Our Lady of the Stones

1.

Several months ago when the impending election was igniting the mediasphere, in a divination I received a message to look to Our Lady for support in weathering the tumultuous times to come.

Stella Maris has been with me for decades, and I cherish the relationship I have forged with her. But this Mother, She felt...different. Like the same eternal spirit of Our Lady, but wearing a different garment. 

When I joined the Way of the Rose group on Facebook and read Clark Strand's book that planted the wild sacred garden of souls who pray the rosary together, my relationship and understanding of Our Lady expanded in new, surprising, and delightful ways. Having been brought up without religion as a formative influence, the community of practitioners in this group is such a supportive, fruitful and soul-nourishing place. I drift in and out of the group like Stella Maris' tide, but always to find hidden gems of wisdom, compassion, and epiphany.

On January 16, Perdita Finn posted an entry to "Our Lady Speaks" that rocked my world, all puns intended.

“I have given you a world you cannot lose because I have given you TO that world—to live and to die in, and to be reborn endlessly in its embrace. But the simplest way to know this is to find a stone. Pick it up and hold it, and turn to it when all else fails. Your ancestors understood the wisdom of stones and trusted them on their long, long journey through time. You can trust that wisdom even now. Nothing has truly changed.”

Many, many years ago when I was a teenager, I had a dream so vivid and revelatory I've never forgotten it. In it, I was standing on a beach with a man who was writing a poem with a long stick in the sand. I watched every letter and word that was formed, and when I woke I wrote it down in a state of awe.

"If you are in peace today, 

It is my birthday.

In this Piscean peace,

The stone you hold in your hand

Holds me turn."

I've never published that poem anywhere before, though I have shared it with a few soul companions over the years. For so long I have held those mysterious words as personally sacred to me, without ever truly understanding what they meant. I'd always thought they referred to Christ on some level, but now I have not a shred of doubt they are Our Lady's words. When I read Perdita's post, it was as if a light shone back through all those years, stirring up shimmering dust motes until they found my dream poem and lifted it up into my consciousness again.

A holy revelation.

2.

Since I moved to Maine 14 months ago I've been looking for a statue of Our Lady. We live on 4 acres of oak, maple, pine, and cedar forest, on moss-dappled granite ridges not too far from the coast, and I could just envision her in a forest shrine, surrounded by these elements. I've been scouring Marketplace online, local vintage shops, and thrift stores hoping that She would present herself to me, but nothing had yet materialized. 

The morning after "Our Lady Speaks" was posted, my husband and I went on a little adventure in our hometown hitting some local galleries and a sprawling antique mall housed in an old farmhouse. We pored through the individual stalls, picking up this and that, thinking about what might be a quaint addition to our still new-to-us home. I found an old chalkware statue of Mary that had taken some hits over the years, but she wasn't really calling to me.

Just as we were closing in on the last corner of the antique mall, I saw a seller that had a large number of quartz clusters on display, and a big brass pot filled with large chunky points. Being the crystal magpie that I am, I rifled through the pot looking for a price sticker, but there were none. The only price tag was attached to the pot handle and said "pot of quartz $15." I assumed that the individual chunks were $15 each, so I chose a pretty one, took a photo of the tag and brought it up to the checkout counter. 

After a quick call to the vendor, it was confirmed that no, it was in fact $15 for the pot and ALL THE CRYSTALS in it. I was beside myself with joy, as anyone who shops for crystals these days knows you can hardly find a single small crystal point for $15. So home we went, me practically skipping with my magic pot of crystals. I set them out on my balcony to soak in the moonlight and catch a bit of much needed rain to purify the energetic clutter and cacophony of the antique mall.

3.

The next morning, I opened Facebook to find a Marketplace notification that new items matching my "virgin mary" search had been posted. So naturally, I clicked.

At the top of the feed, there She was. A beautiful vintage concrete statue rescued from the All Souls Chapel in Poland Springs about an hour away. I was convinced She was there for me, and excitedly made the arrangements to pick her up. 

She is stunning, 80 pounds of weathered concrete coming in at 33" high. With arms outstretched she stands on a seamed half-dome that looks to have been repaired at some point in her lifespan of 65 years. I managed to lift her into the passenger seat of my Tacoma and seatbelt her in for the drive home, beaming the whole way. 

It was then I remembered the pot of crystals and Perdita's post from the Way of the Rose, and She affirmed her epithet: Our Lady of the Stones.

Here you can see her with my first offering of crystal chunks from the magic pot. 

4.

There is a curious area nestled on the land behind our house on the north stretch of the property. It may have once been a deer stand, or a child's treehouse, secret garden or play area. We've found a lot of dilapidated structures on the property, and a LOT of trash buried beneath layers of leaves, treefall, and debris. I see why this particular space was casually used for various things over the years: it's directly behind the house, well past the septic field and subtly enclosed by trees and boulders. It's littered with wood scraps, old planter boxes, crumpled half-buried garden wire fencing and decaying scraps of old tent fabric and plywood. When we first walked the land as new homeowners we were frustrated and saddened by the decades of refuse and trash the previous owners had left haphazardly all over the property, and frankly at a loss as to how to haul it all away uphill and through the forest.

But there, half hidden amidst the careless debris of humans is a majestic granite boulder. I know this is where Our Lady of the Stones will preside, and I'm already making plans for when the snow melts to roll up the proverbial sleeves and start hauling trash and dissembling the dilapidated structure for her shrine.

I envision adding beautiful stones to this shrine over the coming months and years, until she stands surrounded by a sparkling array of stones, crystals, rocks, and minerals. Even as her concrete form begins to break down by rain, snow, pollen, moss and the graceful entropy of the forest, the stones will remain, a testament to her eternal presence.

In the meanwhile, she is blessing my balcony, surrounded by chunks of local quartz and dusted with our first real snow of 2025. May she hold us all as we move forward into the terrifying unknown.