our car (water pump bearing), we were
delayed an hour, and I was unable to visit the Garden of Our
Lady.
The 21st was my birthday - my 65th - another bright blue
day. We had lunch at the restaurant on top of the Prudential
Center Tower, which has a wonderful view of Boston and Cambridge
- an excellent perspective for discussing past and future, as one
is wont do do on birthdays. I am so thankful for my 65 years of
blessings, and hope I will be enabled to bring things to full
fruition in the years to come.
I know your birthday was a few weeks earlier, Brother, and
hope it was a joyous one, and that you are well.
Sincerely, your friend, in Our Lady,
+
Boston, MA
November 1, 1985
All Saints
Dear Brother Seá,
Greetings on this marvellous Feast of All Saints!
In earlier times All Saints, All Hallows, was evidently
considered of much greater importance than it is today. Now, the
emphasis all seems to be on Halloween.
For me, chrysanthemums are the flower symbols of All Saints,
first because - unless there has been a mild Fall here (as this
year) - they are frequently the only flower in bloom for the
feast. However, in a fuller sense, coming at the end of the
natural and liturgical years, when the other flowers have past
their bloom or been killed by the frost, their bloom symbolizes
the immortality of the soul after the body, with all its
flowerings, dies. In a way chrysanthemums have become a sort of
everlasting flower in our culture in that they are perhaps the
flower most widely forced into bloom all year round for florists
by greenhouses.
I'm sure Bonnie wrote you of the profusion of chrysanthemum
varieties she grew in her 'Garden of Memories'. Her Mary Garden
was so glorious with the Fall bloom of Marigolds and
Chrysanthemums and Roses.
Halloween, of course, has its own special plant symbol, the
pumpkin jack'o'lantern, which, with all the costumes and pictures
of ghosts, goblins and witches, quicken us to re-awareness of the
precariousness of our spiritual souls, hearts, minds and bodies
once they have emerged and risen mystically from the confining,
yet protecting, encompassing, bonds of our physical bodies.
Clearly we would never 'make it' to heaven, 'now and at the hour
of our death', if there were not the protection of the heavenly
reign of Christ, with Mary, the angels and the saints; and in
particular the ministry of the angels accompanying us back and
forth between heaven and earth.
Traditionally, Halloween is perceived as the liturgical
season in which the heavenly reign over the evil and errant
spirits is slackened just a moment - in a sort of Mardigras of
the spirits - that we may better appreciate their restraint the
rest of the year - through the reign of Christ, Mary, the Angels
and the Saints; and have fullest recourse to the sacraments,
sacramentals and prayer in constant petitioning of and
thanksgiving for this protection.
As distinct, however, from the heavenly and earthly ministry
of the angels which we celebrate on the feasts of the Guardian
Angels and Michaelmas - on All Saints we give special honor to
the intercession of the saints. In the divine economy the angels
minister, and the saints intercede. The angels are the ministers
of God's plan and initiatives. The saints, through their prayers
for God's mercy to earth, open up and mediate the earthly
distribution of the riches of the heavenly storehouses of light,
grace, pneuma and power - to which they themselves contributed on
earth through the rising merits of their spiritual acts and
works, and to which they correspondingly have the divine
prerogative of special access in heaven.
Glorious Mary, as Queen of both Angels and Saints,
encompasses all these prerogatives and functions (and infinitely
more) in her heavenly, motherly, intercession, mediation and
distribution.
It seems to me that the heavenly intercession of each of the
saints has a particular earthly specificity, pertinency and
concreteness derived from the merits of his or her redemptive
earthly life involvements. We see this especially in the
comminications and appearances of the saint-founders of religious
orders to shepherd the ongoing lives of their orders, after they
have risen to heaven.
Other saints similarly carry on from heaven their special
works started on earth - as we know from the announcement by St.
Theresa that she would spend her heaven showering roses of grace
on earth, especially for the missions.
I have a special sense of recourse to Ed in matters of
kingdom, and to Bonnie in matters of soul.
Most dramatic, are the miracles attributed to the saints,
although these miracles are so often thought of in terms of
evidence for canonization that it is sometimes lost sight of that
first and foremost miracles are exemplary and characteristic of
the great ongoing heavenly work of the saints for earthly
salvation and kingdom.
