The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary
by Clark Strand and Perdita Finn
A few months ago while picking up a few novels at my favourite secondhand bookshop, my eye also landed on this beautiful book, The Way of the Rose. I instinctively added it to the pile and recall thinking simultaneously that I couldn’t imagine reading a book about the rosary (my Catholic upbringing being long gone) and yet feeling there was something about it that was so invitational I just had to take it with me. Thank goodness I honoured that impulse. It was a good reminder that when we follow our instincts we’re often more richly rewarded than we could’ve imagined.
The book begins with the question: ‘How does an ex-Buddhist monk who isn’t a Catholic, and no longer even considers himself nominally a Christian, end up praying the rosary?’ Fortunately this gets answered beautifully by the rather contemporary combo of seasoned author, Clark Strand, and his wife, Perdita Finn, also a seasoned writer – and ex-Catholic and former Buddhist.
The Way of the Rose takes us on the journey of their own, very unexpected discovery of the rosary. Early on we hear about Strand’s encounter with an apparition of the Virgin Mary, a profound and personal experience shared so generously here. As it happens, apparitions of the Virgin Mary date back thousands of years, but the number of times she has appeared in modern times has increased exponentially. And ‘wherever she appeared, with few exceptions she asked people to pray the rosary. She asked everybody to pray the rosary’ says Strand.
Throughout the book are the messages Strand has received from ‘Our Lady’ as he’s journeyed with this wise presence, many of which refer to the vulnerable state of the planet and the future of the natural world. It is a cautionary tale indeed as far as taking serious care of our planet is concerned. Another strong thread throughout the book is the understanding that the Goddess has been worshipped since Palaeolithic times, if not for millennia. Finn and Strand’s passion for historical knowledge is evident and their clarification of the meaning of the word ‘virgin’ alone is essential reading.
The Way of the Rose
Following some practical guidelines on how to say the rosary are small chapters taking us through many wisdoms that follow the cadence of the ‘five decades’ of the rosary – many of which hold so much profundity that I found myself feeling full to the brim after reading just one or two. It’s a bit like a rich meal that you want to take your time over so I found myself reading the book very slowly over many weeks as I let the messages arrive with me fully and soak into my Being.
In Part three of the book, the words of the Mother as received by Strand, are captured and hold profound and essential messages for us.
“Follow Me, and I will lead you to the treasure that is real. It is a very short journey, and its direction is down – back to your Mother, back to basics, back to the Earth from which you came.”
I’d been reading in snippets for perhaps six weeks, with around 100 pages to go when I felt the impulse to pick up a rosary. My mother had given me hers the week before after I’d been telling her about this compelling and uplifting book. That first journey around the 59 beads of the rosary, on a typical Tuesday morning, was truly profound for me.
My grandmother Lil prayed the rosary for much of her life. To me it always seemed like a constructed religious ritual. It turns out the rosary was a practice and handed down through oral tradition tens of thousands of years before Christianity arrived and the Catholic Church adjusted it to suit the edicts of their hierarchy. Throughout all of this time, the Mother, Our Lady, who Strand describes as ‘the mother at the bottom of everything’, was there for all of it. There for us. And I feel her presence so profoundly.
Whether you have any curiosity in the rosary or not, there is so much in this book beyond an intriguing story, personal memoir and many fascinating historical facts. It’s deeply comforting. It feels like a guidebook for the world. It feels like a homecoming – or as if our Mother of Mothers has come home to us.
“In the beginning was the Word,’ says the Gospel of John. But the truth is, words came later. In the beginning was the rose.”
Needless to say, I am so grateful this book crossed my path and is now in my hands whenever I choose to pick it up. I’m so grateful too to the authors for sharing so generously their experiences and this wisdom.
Each of our spiritual journeys is so individual and unique. There aren’t many things I know for sure, but one thing is: there is no one path to God or our inner Divinity. The best we can do is follow the trail of messengers and messages that cross our path, whilst continually tuning into our inner wisdom that wants to guide us, more deeply with every breath we take.
The soul is our own personal Divine guidance, working in concert with the Divine mother-father to guide our lives.
I’ve been reflecting on how we seem to be reclaiming our Divine Mother, but in fact it occurs to me now that in fact she was always here, and is perhaps now, even more thoroughly than ever before, reclaiming us.
Karen x
“Over and over again we repeat the words of the Hail Mary and the Our Father. The syllables become vibrations that resonate within our bodies. By murmuring the prayers of the rosary, we activate the primordial alchemy that weds sun and matter, light and darkness, father and mother, and calls forth the life from within each of us.”