Rosary divine female empowerment
My mom is the best worrier. But I’m no slouch. I learned how at her knee. The tutorial was on a continuous loop. But when my mother worries, she prays the rosary. The beads calm her. Her faith sustains her. She wants them to soothe me, too. But after years of Catholic programming, I reject the rosary and religion of my birth.
“Please say the rosary,” she begs. “It’ll help you. Don’t think of it as Catholic. Think of it as meditation. That’s what praying the Rosary is: repeating words like a mantra. You believe in that stuff. So, try it. For me.”
She knows my faith journey has led me to more spiritual Eastern beliefs than the dogmatic Christianity of my youth. She reminds me that many religions incorporate beads, the word meaning prayer in Old English. My mother hands me her deceased mother’s rosary, which I stash away.
Fifteen years ago
My mother lies comatose in the hospital, succumbing to brain cancer. Her spirit neither on this plane or the next, she lingers. And I linger at her bedside, wondering how to help her. I’ve done everything imaginable … except pray the rosary.
I begin slowly with the Hail Mary, then the Our Father. Although not recited for years, the rosary takes shape in my mouth. I return to my Catholic roots, the words hauntingly familiar and right for the time.
“Now and at the hour of our death.”
I pray over her motionless body. I don’t know whether it’s for her or me. It doesn’t matter. My 89-year-old mother is finally getting her wish: Her daughter is praying the rosary.
Two years ago
My dog, Dolly Lama, is hemorrhaging externally. A culture is taken to determine if it’s cancer. It will be two days before I get the results.
I find my mother’s rosary. I kiss the cross as I’d seen my paternal grandmother do and place it under Dolly ’s bed. To harness the Divine Feminine, I
ask for intervention from Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene and Quan Yin, the goddess of compassion. The rosary, after all, pays homage to a woman.
“Blessed art thou amongst women.”
The next morning, for the first time in three days, Dolly stops bleeding. My Reiki master, whose aid I’d also enlisted, tells me, “The Holy Mother is surrounding Dolly with pink light to help her heal.” I then tell her of my entreaty to the Holy
Mother and strategic placement of the rosary. When the veterinarian calls with a prescription to treat three co-infections, she’s surprised the bleeding stopped without medication.
I’m not.
Nine months ago
I receive an email invitation to join a Virtual Rosary Circle. I question why this friend, who shares my aversion to allthings-catholic, would send it to me. I delete it. And then, reconsider.
The Virtual Rosary Circle is organized by Carolyn Myss, a best-selling author on spirituality, mysticism and intuitive medicine — practices I embrace. Her reason for forming the online group states, in part: There is a calmness to repetitive holy prayers structured around beads … This prayer circle is about our living, breathing connection to each other … World turmoil and the coronavirus have caused me to consider different types of spiritual interventions and healing. I find myself seeking solace in unexpected ways.
I join the Circle and invite others.
Three months ago
With time on my hands due to the pandemic, I decide to spruce up my yard. I hose down statues of angels, birds, Buddha, Quan Yin and Saint Francis, and touch them up with paint. For the first time, I notice a rosary hanging from Saint Francis’ belt.
Skeptical, I research the possibility of Francis owning a rosary. In the early 1200s, Saint Dominic claimed that Mary presented him with a rosary and corresponding prayers. Francis died in 1226, so the inclusion might not be totally anthropomorphic. Before that, supplicants used pebbles and knotted ropes to track prayer recitations.
I stop resisting and start honoring the rosary ’s significance in my life. I paint Francis’ beads gold; I chuckle thinking such adornment might offend this saint who gave up wealth to live in poverty. But I realize I can integrate the rosary into my spiritual practice my own way. In the garden, I want the rosary highly visible to remind me of its accessibility and power.
Today
I can’t say I’ve developed a personal relationship with the rosary as my worry reliever. I can’t explain its transformative potential. But my mother was right: Rosary beads can be a meditative tool for reciting blessings, worries, affirmations or supplications. Its potential lies in believing in something bigger than we are, drawing on a higher power that can lend support and transform a bad situation into something manageable because we aren’t alone.
The Lord is with thee — however we interpret “Lord.”
What matters is that we ask, that we invite divine intervention to ease our suffering. Dolly now sleeps with my mother’s rosary under her bed. My grandmother’s rosary is under my pillow.
Hail Mary, full of Grace.