Beyond the Biblical Mary
I started getting invitations from Mary back in 2014, well before my daughter was born. As in, the Virgin Mary, Jesus’ mom. It sounds strange, I know. I am not Catholic, and these encounters began before I would have ever considered associating my spiritual and religious beliefs with Christianity.
She began holding space for my journey toward a higher power, nurturing the spirit within me that was called to till the soil of my soul, as I made my first steps on an ancient pilgrimage across Spain. I am also talking about Mary in a larger sense, beyond what we know about her in a Christian Biblical framework, or even a historical one. Rather, a Mary that encompasses what some may call the Divine Feminine, perhaps an ancient understanding and reverence for the energy that births and nurtures all life. She hasn’t visited me in a literal sense, as so many people around the world claim. Visionaries from Mexico to France, from Portugal to a tiny hamlet in Bosnia & Hercegovina recount seeing and talking with her, experiencing miracles and messages. Rather, she has surfaced in my life in synchronous and even odd ways that I can no longer shrug off as coincidence.
Most recently I’ve found myself, very unexpectedly, living in Sarajevo in the country of Bosnia & Hercegovina. Beyond the association of a recent war in the Balkans, I was familiar with Bosnia because of a famous pilgrimage site called Medugorje. I’d heard about it in a couple of books and knew that back in the 80s a group of children and teenagers had (and some continue to have to this day) a series of visions and interactions with the Virgin Mary. Despite the fact that the Catholic Church does not recognize these visions, Medugorje is the second most visited Marian pilgrimage site in the world. And since I was now living very close to this place, I needed to know why.
From the get go, I had a suspicion that Mary was present in this part of the world well before Christianity. This suspicion arose after learning more about Our Lady of Guadalupe, the iteration of Mary that first caught my attention. The site where Mary appeared to Don Diego hundreds of years ago in present day Mexico, was also a very important site for indigenous people to worship the ancient goddess Tonantzin. Did Medugorje have a similar past? I wondered.
Here’s what I know, now having been to Medugorje three times, with designs to visit again. There is something special, odd, powerful, and even a little scary about this place. It is cloaked in shadow. It has a special stillness. It draws people to it. And whether or not the Biblical Mary has truly made herself visible on Apparition Hill, there is a distinct energy of sacred femininity I can only liken to what I felt at Kilauea Volcano, the womb of Hawai’i.
There is a small mountain in Medugorje called Mt. Krizevac, located near a separate mountain where the visions of Mary appeared. Pilgrims hike the stations of the cross to the summit, where a large cement cross looks out over the valley and mountains beyond. I’ve found a bit of history on this particular mountain, making it special starting at least a few thousand years ago, but I’ll save that for another time. At my last visit here, I planned a poetry hike as part of a creative retreat for fellow artists. The inspiration for the selected poems is Mary’s Way, which is essentially the stations of the cross from Mary’s perspective. I wanted to go beyond the Bible in my own pilgrimage, and so chose 15 poems to read, one for each station, that I felt represented the feminine journey in the death and resurrection story. Below are the poems I chose for the hike, in case you want to take them along on a journey of your own.
I’d like to tell you more about Medugorje, but I’m still gathering research and sitting with what I’ve experienced there. There is perhaps no conclusion to draw about the place, but I certainly feel that something about being there nurtures a call deep within me, something that, at least for now, cannot be expressed in words on a screen.
For now, I offer you these poems and a small prayer for the sacred feminine within us all.
We all know what it is to be a mother. Whether we are mothers, have been mothered, or serve as containers for ancestral mothers, the sacred experience of bringing life into the world and holding it, is within. May we go out from here, honoring the powerful shadow places of the Divine Mother, as well as the stillness and patience of her nurturing spirit.
Creative Circle Poetry Hike
Inspired by “Mary’s Way” by Richard Furey
Station 1: Jesus is condemned to die
Perhaps the World Ends Here
BY JOY HARJO
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
"Perhaps the World Ends Here" from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Joy Harjo. Copyright © 1994 by Joy Harjo. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., www.wwnorton.com.
Source: The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1994)
Station 2: Jesus takes his cross
I Worried
by Mary Oliver
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.
Station 3: Jesus falls the first time
Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong
by Ocean Vuong
Ocean, don’t be afraid.
