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Intro Mary Garden
Mary Garden Summer Solstice
John S. Stokes Jr.
One of our treasured times for reflection and meditation in
the Mary Garden is in the cool of the evenings of the long days
of June and July. On clear days at this time of the year we
experience the subtleties of the changing light as the sun sets,
in which the lighter colored plants stand out impressionistically
against the darker soil and foliage, and against the shadows of
the moonlight (when the moon - "Our Lady's Lantern" - is waxing).
This has been a special time of the year for me since, as a
boy, I used to fly model airplanes after supper in a field behind
my parents' flower garden (designd around a raised Maltese Cross
pool, replicated from a Philippines monastery garden). I had an
early mystical experience one evening when, in the silence and
peace of the setting sun, my rubber-powered model plane was caught
up in a rising thermal air current, eventually disappearing as a
tiny dot in the blue sky above - in a wondrous personal
interaction with nature.
In 1956, after planting a Mary Garden in a new location, I
noticed that, in mid-June, just at sunset, the sun broke through
the shadows to bathe the central garden sculpture - Mary, Seat of
Wisdom - with a beam of warm, glowing sunlight. In examining how
this came about, I saw that, in these few longest days around the
time of the summer solstice, the sun emerged below the foliage of
some trees several hundred feet to the west of the garden; just
clearing the corner of a house which blocked it in the weeks
before and after, and "threading the needle" of a two foot space
between the trunks of two trees at the side of the garden to
shine through on the sculpture.
The accompanying photograph captures this moment, showing
the illumination of the west-facing sculpture from the front, and
also catching the glow in the setting sun of the June-blooming
biennial, Giant Mullein - Our Lady's Candle, and perennial Rose
Campion, Mary's Rose.
.
It has been mentioned by a number of gardeners
that illuminations or providential surprises experienced in the
Mary Garden, such as this one of the summer solstice, engender
corresponding interior illuminations or movements of love which
we then pour out on the flower symbols of Our Lady. After this
experience I wrote:
"Awed by the solstitial illumination of Mary's image, I
lifted my heart and mind to Mary in contemplation in
the peace and quiet of her garden. As I did, her
flowers seem to glow about her image, filled with
the radiance of her virtues and graces and permeating
me with a sense of the unfolding of spiritual life and
growth. Plunged, as it were, into the interior of Mary
in contemplation, I began to take root and sustenance
in her as my Spiritual Mother and Earthly Paradise."
This solstitial experience of the rotating earth also
prompted me to take more notice of the starry sky above the Mary
Garden, with its monthly progression of the constellations, and
also those of the five visible planets and the moon, paralleling
the year's cycle of the tasks and events of the garden. With
this I recalled the late medieval books of the farming and
gardening year, similar to the books of hours - setting forth the
dates for soil preparation, sowing, cultivating and harvesting,
with a miniature painting accompanying the text, in a "book of
months". Each of these monthly paintings typically displayed at
the top the days of the month, along with the corresponding
signs and degrees of the zodiac so that, before the day of
printed calendars, the time of month could be ascertained by
observing the rotation of the heavens. Also indicated were the
traditional timing of monthly tasks in coordination with the four
phases of the moon falling within each month.
This unexpected encounter with the summer solstice, and the
investigations it stimulated, opened up a whole new perspective
on the religious culture of the medieval countrysides which
engendered the symbolical Flowers of Our Lady - placing me back
in time standing beneath the stars, in the days when the earth
was considered to be flat and the center of the universe, with
the the sun, moon, planets and stars moving overhead. No clocks;
no radio or TV; no printed newspapers, magazines or books; no
trains, autos or planes. In daily life the orally transmitted
reality of the articles of faith were projected on the things of
nature - on the earth and in the sky above.
Perhaps the ringing of the Angelus Bells at sunrise, noon
and sunset (also heard from my garden) was the only regular daily
communication from the outside. In this period the faith was
widely nurtured by itinerant preachers, mendicant monks,
wandering minstrels and roving players, as well as by Mass at the
village church or nearest monastery. Additionally there was the
pilgrimage to the cathedral - with its architecture, stained
glass windows and sculptured programs - as a monument to the
faith, embodying sacred history and scripture and pointing with
its tower or spire to heaven above, as well as providing an altar
for the Mass, a repository for relics of the saints and the Real
Presence of the Eucharist, and a seat for the bishop.