In scripture we are given many instances and examples of the
movement of the angels between heaven and earth, but the movement
of the saints is left for us to discover - especially since it
has developed largely since the scriptures were written.
It seems to me that while the saints sometimes appear and
communicate directly to those on earth - especially in the case
of religious orders, as I mentioned - communications with earth
are primarily the providence of the angels, and the circulation of
the saints is essentially a heavenly one.
I envisage that the saints intercede for us before the
throne of God in the Empyrean Heaven, or before the Mother and
Child of the Heavenly Paradise - and perhaps in some way in the
Heaven of the Rose. Then, as their intercessions are granted,
they rise, in concert with God's will, to the higher created
heavens to actually tap, mediate and direct the divinely bestowed
Light, Grace, Pneuma and Power, through angelic aqueducts,
conduits and channels, for distribution to souls on earth.
While the angels are heavenly messengers and deliverers, it
is the saints who, while they were on earth, as 'other Christs',
sharing in his humanity, existentially and concretely extended his
life, passion and death into the various areas of human life and
society - as a consequence of which they participate spiritually
in his one Resurrection, Ascension and Reign.
While we, too, participate directly in the passion and death
of Christ, through the Mass, Way of the Cross, Crucifix, and
Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, etc. (and thus in his
resurrection, ascension and reign), we are assisted in taking up
and extending the Cross to the particular circumstances,
experiences and acts of our lives by the example of the Saints
when they were on earth, and then by their heavenly intercession.
Thus, it is one thing to participate in Christ's Cross
directly - the fullest way being that of receiving the impress of
the stigmata, or of being asked by Christ to help him carry his
cross mystically (as in the case of Sr. Josepha Mendenez, in 'The
Way of Divine Love') - but to incorporate all our works,
adversities and sufferings in Christ's Cross, as an extension of
it, for which we pray in making our Morning Offering, is
something in which we need the particular immediacy of the
example, intercession, mediation and distribution of Mary and the
Saints, as well.
God, in his infinite love and wisdom, uses the meritorious
acts of the saints on earth as sources of rising grace, light,
pneuma and power to bring the storehouses of the upper created
heavens to their plenitude. He then provides, in the Communion
of Saints, that the specificity of each saint's earthly
salvational and kingdomal involvement, as impressed forever on
his or her soul, may serve for fine-tuned intercession and
re-distribution of this grace, light, pneuma and power to us on
earth, that we may return them multiplied to heaven in the merits
generated and rising from our spiritual acts of extending the
Cross to every area of life.
The importance of flowers to all this, and the reason why I
address these matters in such detail in our Mary's Gardens
correspondence, is that it is the flower-pneums, especially the
rose-pneums, generated by our meritorious spiritual acts that are
the primary vehicles by which accompanying reflected and
regenerated grace, light and power are angelically transported to
heaven - especially as we pray the Rosary.
It is the sense of the reality of these flower-pneums that
we gain from intimate contact with flowers in the garden; from
beholding their forms, growth and liturgical seasons
symbolically; and from praying the Rosary, that opens up to us
the 'Realism' of spiritual circulation in and between heaven and
earth.
And in this context we are better able to quicken the
dispositions towards the saints to which St. Bernard calls us in
the passage selected as the Second Reading for the Hours of
today's feast, viz, that we may:
- long to be in their company, to possess their happiness,
and to share in their glory
- be moved to respond to their longing and waiting for us
to be with them in heaven
- yearn that Christ may appear to us as he now appears to
them, and that we may one day share with them in his
glory
- see how much they yearn for us to seek their prayers,
that what is beyond our powers to obtain will be
granted through their intercession
- and, better envisage that when Christ appears again,
they, his glorious members, will shine with him.
Hoping this finds you well, Brother, and praying for the
responsiveness of your students to your teaching, counsel and
prayers, I remain,
Your friend in Our Lady, the Angels and the Saints,
+
Boston, MA
November 21, 1985
Presentation of Mary
Dear Brother Seán,
Thank you for your letter of November 7th which arrived here
on the 15th.
I'm happy to hear you had an enjoyable birthday on October
4th. I recalled that your birthday was sometime in early
October, but it wasn't until reading your latest letter that it
'registered' with me that you were born on the Feast of St.
Francis of Assisi. How beautiful for you, and for Mary's Gardens!