The end of the road is so far ahead
it is already behind us.
Don’t worry. Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets. Like how the spine
won’t remember its wings
no matter how many times our knees
kiss the pavement. Ocean,
are you listening? The most beautiful part
of your body is wherever
your mother's shadow falls.
Here's the house with childhood
whittled down to a single red trip wire.
Don't worry. Just call it horizon
& you'll never reach it.
Here's today. Jump. I promise it's not
a lifeboat. Here's the man
whose arms are wide enough to gather
your leaving. & here the moment,
just after the lights go out, when you can still see
the faint torch between his legs.
How you use it again & again
to find your own hands.
You asked for a second chance
& are given a mouth to empty out of.
Don't be afraid, the gunfire
is only the sound of people
trying to live a little longer
& failing. Ocean. Ocean —
get up. The most beautiful part of your body
is where it's headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world. Here's
the room with everyone in it.
Your dead friends passing
through you like wind
through a wind chime. Here's a desk
with the gimp leg & a brick
to make it last. Yes, here's a room
so warm & blood-close,
I swear, you will wake —
& mistake these walls
for skin.
Ocean Vuong, "Someday, I'll Love Ocean Vuong" from Night Sky With Exit Wounds. Copyright © 2016 by Ocean Vuong.
Source: Night Sky With Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2016)
Station 4: Jesus meets his grieving mother
On the Beach at Night
BY WALT WHITMAN
On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.
Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.
From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.
Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.
Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?
Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.
Station 5: Simon helps Jesus carry his cross
Käthe Kollwitz (part 1)
1
Held between wars
my lifetime
among wars, the big hands of the world of death
my lifetime
listens to yours.
The faces of the sufferers
in the street, in dailiness,
their lives showing
through their bodies
a look as of music
the revolutionary look
that says I am in the world
to change the world
my lifetime
is to love to endure to suffer the music
to set its portrait
up as a sheet of the world
the most moving the most alive
Easter and bone
and Faust walking among flowers of the world
and the child alive within the living woman, music of man,
and death holding my lifetime between great hands
the hands of enduring life
that suffers the gifts and madness of full life, on earth, in
our time,
and through my life, through my eyes, through my arms
and hands
may give the face of this music in portrait waiting for
the unknown person
held in the two hands, you.
Station 6: Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
Käthe Kollwitz (part III)
3
Held among wars, watching
all of them
all these people
weavers,
Carmagnole
Looking at
all of them
death, the children
patients in waiting-rooms
famine
the street
A woman seeing
the violent, inexorable
movement of nakedness
and the confession of No
the confession of great weakness, war,
all streaming to one son killed, Peter;
even the son left living; repeated,
the father, the mother; the grandson
another Peter killed in another war; firestorm;
dark, light, as two hands,
this pole and that pole as the gates.
What would happen if one woman told the truth about
her life?
The world would split open
Station 7: Jesus falls the second time
When I Rise Up
Georgia Douglas Johnson - 1880-1966
WHEN I RISE UP ABOVE THE EARTH,
AND LOOK DOWN ON THE THINGS THAT FETTER ME,
I BEAT MY WINGS UPON THE AIR,
OR TRANQUIL LIE,
SURGE AFTER SURGE OF POTENT STRENGTH
LIKE INCENSE COMES TO ME
WHEN I RISE UP ABOVE THE EARTH
AND LOOK DOWN UPON THE THINGS THAT FETTER ME.
This poem is in the public domain.
Station 8: Jesus speaks to the women
REMEMBER
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Station 9: Jesus falls the third time
FROM EAST COKER PART III
BY TS ELIOT
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away—Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepenLeaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Station 10: Jesus is stripped of his garments
brothers part 6
(being a conversation in eight poems between an aged Lucifer and God, though only Lucifer is heard. The time is long after.)
6
“the silence of God is God.”
