saint mary

saint mary - 48x48

These old beads on a chain came to me one winter when I went to the Holy Land. The Rosary was on table of used stuff at an outdoor market in the old port of Jaffa, in Israel. I was officially "on sabbatical" but there was a much deeper truth behind that word and why I was there. Maybe it was no accident that I found myself in Jaffa, where Jonah went to sea to run away from God. I don't know why I bought the Rosary. I just knew that it was supposed to come home with me.

The next year I was living in California where I painted this picture of Mary on a sheet of marine plywood over the course of two (almost) sleepless nights. I had a terrific urge to paint Mary after an encounter with a marvelously difficult person left me feeling poisoned. This is the first painting I did with a knife instead of a brush. I hung it on the wall of the main hall at St. Mary’s-by-the-Sea in Pacific Grove where I would see her every morning when I came to work. She always made me feel stronger and less alone, even though of you look closely you can see that she is (half) crying. A friend made some card copies of the painting with words of The Magnificat on the other side: “My soul magnifies the “LORD….”

Years later, I found myself back in Maine. In early December I unpacked a box, looking for a book I was missing, and I found the Rosary. I learned to pray with it. It was both liberating and humbling to say the prayers in the same words of whoever owned the Rosary before. The chain that holds the beads of each prayer reminds me of an anchor rode that holds the ship in a safe place. It tangibly conveys the sense that events are connected in ways that we can't always see.

This could merely be the result of chemistry doing its meaningless mechanics in my brain, to bring together such a sentimental notion. There is nothing about the dispassionate explanation to argue with - except its utter incompleteness. Somehow I know that the real truth is so much better than that.