Ed's birthday on the Feast of the Annunciation and yours on
the Feast of St. Francis are rather marvellous in terms of the
providential setting for our work - mindful of how special graces
outpour on each feastday.
In looking at the text for the Feast of St. Francis in
Butler's 'Lives of the Saints' just now, my eye turned to a poem
by the Saint I hadn't noted before in which he attests to the
mystical growth of his interior 'tree of love':
"Into love's furnace I am cast
* * * * * *
"The tree of love its roots hath spread
Deep in my heart, and rears its head;
Rich are its fruits: they joy dispense;
Transport the heart, and ravish sense.
In love's sweet swoon to thee I cleave,
Bless'd source of love . . .
* * * * * *
"All creatures love aloud proclaim;
Heav'ns, earth and sea increase my flame;
Whate're I see, as mirror bright
Reflects my lover to my sight;
My heart all objects to him raise;
Are steps to the Creator's praise . . .
* * * * * *
My own birthday, October 21st, falls on the Feast of St.
Hilarian, not celebrated in the liturgical cycle of the Church.
This saint was one of the early desert ascetics of St. Anthony's
time.
I was sorry to hear that a thief made off with some of your
things, including my letter of October 2nd (the date of the one
you reported receiving receiving October 9th) before you had a
chance to read it. Since, as I have mentioned, I now use a
little 'lap' computer for my correspondence and other writing, I
was able to regenerate the letter, and I mailed a copy to you on
November 17th. Happily, I had 'back ups' of the blest rose petal
and 'bible leaf' from the Garden of Our Lady in Woods Hole
enclosed with the original letter, so I was able to enclose
replacements of these also.
One wonders, in the order and grace and providence, why
someone would take such a letter, and the postcard you mentioned,
in the first place; and wonders in particular where the blest
objects may have circulated to now.
I was joyed to hear about the consignment of bulbs you were
able to send to Anne Hopkins for the Knock Mary Garden, and about
the progress with your descriptive booklet for the Garden. I am
sure there is a deep providential movement here (despite bad
weather this year).
Monsignor Horan's flight with friends to Rome from the Knock
airport is marvellous news. I don't remember whether I wrote you
that a 20 minute 'special' on the politics of the Knock Airport
was aired in the summer of 1984 on one of our national TV
programs ('60 Minutes' or '20-20'). It included a long interview
with Msgr. Horan in the Cemetery, and just a fleeting glimpse of
the Blessed Sacrament Chapel and (I think) part of the Mary
Garden, from the front. With the airport officially opening next
April, I would expect that there would be pilgrimage flights from
Boston, and who knows, maybe one day I'll be able to get on
board, if I may express a pious hope.
For the present, I continue to have a flow of thoughts about
Our Lady's feast days, through the seasons of nature, which I
want to share with you; and today's Feast of the Presentation of
Mary is no exception.
Even though this is a 'lesser' Marian feast, it has become
for me an increasingly important one in its tribute to Mary's
spirituality during her childhood.
Mindful that the Annunciation is said to represent the first
explicit revelation of the Trinity, we can consider the
Presentation of Mary as a celebration of Mary's faith in the
Father and in the promise of the Messiah prior to her call to her
fuller, more explicit, participation in the Trinitarian,
incarnational, plan of redemption at the Annunciation.
As distinct from the Feast of Jesus' Presentation in the
Temple, as an infant - which commemorates Mary & Joseph's
dedication of him to God; and the confirming prophecies of Anna
and Simeon, that he was indeed the Messiah, elicited in return -
the Feast of Mary's Presentation as a young girl celebrates her
own dedication to God, which inaugurated for her a period of
training and service at the Temple - according to apocryphal
tradition and the private revelation.
It thus brings us to reflect on her early interior mystical
life - mindful of the Temple Psalms of Ascent, which we read
every day in the daytime Hours.
Because of Mary's immaculate purity, her mystical openness,
filling and unfolding must have been rapid and total in spiritual
soul, heart, mind and body. "He that is mighty has done great
things to me."
Just as Mary's prior physical presence on earth made it
possible for her to give incarnational birth to Christ in his
physical humanity, so did her prior mystical presence in heaven
in her spiritual humanity, make it possible for her to give
heavenly birth to Christ's spiritual heart, mind and body,
rising from her physical humanity, as we know from the
revelation of the Woman Clothed With The Sun, of the Apocalypse,
giving birth to the heavenly child - although the heavenly
Assumption of her physical body followed on Christ's Resurrection
and Ascension, so that physical resurrection and ascension are
uniquely Christ's, following on the reception of his physical body
from Mary.