In the unity of all things - spiritual and material, heaven
and earth, all originating through the creating Word of God - it
was expected that correspondences to the objects and events of
the Faith would be found in the forms and movements of nature
immediately at hand. When an agate rock was split open it would
be inspected to see if it contained an image of the Virgin and
Child. Plants were examined according to the medieval Doctrine
of Signatures to see whether there was some indication from their
form and markings of the parts of the body for which they would
provide healing, as medicinal herbs.
The multiplicity of forms, color and habits of growth of
flowers provided an especially rich mosaic for the discernment of
natural symbolical corespondences to the values and events of
Scripture and belief; and it is from this perspective that we are
to envisage the origins of the Flowers of Our Lady. Since these
symbolical correspondences of flowers were regarded as real, as
ontological, those flowers bearing them were regarded with a
special respect, if not awe. The modern scientific perception of
celestial mechanics that the earth is a planet orbiting with the
other planets, visible and invisible, around the sun, with the
moon orbiting around the earth, only increases our sense of awe
at the order of Creation.
We are told that the authenticity of the Jewish prophets was
established through the enduring acceptance of their prophecies
by the people of Israel. The survival of religious flower
symbolism in oral traditions through the centuries testifies
similarly to the authenticity and enduring vitality of their
symbolism - taught by parents to their children, from generation
to generation, often with the embellishment of legends.
Today these old flower symbols of Our Lady may at first
appear to us as only interesting lore; but as we care for them
and live with them in the Mary Garden, within the rhythms of the
seasons and the heavens, they help to nurture in us a faith
which permeates all of life, all of God's creatures, as we pray
and work for the coming on earth of God's peaceable kingdom of
love, justice, material sufficiency and glory as we work in this
life preparing and building for the next.
In looking up from the Mary Garden to the stars, I also
recalled various parallels which had been drawn between stars and
flowers - as lights. Thus, Longfellow's characterization of
flowers as "the stars of earth's firmament"; and a delightful
folk legend that the stars, wishing better to adore the new-born
infant Savior, came down and planted themselves before the manger
at Bethlehem as buttercups. Also, the old legend that after the
miraculous star led the Astrologer-Kings to Bethlehem, it burst
into thousands of fragments planting themselves around the
Nativity manger - as the flowers we know today as Star of
Bethlehem. St. Bernard exhorted, "Look on the star, think of
Mary" - possibly the source of the old name for the daffodil of
"Mary's Star".
The experience of the Summer Solstice in the Mary Garden
also carried me back to the much earlier times of the stone age.
. A friend to whom I mentioned
the shining of the summer
solstice setting sun on the Mary
Garden Seat of Wisdom sculpture
remarked, "You have your own
private little Stonehenge", and
explained to me how the large
stones of this English
megalithic "stone ring" were
astronomically aligned such that,
at the solstices and equinoxes,
the edges of certain stones were
exactly lined up with the shining
of the rising and setting sun.
Some years later, I had a
fortuitous opportunity to visit
Stonehenge and to experience its
awesomeness personally.
While vacationing in London,
I took "time out" for a train
trip to Salisbury to attend a morning business meeting. After
the meeting, our host took our group to lunch at the Salisbury
Pub and then, after a visit to the beautiful Salisbury Cathedral,
announced, "Now, I'm going to take you on a visit to Stonehenge",
which turned out to be nearby. Thoughts of my Summer Solstice
Mary Garden and my friend's remark about my "private Stonehenge"
came to mind. It was a moving experience indeed to sense the
orientation of this huge monument to the rotation of the earth,
the orbiting of the moon around the earth, and the orbiting of
the earth around the sun, against the background of the
constellations of the fixed stars of the universe and galaxy.
