Litany

As a musician, my father was seldom home in the evenings, but on his nights off he often led us in saying the Rosary. My mother, her two sisters, and I would sit in the dining room while he walked up and down, beads in hand. The Rosary consists of five Our Fathers and fifty Hail Marys. How long does it take to say all those prayers? If you’re a kid, half your life.

“Why do I have to say those same words over and over?” I ask my mother.

“You’re supposed to meditate on the lives of Jesus and the Virgin Mary,” she says.

“But it’s boring!”

“Shhh. Your father’s about to begin.”

I stare at the bread crumbs from dinner that litter the yellow tiles under the table. The maid is waiting in her room for us to finish saying the Rosary so she can sweep and go to bed. I glance at my mother’s stockings, which she has rolled like donuts around her ankles to keep them from getting runs, and decide that when I’m allowed to wear stockings I will never roll them like that. I envy my father, who is allowed to walk while he prays, instead of having to sit still.

After the last Hail Mary is said, however, there is a reward: the Litany of the Virgin Mary, a list of fifty epithets of the Mother of God, which my father recites in Latin. After each name, we respond in chorus, ora pro nobis (pray for us).

Here is a sample:

Speculum iustitiae (Mirror of justice)

Sedes sapientiae (Seat of wisdom)

Causa nostrae laetitiae (Cause of our joy)

Rosa mystica (Mystical rose)

Turris eburnea (Tower of ivory)

Stella matutina (Morning star)

I don’t know why this list of names thrills me. Years later I realize that they have  something in common with Homeric epithets such as “white-armed Hera,” and “bright-eyed Athena.” At age nine, though, I have not yet heard of Homer, and I don’t know Latin. I can make out a few words, but even if I understood all of them I would find them puzzling: what is a tower of ivory, or a mirror of justice, and what do they have to do with the Virgin Mary?

But I love the rhythm of the Litany, my father with his raspy smoker’s voice pacing in synch with the names, and us responding ora pro nobis, ora pro nobis. On and on go the names, Mother of our Creator, Virgin most powerful….And this  extraordinary collection of praises is dedicated to a woman—one who as a teenager was visited by an angel, which was just the first of a series of amazing things that happened to her.

And now that She is in Heaven, sitting between God the Father and her Son, Jesus, with the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove hovering above her head, She looks down upon me kindly (Virgin most merciful) and with special understanding, because she was once a girl like me.

The presence of this quasi-divine Lady in the heaven of my childhood gives me something that the images of God the Father, with his white beard, and God the Son, with his brown beard, could never give me: a sense of identification with the divine feminine that puts me in the ancient lineage of females—Babylonian girls praying to Ishtar, Egyptian mothers praising Isis, Greek wives sacrificing to Hera—who, from time immemorial, have sought help and consolation from the Mother of us all.

Snake At My Back Door

Two steps made of thick slabs of West Pawlet slate, flanked by overgrown bushes of ornamental sage, lead to our backyard. I'd been smelling a lot of sage on Wolfie lately, and noticing that the bushes were looking trampled.

Yesterday I watched him snuffing in those bushes, then rearing back as though zapped by something, then snuffing again. I looked closely and there she was, brown and dry and curled up loosely upon herself--the snake. She was just under an inch in girth, and she resented the dog for interfering with her sunbathing.

I guess our back stoop is a perfect snake habitat: two slabs of south-facing slate, and a tub garden within easy reach.

I'm assuming that this is a black snake, harmless to humans and pets. I'm hoping that, come fall, she will stem the waves of field mice immigrating into our basement. My only concern is that she will eat the toads that are precious to my garden. Otherwise, I'm glad to give her a home.

“I will put enmity between thee and the woman,” Jehovah said to the snake as Paradise disintegrated. Well, here is one woman (me) who doesn't feel a particular enmity toward the snake tribe. Why should I? I've never been stung by a viper, nor strangled by a python. The snakes I have met have peered at me with their clever little eyes, shown me their curious forked tongues, and slithered away discreetly.

For eons before anybody wrote about Jehovah, the snake was sacred to the Goddess. Remember those Cretan statuettes in their flamenco skirts and amazing decolletages, holding snakes in their hands? They don't look to me like they're struggling with the snakes, or fighting with them. They're having a good time, and so are the snakes. And then the patriarchy came on the scene, and messed things up.

The Virgin Mary is often depicted with her foot on the head of a snake, who is holding an apple in her mouth. But is that really enmity? If Mary's foot were really crushing her skull, wouldn't the snake be struggling, looking wounded, or curling up the Virgin's leg? Would she still be hanging on to the apple?

If the Virgin Mary is who I think She is, Her foot is delivering a friendly pat, the snake is relaxed, and the apple from the Tree Of Knowledge is full of vitamins.

As for the snake in my back stoop, she's welcome to stay, and I hope the winter is kind to her.

Goddess Making Potpourri

Earth Goddess With Goats

She's been talking to me.

Peasant Madonnas

In my native Catalonia, as in much of Europe, the countryside is dotted with shrines to local statues of the Virgin Mary. These are very old (Romanesque era), or copies of very old sculptures, and some of them are black. The most famous, Our Lady of Montserrat, is affectionately known in Catalan as La Moreneta, The Little Dark One, because both she and the Infant she carries are black.

My parents were married, and I had my first communion, at another such shrine, this one much smaller than Montserrat, dedicated to Our Lady of the Fields. The shrine is a one-room whitewashed church adjoining the sacristan's house. And next to that is a spring. This Virgin is not black, and the statue is a copy of a copy of a copy, but she has the same fierce, other-worldly look as the others, and the same story.

The story of what I call the “peasant Madonnas” is, with small variations, always the same. A peasant, or a shepherd, or a woodcutter takes refuge from the sun under some trees by a spring. As he rests, he becomes aware of a Presence amidst the foliage, a Lady who asks him to build her a shrine on that very spot, and then vanishes. The peasant/shepherd/woodcutter takes off for the village, where he breathlessly tells his tale. The priest, the mayor, and a crowd of villagers follow him to the spring, and there they find the statue of the Virgin.

The priest alerts the bishop, the mayor tells the governor, and among them they decide that the spring is no place for the Virgin and her shrine. She needs to be in a more public, more formal, more important spot. She needs to be in town.

But when they go to fetch the statue, she becomes so heavy that the strongest men, with the biggest horses, cannot budge her. So the notables throw up their hands and build the shrine right where she wants it.

Who are these peasant Madonnas? Why are there so many of them, and why do they favor trees and springs? Why do they insist on staying in the countryside?

The word “peasant” has the same root as “pagan,” which originally meant “country-dweller,” the countryside being the last refuge of the old religions. When Christianity eventually evicted the naiads and dryads and satyrs, the country-dwelling Madonnas took over, guarding the old sacred spots—under trees, near springs—and offering the toiling peasant a place of rest and refreshment.

Whether they are dryads in disguise, or manifestations of the Goddess Herself, I think of these country Madonnas, stubbornly clinging to their bit of earth, as the patron saints of environmentalists. They affirm the sacredness of wild spaces and invite us to share their mystery.

There is a huge old pine tree on a south-facing slope in our woods. Whenever I go by it, I look around its roots and up into its branches, hoping for a glimpse of something—I don't know what—that I wish were there.