Spirituality
Rosaries focus on sacred creation
By SHARON ABERCROMBIE
Prayer beads, an ancient method for
keeping track of one’s religious recitations and meditations, are evolving
to keep pace with the expanding of spiritual consciousness about our
planet.
Internationally, the shift manifested itself in October when Pope
John Paul II announced the beginning of a “Year of the Rosary” by
adding five new mysteries dedicated to events from Jesus’ public life.
Called the Mysteries of Light, the new rosary theme focuses on Christ’s
baptism, first miracle, his preaching ministry, transfiguration and his
institution of the Eucharist.
Individuals who are drawn to the ecological spirituality movement
now have their own special prayer beads as well. These rosaries are shaped
around a growing awareness of the inherent sacredness of the Earth, of the
Universe itself -- beginning with the original “Mystery of Light” --
the transfiguration of what had been nothingness into the “Big Bang,”
that first spark of vast radiance that set the universe into motion.
Passionist Srs. Gail Worcelo and Bernadette Bostwick have named
their rosary “Earth Prayer Beads.” Paula Hendrick has named hers,
“The Cosmic Rosary.” Connie Barlow and Michael Dowd have dubbed
theirs “Great Story Beads.”
Amazingly enough, neither the nuns nor Paula Hendrick knew of the
other’s rosary. Each rosary evolved independently -- a phenomenon Connie
Barlow sees as an example of parallel evolution -- the same thing happening
independently in several places, at about the same time. “It’s the
Earth calling forth these ways of being,” reflected Barlow, a science
writer and author of The Ghosts of Evolution. This calling forth has
been an interfaith one. Only Worcelo and Bostwick are Catholic.
The cofounders of the Green Mountain Ecozoic Monastery near
Weston, Vt., in 1999, they were the first to hear the call. They had felt drawn
to create a special prayer form that individuals could use to focus on the
healing of Earth. So, tapping into their Catholic heritage, they designed a set
of wrist-sized Earth Prayer Beads modeled on the ancient Christian beggar
beads. The Anglo-Saxon term for bead, bede, means “to beg.”
St. Augustine, once said, “We are all beggars before God,” explained
Worcelo.
The sisters’ Earth Prayer Beads are 15 handcrafted blue and
green orbs, each bead representing a billion years in the unfolding story of
the universe, “of which we are a part,” Worcelo said. The central
bead of the little rosary is a square, which draws upon the ancient and the
contemporary at the same time. The bead carries an image of a fish, “the
ancient symbol for Christ and a reminder in our time of the depletion of the
fisheries of the planet,” said Worcelo.
Ecozoic Monastery
A group of volunteers from Weston make the beads to support the
sisters’ Ecozoic Monastery, which is used for earth-based workshops and
retreats. The crafters use hemp for their handmade bead bags, and the set sells
for $15. “Our intention is to bring the power of prayer to bear upon the
needs of our planet. The journey around the beads is a way to awaken to the
presence of the Divine within the total sacred community of life,” she
said.
Earth Bead creators pray and fast as they make the rosaries.
“We do this with the intention that Earth may know healing and that as
human we might manifest expressions of harmony and integration in this world,
for the sake of all life and thus become conscious participants in the
evolutionary process.”
At the sisters’ kitchen table, volunteers hand roll the beads
from four colors of a low-temperature baking clay. The beads are fired in their
oven.
So far, “we’ve rolled over 32,000 beads,” said
Worcelo. More than 2,000 sets of the beads have made their way all over the
world, throughout the United States. Ireland, England, India, Africa, New
Zealand and the Philippines, “and to places we don’t even know
about,” said Worcelo.
In July 2001, as the Vermont rosary makers made their beads, more
than halfway across the United States in Seattle, Paula Hendrick was conducting
one of her women’s Earth Story circles. She had just finished leading the
“Spiral Walk,” a moving meditation created by Genesis Farm founder
Caldwell Dominican Sr. Miriam MacGillis. Participants doing the walking
meditation move to different stations, symbolizing the evolutionary path of
creation.
When Hendrick asked for feedback, one woman wondered if the
meditation could be done privately, in the confines of a small space. Well, why
not put the walk into a rosary format, suggested two Catholics. The women
explained that the Catholic rosary is a meditation based upon significant
events in the lives of Jesus and Mary, through the Joyful, Sorrowful and
Glorious Mysteries. Why not make a set of beads to keep track of significant
events in the evolution of the universe, from the Big Bang through star and
planet formation, the beginnings of biological life and onward?
Their idea sounded good to Hendrick. She knew about prayer beads,
having spent time with Seattle’s large Sufi community. So the three women
went shopping for beads. They scoured local stores and garage sales, finding
one treasure after another. They found a large, colorful bead that could pass
for the supernova explosions that created the carbon element out of which life
formed. They fell in love with a bunch of little trinkets shaped like stars,
birds, turtles, flowers, dinosaurs and crescent moons. Returning with their
bounty, they went to work.
Supplied with wire cutters, wire, pliers, thread, beads and
imagination, each woman made a rosary, telling the universe story in her own
way. “We loved it,” said Hendrick.
Each of them realized that the act of creating a set of prayer
beads was as meaningful as the follow-up meditation. Hendrick especially was
taken with the process. She began collecting more beads. Her mom opened up her
jewelry box to further the cause.
When Paula Hendrick began giving away her cosmic rosaries to
friends, the recipients asked her to teach them how to make their own.
Since then, Hendrick has conducted numerous classes.