(The heavenly presence of Mary's assumed physical body makes
it possible for her to return to earth in a special bodily way -
as distinct from the angels and the saints - in her work of
giving continuing birth to the Church).
We can also consider that Mary's Presentation in the Temple
was accompanied by a heightened participation with the angels,
who - as we know from sources such as Mother Mary of Agreda's
'Mystical City of God' - ministered to her abundantly from her
earliest years - establishing a context and preparation for the
angelic message of the Annunciation.
In terms of the progression of the Life and Mysteries of
Mary in the Liturgical cycle which begins with the feast of her
Birth, the feast of her Presentation is an important bridge to the
the Annunciation, which, - while its actual feast is on March 15
- is implicitly present in the primary cycle in the early Advent
text in the Prophecy of Isaiah that 'a Virgin shall conceive' etc.
It is instructive to reflect that the Feasts of the
Immaculate Conception and the Annunciation, which testify to the
two major supernatural initiatives and interventions of God in
respect to the Incarnation, also, by reflecting the period of
human gestation - preceding the Feasts of the Nativity of Mary
and of Jesus, respectively, by nine months - testify to the
humanity of Christ, true God and true man.
Their very 'transfer' from, yet juxtaposition with, the
primary natural seasonal liturgical sequence from the Birth of
Mary in November to the heavenly reign of Jesus and Mary in the
fullness of summer and autumn serves to highlight the
interpenetrations of the divine interventions they celebrate.
The Feast of the Visitation - following on the Annunciation
- also falls in this '9 months' phase' secondary cycle, so that
the supernatural, mystical aspect of the Visitation, too - as
manifested in the Magnificat - is set apart for special
liturgical accent.
The important thing for us, Brother, is that the Flowers of
May - which I always think of as being so especially beloved by
you - mirror both the bodily rising of Jesus, of the Easter
Cycle, and the Mystical rising of Mary, of the Visitation.
Finally at the Assumption, the two cycles are united in one,
continuing until the glorious culmination in the Feast of Christ
the King - with the new cycle seeding itself within the old at
the Nativity of Mary.
Considering the Nativity cycle again, it is fitting that the
Feast of Mary's Presentation comes at an immolative season of the
natural year - that of the falling of the leaves - which
symbolizes the mortification, self-denial and self-abnegation,
voluntary and imposed, associated with any spiritual undertaking.
One of my most favorite poems is Francis Thompson's 'The
Sere of the Leaf', in which he marvels at how another poet could
sing about nature so joyously at this immolative time of the
year:
* * * * *
"As the cadent languor lingers after Music droops
her fingers
Beauty still falls dying, dying through the days;
'But ah!' said he who stood in that Autumn solitude,
'Singing-soul, thou art 'lated with thy lays!
* * * * *
"And hast thou thy content? Were some rain of it
be sprent
On the soil where I am drifted to and fro,
My soul, blown o'er the ways
Of these arid latter days,
Would blossom like a rose of Jerico.'
'I know not equipoise, only purgatorial joys,
Grief's singing to the soul's instrument,...
* * * * *
(Note the allusion rose of Jericho desert-blooming
"Resurrection Flower" symbolism.)
It is interesting that while those in the temperate zones of
the southern hemisphere are able to associate the falling of
leaves with the mortifications of Lent and Christ's Passion, we
must have recourse to the forms and colors of flowers for this,
rather than to the concurrent seasonal cycle. Yet our
October-November-December Fall is in seasonal correspondence with
the spirituality of Mary's mystical immolation, following her
Presentation - which implicitly anticipated the mortification of
Christ, and prepared her for her subsequent communion with him in
it.
Also, it correlates with Advent, which - despite the
Christmas shopping season, with all its lights and music - is
liturgically a time of mortification in preparation for Christmas
- when presents are exchanged, and the tree lights formerly were
first turned on. (I recall an article many years ago in America
magazine which was titled, and pointed out that in this respect,
'Scrooge was Right').