Some years later I noticed how tall city buildings, such as,
in my experience, the magnificent all-glass Hancock Tower in
Boston, seemed at night as pointers - "Ladder-to-Heaven" - their
tops passing through the constellations of the ecliptic; and I
realized how the designation "sky scraper" implied the rotation
of the earth. I also noticed from my vantage point how the sun
just cleared the top of the Hancock Tower around the Spring
Equinox.
Somewhere back in antiquity, the cycle of the year - based
on the changing height of the noonday sun overhead with the
consequent change in the length of day and temperature of the
seasons - was divided into the twelve months, with their various
seasonal characteristics. Then, the day was divided into
twenty-four hours: twelve daytime hours, from sunrise to sunset,
and twelve nightime hours, from sunset to sunrise.
I came to understand, in this context, that the sundial is
not a garden curiosity but another venerable measure of time, of
the hours - for the coordination of daily human activity. For
this the cast shadow of the sundial blade is projected on a scale
dividing the daytime into twelve hours: six hours from sunrise to
high noon when the sun is in the mid-heaven, and six hours from
noon to sunset. The night dial, based, in the Northern
Hemisphere, on the elevation of the North Star, or on the
rotational orientation to the North Star of the two "pointer
stars" of the Big Dipper constallation, serves the same function
at night. The lengths of the daytime hours are longer or shorter
as the days became longer or shorter throughout the year.
The days are also mirrored by those flowers which open at
sunrise and close at sunset, to which Shakespeare alludes in
speaking of the Marigold:
" . . . when winking Mary buds begin to ope'
their golden eyes."
Other flowers were named for the time of day when they
bloom, such as "Our Lady's Eleven O'Clock". And still others
keep turning to face the sun as it moves through the sky. Then
there are the day lilies which bloom for only one day.
With the introduction of mechanical clocks, the twenty-four
hours of the day and night were equalized in duration in
disregard of sunrise and sunset, thus departing from the natural
rhythm of the day. The introduction of daylight saving time for
half the year represents a rough attempt to adjust the clock
hours to the natural sunrise.
Coming perhaps from the revelation of the seven "days" of
Creation, the year was divided into seven-day weeks, and the
hours of the days and nights were named, in repeating seven-hour
cycles, for the Sun, Moon and five visible planets in the
ascending order of their observed apparent speeds of heavenly
movement - (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon) -
such that for the days of the week each came to be named for its
sunrise planetary hour: Sunday, Monday . . . through Saturday.
Also the year formerly was conceived as beginning with the
month of the Spring equinox, such that March was the first month
- explaining, for example, why October still retains its name as
the eighth month, November the ninth and December the tenth.
From this I saw that while every Mary Garden might not have
solstitial or equinoxial markers, it could have a sundial to
quicken our sense of our rotational relationship to the universe.
Further, the points of the compass could be indicated on the
sundial base, and possibly the garden site "oriented" to the East
(as were the medieval cathedrals), where from the vantage point
of the Western world, Christ was crucified.
I later learned that many Stonehenge-like stone rings have
been found, on all the continents, apparently embodying the
primordial religious sense of nature and the seasonal calendar -
mercifully surviving all the "turns of the wheel" of the
confusion of tongues at Babel.
Our Irish Mary's Gardens Associate, Brother Sean MacNamara
of the Christian Brothers in Dublin, who has made the definitive
botanical cataloging of the plants of the micro-climates of the
famous Burren in his native County Clare, informed us that there
were several Stone Rings in the Burren, and that monks of old
used the stones as stations - sanctifying them as they paced
around them while praying the Rosary.
Reflecting on all this I went still further back in sacred
history to the time of our first parents, evisaging how in
carrying out God's will that they "dress and keep" (embellish,
develop, care for and conserve) the earth, as they "multiplied
and filled it", they would have needed to learn of the rotation
of the seasons and of the time for sowing and reaping. After the
shortening of the days and the coming of the first winter, it
would have been observed that the days then grew longer and
warmed up, sustaining vegetative growth (or that in other areas,
there were parallel cycles of wet and dry periods) - leading to
the concept of the astronomical year, and then to the observation
and marking of the annually recurring positions of the sun.