For her own spiritual practice, she uses the cosmic rosary as
“an aid for centering and reflecting.” Sometimes she wears it as a
necklace. It serves as a great conversation starter, reported Hendrick. When
people ask about it, she invites them to sign up for her Earth Story circles,
where she has since incorporated a rosary-making session into the curriculum.
She recently put up a Web site to help people create their own rosaries. It
even has timelines spelling out significant evolutionary steps such as the
creation of dinosaurs, oxygen, flowers, birds and humans.
“For some people, the universe story is brand new, so they
follow a very simple timeline. For others, it’s an opportunity to get
‘hands on’ with something they’ve studied. The bottom line is
everyone learns that our scientific story of the universe is a sacred
story,” said Hendrick.
From Seattle, the Cosmic Rosary wound its way back to the East
Coast. Hendrick sent one to her friend, Connie Barlow. But all the glass beads
got smashed en route, so Barlow went shopping for replacements. “And then,
one thing led to another,” she confessed.
Barlow, a board member of the American Teihard Association and
founding member of the Epic of Evolution Society, invited her minister husband,
Michael Dowd, to accompany her. Neither had ever had the opportunity to pray
the Catholic rosary, or any other variety, for that matter.
Caught up in creation’s
magic
Barlow calls herself a “religious naturalist,” and Dowd
is an ordained member of the Unitarian Universalist denomination. In 1991 he
wrote Earthspirit: A Handbook for Nurturing Ecological Christianity, one
of the first major works to popularize the epic of evolution for Christians. It
looks at the core tenets of Christianity from the perspective of the new
cosmology.
By the time the pair had finished stringing their own rosaries,
they became caught up in the magic of the creative process. Dowd saw how
sacramental it could be as well. “This is a way to not only celebrate
Jesus’ story, but everybody else’s sacred story, as well,” he
exclaimed.
“Caught up” might be too mild a description for
Dowd’s enthusiasm. He has since made a Great Story Rosary with 270 beads.
Like some Franciscans or Dominicans, he wears it at his waist when he conducts
church services.
The Great Story beads go with this couple during their travels.
Since last April they have been traveling around the country in their van to
teach the Great Story to anyone who will listen. The couple is using their
savings for this new ministry. They depend upon the generosity of their hosts
and audiences to provide food and shelter. They are speaking to adults and
children in churches, schools, convents, colleges and at private gatherings.
The beads are always there during their presentations. “Our point is that
the Universe Story is not ‘out there.’ It’s our story,
too,” said Dowd, who added that he and his wife hoped to bring it to
mainstream America.
Like Paula Hendrick, Barlow wears her rosary as a necklace.
“Pick a bead, any bead and I’ll tell you its story,” she
said.
There are no rigid rules for making one’s own Cosmic, Earth
or Great Story Beads. As Hendrick, Barlow and Dowd point out, the expanding
universe is the limit. Beginners on the journey can use Jennifer Morgan’s
new book for children, Born With a Bang, for ideas. Barlow and Dowd
suggest adding beads symbolizing the birth of significant religious figures,
personal histories, and even one’s own birthday.
The birthday piece made Sonya Shoptaugh perk up when she attended
one of Dowd and Barlow’s workshops. Shoptaugh knew about prayer beads
because she is a practicing Buddhist. Each April, the Washington D.C. resident
celebrates her birthday by returning to Mendocino County, Calif. -- “my
spiritual home, the place where the land meets the water, the place where I
feel most at peace.”
Shoptaugh learned about the great story rosary “just as
[Dowd] was making his,” she recalled. Shoptaugh decided she needed to make
one, too. Dowd sent her to the same bead shop he had gone to. “They gave
me a discount,” said the teacher/writer/photographer.
Last April, Shoptaugh arrived in Mendocino County with a supply of
beads. “I strung my beads starting with the Divine, and the beginning of
the universe as we know it, continuing through time where my life becomes a
part of the strand. … I felt in an emotional and physical way my place in
the stream of things. I honored the birth of plants, when water first came into
existence, the coming of frogs and trees. I felt at a core level how my birth
is part of a long lineage of births and deaths and births.”
When she finished making her rosary, she dunked the beads in the
ocean as “a symbolic blessing and christening, sanctifying the strand in
the waters of my spiritual home. I put them on proudly, feeling both the
solidarity of connection to Earth as well as the fragility of my singular
existence. I am humbled and honored to have a place in the evolution of
life.”
Shoptaugh said that when she holds the beads in her hands, she
prays for “humanity and myself to awaken to the responsibility bestowed
upon us to be wise stewards of the Earth’s resources. My passion for
Earth, social action, science and God has combined together in the Universe
Story rosary.”
Meanwhile, back in Weston, Vt., the Sisters of the Green Mountain
Ecozoic Monastery are embarking upon a new project. They are creating an
expanded version of the Earth Rosary, using the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious
mysteries to trace the evolution of the Universe.
Their Sorrowful Mysteries are especially heart wrenching. They
cover global warming, starvation, war, commodification of water, nuclear
weapons, globalization, species extinction and torture.
The sisters have also added another decade -- “The Evolving
Nature” of the human being. They hope that humans will evolve to the level
of a “cosmic consciousness” that will one day do away with all the
evils of the Sorrowful Mysteries.
The sisters continue to pray their Earth Rosary fervently these
days: “Given the direction our country is going in regarding war, we all
need to pull out our prayer beads and petition the Divine double time,”
said Sr. Gail Worcelo.
Sharon Abercrombie is a free-lance writer who lives in Oakland,
Calif.
National Catholic Reporter, December 13,
2002
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