—Carolyn Forche
tell me, tell us why
in the confusion of a mountain
of babies stacked like cordwood,
of limbs walking away from each other,
of tongues bitten through
by the language of assault,
tell me, tell us why
You neither raised your hand
Nor turned away, tell us why
You watched the excommunication
Station 11: Jesus is nailed to the cross
The Night Where You No Longer Live
Was it like lifting a veil
And was the grass treacherous, the green grass
Did you think of your own mother
Was it like a virus
Did the software flicker
And was this the beginning
Was it like that
Was there gas station food
and was it a long trip
And is there sun there
or drones
or punishment
or growth
Was it a blackout
And did you still create me
And what was I like on the first day of my life
Were we two from the start
And was our time an entrance
or an ending
Did we stand in the heated room
Did we look at the painting
Did the snow appear cold
Were our feet red with it, with the wet snow
And then what were our names
Did you love me or did I misunderstand
Is it terrible
Do you intend to come back
Do you hear the world’s keening
Will you stay the night
Source: Poetry (November 2015)
Station 12: Jesus Dies on the Cross
the apple tree
by wendell berry
In the essential prose
of things, the apple tree
stands up, emphatic
among the accidents
of the afternoon, solvent,
not to be denied.
The grass has been cut
down, carefully
to leave the orange
poppies still in bloom;
the tree stands up
in the odor of the grass
drying. The forked
trunk and branches are
also a kind of necessary
prose—shingled with leaves,
pigment and song
imposed on the blunt
ligaments of fact, a foliage
of small birds among them.
The tree lifts itself up
in the garden, the
clutter of its green
leaves halving the light,
stating the unalterable
congruity and form
of its casual growth;
the crimson finches appear
and disappear, singing
among the design.
Station 13: Jesus is taken from the cross
Continue
by Maya Angelou
On the day of your birth
The Creator filled countless storehouses and stockings
With rich ointments
Luscious tapestries
And antique coins of incredible value
Jewels worthy of a queen’s dowry
They were set aside for your use
Alone
Armed with faith and hope
And without knowing of the wealth which awaited
You broke through dense walls
of poverty
And loosed the chains of ignorance which
threatened to cripple you so that you
could walk
A Free Woman
Into a world which needed you
My wish for you
Is that you continue
Continue
To be who and how you are
To astonish a mean world
With your acts of kindness
Continue
To allow humor to lighten the burden
of your tender heart
Continue
In a society dark with cruelty
To let the people hear the grandeur
Of God in the peals of your laughter
Continue
To let your eloquence
Elevate the people to heights
They had only imagined
Continue
To remind the people that
Each is as good as the other
And that no one is beneath
Nor above you
Continue
To remember your own young years
And look with favor upon the lost
And the least and the lonely
Continue
To put the mantel of your protection
Around the bodies of
The young and defenseless
Continue
To take the hand of the despised
And diseased and walk proudly with them
In the high street
Some might see you and
Be encouraged to do likewise
Continue
To plant a public kiss of concern
On the cheek of the sick
And the aged and infirm
And count that as a
Natural action to be expected
Continue
To let gratitude be the pillow
Upon which you kneel to
Say your nightly prayer
And let faith be the bridge
You build to overcome evil
And welcome good
Continue
To ignore no vision
Which comes to enlarge your range
And increase your spirit
Continue
To dare to love deeply
And risk everything
For the good thing
Continue
To float
Happily in the sea of infinite substance
Which set aside riches for you
Before you had a name
Continue
And by doing so
You and your work
Will be able to continue
Eternally
Station 14: Jesus is placed in the tomb
Essay
by Semezdin Mehmedinovic
This evening walk deserves a poem.
A plane gleaming over the suburbs
Sinks into the bluish dusk.
Wires spark over the trollies.
A woman who lost her earring
Comes back up the street looking for it.
Feel sorrow for her suddenly.
For the boy looking at himself
In the bell of his bicycle.
For the old man on the bridge, waving to me:
“How is it possible that a river can dry up
in this best of all possible worlds?”
Finally
For the pattern of freckles
On my mother’s face
While she assures me as we walk
That God is wherever I think of him.
Station 15: Jesus is raised from the dead
excerpt from A Ritual
by Nyuma Waggeh
Prayer
If this is a prison,
I want to stay with her,
be with her,
pray to her.
If this is an act of God,
may I praise thee in glory.
Oya, protect me from thyself to
Never leave you in this life or the next.
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
& the difference to know that with you I am never alone
In my times of need. I call to you to remove anything that no longer serves me, the scythe out all the dead leaves weighing me down so I can too,
Channel my growth and bloom. To flourish like you, my goddess. Help me transform the turbulent storms into a calming ocean, to appreciate both, love both, be both. Ase.
From the Black Trans Prayer Book.