I recalled in this connection the folk legend of the
early-blooming snowdop flowers: that Adam and Eve wondered if and
when the first winter (or dry period) would end and plants would
again grow, until one day they observed the blooming of the
snowdrop - a sign of hope for the return of warmer (or moister)
weather.
With the establishment of the Christian liturgy, the
solstices and equinoxes were "converted" through a transfer of
their significance to corresponding feast days of the liturgical
cycle: the summer solstice to "St. John (the Baptist) of Summer",
the autumn equinox to Michaelmas, the winter solstice to "St.
John (the Evangelist) of Winter", and the spring equinox to the
Annunciation - with the corresponding namings of flowers blooming
at the times of these feasts, such as St. Johnsworts and
Michaelmas Daisies. The hugh bonfires lighted in the countryside
for the summer solstice became the Fires of St. John. The date
of Easter was established as the first Sunday after the first
full moon after the spring equinox.
The calendar of the liturgical year, however, was framed in
seven major feasts, each announced in nature and legend by the
blooming of associated flowers and celebrated with special
ceremonies and procesions: Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Trinity,
Pentecost, Corpus Christi and the Assumption.
The hours of the day were santified by the Liturgy of the
Hours. The Morning and Evening hours (Matins and Vespers) were
prayed at sunrise and sunset, and continued to be even after the
secular adoption of clock time.
"Morning Prayer...is said...in order that the first
stirrings of our mind will be consecrated in God, and
that we may take nothing in hand until we have been
gladdened by the thought of God' . . .
"When evening approaches and the day is already far
spent, Evening Prayer is celebrated in order that 'we
may give thanks for what has been given us, or what
we have done well during the day" . . . "
- The Liturgy of the Hours
The seven days of the week were seen as mirroring the seven
days of the Creation of the world, now beginning with Sunday
signifying the Easter Sunday beginning of our re-creation - yet
still retaining their names from the planetary hours.
In all this we strive to live closer to the cycles of
nature, in the belief that Creation is good, very good.
Believing that Christ is a light to the Gentiles, that
Christian Trinitarian revelation and redemption are to provide
the culmination for all the religions of the world - gathering
them together ("in my house there are many mansions") in a
reversal of the fall from grace of original sin, and of the
further confusion of tongues of the Tower of Babel - we can
conclude that this applies as well to the sanctification of the
years, months, days and hours and other astronomical
correspondences of the ancient Stone Age religions, memorialized
by their stone ring and other monuments. (Dante's soul in its
mystical flights passes through the "spheres" corresponding to
the moon and the planets; the placidian house system widely used
in astrology (medieval astronomy) was developed by a monk,
Placidus; the medicinal herbs were each identified with a planet;
the typannum of the Virgin in Majesty at Chartres Cathedral
contains signs of the zodiac as well as depictions of Mary's life
and mysteries; and the month of May is dedicated to Mary.)
Thus, the religions of the Stone Age, as well as the major
world religions of more recent times and the present - Hinduism,
Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Islam, Shintoism; the African
tribal religions; and the Aztec, Incan, Mayan and Native North
American religions, etc. - preserve sublime elements of the
primordial revelation which, viwed within unity, are to round out
the fullness of the universal manifestation and redemption of
God's goodness and glory in Creation.
Perhaps the most meaningful consequence of solsticial
awareness in the Mary Garden is a concrete insight into Mary's
mystical participation in the Father's creation of the world,
according to the passage applied to her by the Church Fathers
from Proverbs 8: 22-31:
"The Lord begot me, the first born of his ways,
the forerunner of his prodigies of long ago;
From of old I was poured forth, at the first before the
earth.
. . . .
When he established the heavens I was there,
when he marked out the vault over the face of the deep;
When he made firm the skies above, when he fixed fast the
foundations of the earth;
. . . .
Then was I beside him as his craftsman, and was his delight
day by day,
Playing before him all the while, playing on the surface
of his earth;
and I found delight in the sons of men."
Copyright Mary's Gardens, 1996