(The large Christmas Tree at the Prudential Center here in
Boston was put in place around November 1st, and it looks as
though it will have the lights on by Thanksgiving Day, a week
from today, when the Christmas shopping season 'officially'
begins).
After writing you on the Feast of All Saints about the
heavenly circulation of the saints from the Empyrean Heaven, to
the Heavenly Paradise, to the Heaven of the Rose, and return, I
reflected a lot on the Heavenly Rose, and pervceived that it
undulates, as it "rests", filled, as it were, and then opens
further to receive or dispense graces.
In prayer, I communed with Bonnie as to whether there was
something further here, and the words came to me,
'The Rose of Heaven grows constantly.'
This lead me to recall Teilhard de Chardin's insights as to
how, through our spiritual acts and works on earth, we 'build'
heaven, and I saw that the stones of the Empyrean Heaven are
generated by our earthly acts of fortitude, in duty; the flowers
of Paradise, by acts of love or neighbor; and the petals of the
Heavenly Rose by mystical risings from earth in the circulation
of the Spirit.
At Knock Mary's crown and its jewels represent the Empyrean
Heaven; the flowers adorning it, Paradise; and the Rose at her
forehead, the Heaven of the Rose.
With respect to the Heavenly Paradise, I recalled Jesus'
words of Sr. Josepha's private revelation (in another context)
in 'The Way of Divine Love':
'I saw (saintly souls) gathered round me as in a garden,
each separately rejoicing me with her flowers and her scent.'
Also, with respect to the growth of our interior trees, rose
plants or vines of life - St. Francis' 'Tree of Love' - engrafted
us onto the Vine of Christ as branches - I have had a clearer
insight as to how this growth, as a parallel of the natural growth
of trees, conduits the descent of spiritual power. As, like those
of Jack's Beanstalk, its branches, leaves and flowers rise to
heaven, with our spiritual heart, in which it has grown on earth,
and as the infinite-petaled flower crowning it blossoms in heaven
with the rising of our spiritual mind - our spiritual leaves and
flowers receive and intake the heavenly power into our spiritual
branches so it can be conduited to the roots of this tree in our
spiritual body - still, pre-Assumptionally, bound to earth.
Then, as we proceed with the earthly work of the Apostolic
power-gifts of the Pentecostally descending Holy Spirit (as
symbolized outwardly by thunder, lightning, wind and rain), our
Tree of Life grows and rises ever more fully to heaven, where it
is layered and engrafted until its heavenly rooting becomes
primary - and the trunk of the tree, with our mystical
assumption, becomes a column, with its capitol anchored and
grounded in heaven.
As in the familiar representation of Mary in sculpture, our
feet are still on earth, but our head is gloriously in heaven.
Further - as Francis Thompson attests in the same poem - while we
rise to heaven, our task is still on earth ('Thy Kingdom come'):
". . . 'tis vain to scale the turret of the
cloud-uplifted spirit,
And bar the immortal in, the mortal out;
For sometime unaware comes a footfall up the stair,
And a soft knock under which no bolts are stout,
And lo, there pleadeth sore
The heart's voice at the door,
"I am your child, you may not shut me out!'"
* * * * * *
Well, Brother, this letter has wandered quite a bit, but I
should say it was much stimulated by the good spirit of your
letter of November 7th, which I much appreciate.
With the end of the Liturgical year upon us (yet with the
new one germinating within it), I send all prayerful best wishes
to you for a holy Advent.
The past several days have been a warm 'Indian summer' (I
don't know if this is a familiar term in Ireland) with the
temperature pushing the 70's - after a cold spell, with nighttime
frosts). This alerted me that the flowers which have come to
specially signify for me the growth of the new cycle within the
old should be in precious bloom; and, lo, upon looking, I found a
single November-December violet blooming in the garden across our
street here - the same garden in which I found the 'hopefuls',
the snowdrops, about which I wrote, last February.
Sincerely, your friend, in Our Lady,
+
Boston, MA
November 24, 1985
Christ the King
Dear Brother Seán,
On today's culmination of the liturgical year, I am thankful
that this year has had for me its own special spiritual richness,
as I'm sure it has had for you, and that I have had the privilege
of being able to share this with you in our friendship in the
Communion of Saints.
