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Intro Mary Garden
Wayside Flowers and Shrines of Our Lady
John S. Stokes Jr.
As we come to know the growth and blooming of the Flowers of Our
Lady in our Mary Gardens, we acquire a heightened alertness to
their presence also in the neighborhoods and waysides through
which we travel. Thus discovered, they evoke our reflections and
prayers in a spontaneous and ever-changing way as we move about,
as distinct from the familiar reflections in our gardens. As
Judith Smith observes in The Mary Calendar, "Every field path and
hedgerow (becomes) an illuminated Book of Hours."
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This is a return to the spirituality of medieval times, when
symbolical flowers were characteristically encountered in and
gathered from the countrysides rather than gardens. In this
period, when people traveled mostly afoot, flower prayers were
focused, not by garden statues or grottos of Our Lady, but by
wayside shines or field crosses encountered as they moved about.
Happily this quickening is also available to us in the present
day, for in our alertness to find the Flowers of Our Lady in
roadsides and fields, from time to time we discover statues and
shrines of Our Lady placed there - mostly in front yards, but
sometimes also along waysides. Two such shrines stand out in our
own experience.
The first was one we discovered while driving through Wareham,
Masachusetts in the 1960's (on the way to visit the Garden of Our
Lady in Woods Hole). Surveying front yards as we passed, we noted
a large garden with a trellised fence, above the entrance to
which was a sign, "God's Garden", with an invitation for passers
by to enter. Stopping our car and entering, we beheld a large
statue of Our Lady surrounded by lilies, as can be seen from the
accompanying photo. In future years, we would look forward to
stopping for a visit to this wayside garden each time as we passed
by on our annual pilgrimage to Woods Hole.
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We discovered the second while making a trip from Boston to
Springfield in the 1980's. Several miles past the Hartford
turnpike exit of the Massachusetts Turnpike, we came upon a large
shrine set back from the south side of the road. We pulled up on
the north side of the divided highway to view it as best we could;
and then on the return trip several days later were able to stop
for a while on the south side and walk over to the shrine, taking
the accompanying photo. In addition to tubbed plants, evidently
rotated so there would always be seasonal blooms, there was a lovely
grassy meade in front of the shrine filled with bluets (Eyes of
Mary) and bordered with orange hawkweed (Our Lady's Paintbrush).
There were no buildings in sight, only a pathway leading into the
woods behind the shrine. We later wrote a letter to the neighboring
parish church asking about it, but received no reply. On trips to
Hartford over the following several years we would continue on the
turnpike past the Hartford exit to visit the shrine, with a prayer
of gratitude for those responsible for it, and then circle back to
the exit.
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From this searching of nature for flower symbols and images of
the Virgin, we came in time to see all the countryside as a
spiritual mirror. A memorable experience was that of several
motor trips one midsummer and fall travelling between
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts through the extensive roadsides
and fields of goldenrod - known in some parts of Germany as
"Heavenly Radiance" (Himmel-Brand).
Immersed in this golden beauty, we would rise in contemplation of
the awesome beauty of the Creator. On returning to earth, as it
were, we would then see the goldenrod as infused and radiant with
God's aura, which we would follow back to its source in the divine
radiance. Emerging then with the full rays of this radiance we
would see it as flooding the entire sky and countryside, now seen as
God's face, our interface with God, resplendently showing forth the
Divinity.
On a final trip that fall, we approached Boston in the late
afternoon with the sun behind us. Suddenly, just as the Boston
buildings came into view before us, the angle of the road changed
such that the sun behind us, shining momentarily through the rear
window of the car, reflected on us and bathed us triply, from the
main and side mirrors, in an explosion of light - imparting a
startling sense of entrance into the glory of the Heavenly City.
From such spiritual illuminations of the countryside, following upon
the unfolding illuminative discoveries of the symbolical Flowers of
Our Lady as we worked in our Mary Gardens through the years, we
realized that there was a profound providential correspondence or
synchronicity between the inner human spirit and the workings of the
active imagination as one beheld or encountered the forms of nature.
It would have been strange if our loving Creator had not given us,
along with all the poetic imagery of nature, forms we could discover
as symbolic of the divine Persons and of the Plan of our Creation
and Redemption. And this provided insight into how the flower
symbols of Our Lady were discovered, named and used through the
centuries.
Thus, from garden meditations quickened by the symbolical Flowers
of Our Lady, composed around her statue, we came to see all the
countryside, and then our cities, as symbols of the Divinity. With
this alertness we then continued to discern other symbolism. One
spring for example, while travelling on the Wilbur Cross highway
north of New Haven on Ascension Thursday, we beheld a large cloud
cross in the sky before us, which we were able to photograph.
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In this mode, artifacts also came to have a symbolical significance
for us. Thus, for example, Boston's Hancock Tower became a Ladder
to Heaven. A Large decorated public Christmas tree became an
illuminative symbol of Our Lady's protecting mantle, extending from
heaven to earth - the lights undulating in the wind symbolizing the
movement of ministering hierarchies of angels between heaven and
earth.
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This sense of the splendor and power of Our Lady's heavenly mantle
and its angelic fabric brought to mind the Spanish painting of Our
Lady's Mantle protectively overshadowing Columbus' Santa Maria and
the other two ships as they set sail in 1492. We then recalled the
Russian tradition that Satan would be converted at the end of the
world; and the prophecy that Mary, having constrained him with her
heel during the course of Redemption history, would mediate this
conversion by encompassing him in her mantle and with it lift him
upon the Cross, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert -
that all evil would be expiated and not co-exist with heaven for all
eternity.
A culminating artifact was one seen to symbolize the Trinity: a
large demonstration model of a laser in the Boston Museum of
Science. Light (the "Holy Spirit") originating from a source at
one mirror (the "Father"), was refected from a second mirror (the
"Son") - oscillating back and forth with ever increasing
intensity, between the two "ad intra" - until it burst forth through
an aperture in tbe second (the "Word, through whom all things were
made"): spirating to and circulating "ad extra" in Creation.
Through our own experience was thus realized our broader vision
and hope of Mary's Gardens, as described by Robert Ostermann in
his 1953 Irish Ecclesiastical Record article, "Mary's Gardens":
"The ultimate objective is not merely to call public
notice to the Lady-names of flowers. That is but the
opening wedge, one means . . . 'of restoring the
prayerful, religious sense and true dignity to
gardening,' in its turn one means to fill the whole
of life with its vast abandoned content of religious
meaning."
As our hearts are thus raised in love and thanksgiving to God
through the illuminative resplendence of Christian nature symbolism,
we, in emulation of Mary, enter into spiritual communion with the
creative munificence of the Father; with the redeeming sacrifice of
the Son; and with the sanctifying and renewing inspiration and
promptings of the Holy Spirit - from which, in grateful and
compassionate return of love, we turn ever more fully to the works
of mercy and the culminative building of the Peaceable Kingdom of
truth, justice, love and freedom, on earth as it is in heaven, for
the fullest showing forth, sharing and mirroring back of God's
glory.
We do this in emulation of Mary, the Mystical Rose, mindful of the
reading from St. Amadeus of Lausanne in The Liturgy of the Hours
for the feast of the Queenship of Mary, August 22nd:
". . . while still in the flesh...at one moment she
withdrew to God in ecstacy; at the next she would bend
down to her neighbors with indescribable love. . . ."
Mary Garden Prayer
Copyright 1997, Mary's Gardens