In the Second Reading, from Origen, for today's feast, I noted
the affirmation of the interior coming of the Kingdom of God, now,
as a means and prelude to its eternal coming:
"The kingdom of God...does not come for all to see;...
but the kingdom of God is within us....Thus it is clear
that he who prays for the coming of God's kingdom prays
rightly to have it within himself, that there it may grow
and bear fruit and become perfect....
"The kingdom of God within us, as we continue to make
progress, will reach its highest point when the Apostle's
words are fulfilled, and Christ, having subjected all his
enemies to himself, will hand over his kingdom to the
Father, that God may be all in all....
"Therefore, if we wish God to reign in us...there should
be in us a kind of spiritual paradise where God may walk
and be our sole ruler with his Christ...
"All this can happen in each one of us, and the last enemy,
death, can be destroyed....And so, what is corruptible in
us must be clothed in holiness and incorruptibility; and
what is mortal must be clothed...in the Father's immortality.
Then God will reign in us, and we shall enjoy even now the
blessings of rebirth and resurrection."
As I set down these words, I see also that the seeking and
striving for the Kingdom of God within us is important for the
building of the eventual visible earthly kingdom, in that if we
were only to envisage and look forward to God's kingdom 'up there',
in the Empyrean Heaven, we would not give the necessary attention
to 'Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven'.
Before God's kingdom can fully come in heaven, it must come on
earth. Yet before it can come on earth, it must come in our
hearts; and to come in our hearts, our hearts must rise to heaven
to experience it and bring it back to earth.
To me, one of the great 'surprises', of the mystical life was
the immediate discovery on rising interiorly to heaven, that we are
to return our focus to earth, and to become, as Daniel Berrigan put
it in one of his poems, 'mystics with hands'.
We have Paul's testimony to this in 2nd Cor. 12 that when he
was 'caught up to the third heaven...into paradise...(whether in
the body... or out...I know not)...there was given me a sting of my
flesh, and angel of Satan to buffet me...and (the Lord) said to me:
my grace is sufficient for thee; for power is made perfect in
infirmity.'
We are to become weak, and empty, that God's power may flow
from heaven to earth through us. And in this, the envisaging of
our interior 'tree of love' is most helpful in that we see through
it just how this power may flow, as I mentioned in my last letter,
if we are sufficiently mortified and attuned to God's will.
The tree of love has the double imagery in that it shows us
both how we are to rise to heaven with it as it grows, and to
instrument heaven's power on earth through it as it grows still
further.
I think one of my most important spiritual discoveries was the
manner in which our interior spiritual life and growth are unfolded
and sustained through the tree of love.
Many years ago, I read, in Carl Jung's 'The Secret of the
Golden Flower' about the Kundalini Yoga, or Way, of Indian
asceticism, in which leaves and flowers burgeon within one as one
grows spiritually. And in the Hindu tradition, the perception of
this growth was formalized in various levels or centers (Chakras)
of growth, with specific spiritual associations for not only the
levels, but for individual leaves and flowers.
It wasn't until about thirty years later, about ten years ago,
that I was struck suddenly with the realization that this applied
to Christian spiritual growth as well. Thus, I discovered,
interiorly, that one level of burgeoning corresponded to,
accompanied, was supported by, and supported, the obediences;
another the virtues; another the beatitudes; another the corporal
works of mercy; etc. as the tree of love, rooted in our spiritual
bodies, grew within our spiritual heart. Then, I saw how this tree
sustained, and was encompassed by, the building of our House of
Wisdom in our spiritual minds . . . as a seat for the reception, or
'docking', of our descending, angelic, Tower of Wisdom - of which I
have written before.
The several interior ascents of the 'envelopes' of our
spiritual bodies (in mortification, and in poverty, chastity and
obedience), of our spiritual hearts, and of our spiritual minds,
gives us the sense, and increasing spiritual strength, for the
ultimate heavenly ascent of our Tower of Wisdom.
In recent years I have been much struck by the parallels
between major earthly journeys into the unknown and our initial
mystical journey to heaven. I recall a book by Marco Pallas, 'The
Way and the Mountain', on the Tibetan Buddhist mystical symbolism
of mountain climbing.
There come to mind especially Columbus voyage to the New
World, and the climbing of Mt. Everest. (I smiled when I read in
the New York times some years ago that one of the early climbers of
Mt. Everest was a British army lieutenant named, John Stokes, of
whom there was a photograph).
Just now, there is a TV dramatization of the 'race' to the