In the summer of 2021, I sat on the strange, artificial “sand” of what we call Belleayre Beach.
It’s a frigid mountain pond at the base of a Catskill Mountain ski resort, and in the month of August, when you cannot bear the thought of the town pool and the next trip to the ocean is still weeks away, it’s a man-made bit of heaven.
While other mothers were passing out juice boxes, I was deep into The Way of Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary. Looking up to make sure the kids were safe in the boundaried area by the lifeguards, I’d reach into my backpack to touch the cheap pearlescent beads my mom had bought for me in Rome just a few months before she died.
I think I gave Mom “a look” when she presented me with the little white paper bag from the Vatican gift shop. She likely said something like, “In honor of Nanna and because I had to buy you and your sister a rosary when in Rome.” We never spoke of them again. I promptly shoved them into the back of my jewelry box and forgot them.
Who was this woman who had started packing prayer beads in the beach bag?
I am sure my story is like thousands of others who read Perdita Finn and Clark Strand’s book and (re)discovered the rosaries that we might have assumed were lost to the time of great grandmothers, ice boxes, and transistor radios.
I never expected how my circle would expand in the year that followed…
This week’s episode of KnotWork Storytelling is made possible by a little black dog named Baba Ganoush.
It was November of 2022 and
was holding her daughter Sophie’s dog. The room was glowing with the launch of ’s book The Flowering Wand. Everything seemed full of wonder. Everything seemed possible.And, it is so much more possible to approach and express all the gratitude and personal synchronicities to a writer you admire when you can make eye contact with the liquid chocolate eyes of a Havanese puppy.
In the space of a few minutes with Perdita I think I tumbled out with “I gave your book to my grandfather for his 99th birthday!” and “your work gave me a connection back to my mom and my nanna, even though they’ve been gone for years.”
Perdita has surely held an outpouring of personal stories and revelations from countless readers, and I have a sense that she always holds folks with the same kindness and grace that she held me.
It turns out that we’re both Cape Cod girls and though we’ve both left the Catholicism of our childhoods, we share the very “family church” in Centerville, Massachusetts.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, Perdita agreed to be on the podcast
.
Our KnotWork Story this week: Choosing the Mystery: The Rosary’s Radical Feminine Heart
In recent years, the rosary has been used to shame and restrain women and sexuality, but what if it is actually the umbilical cord that connects us to The Mother?
When the rosary emerged in the 11th or 12th century the Church was telling a story that began with Eve’s sin and ended with apocalypse. But ordinary women were telling a different story, one that was expressed in a great circle, not in a straight line of patriarchal history.
Perdita Finna tells us a story of women’s empowerment hidden in plain sight. She unfolds the mysteries of the rosary, reclaiming the prayers and practice as an act of power.
Our Conversation
If you’re a KnotWork Storytelling listener, you’ll know that what makes the show unique is the way we tell a story from the past and then dive into all the ways that it mirrors our current reality and all the ways it shows us the way forward.
Here’s a taste of what Perdita and I explored together…
This is a story that begins with a teenage girl, a parthenos, a “virgin” - a concept related to virility and power, not sexual purity. She decides to have a baby, at the risk of being stoned to death. The profound contrast to the women who have been shamed for having a child out of wedlock.
Mary’s story could be seen as the ultimate heroine’s tale.
To pray the mysteries of the rosary is to pray the mysteries of Isis and Osiris, Dionysis, Elusinian mysteries: the mysteries of creation.
The rosary passes the Bechdel Test (women in conversation discuss something other than men) as the rosary emerges from a conversation between two women
The Irish tradition has it that Brigid was Mary’s midwife. In Season 1, Episode 1, Kate Chadbourne shares the old Irish legend of how Brigid helped Mary on the day she was to be “churched” after birth.
Perdita’s daughter Sophie Strand (who shared the story of Tristan and Isolde during Season 2) will bring us into the ecological roots of Mary Magdalene and Jesus’s story in the upcoming novel: The Madonna Secret.
The power of oral stories, and how they have changed over time; eg. Cinderella.
Abortion and the souls that make appointments in spirit, but not in body. Marisa’s own story of abortion, which she first told in The Sovereignty Knot, and Perdita’s abortion the day before she was confirmed in the Catholic church.
The rosary re-emerses us in the erotic relationship with all that is.
Perdita’s own spiritual journey and how the rosary found her, as described in the book she co-authored with her husband Clark Strand, The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary
Follow Perdita’s Work
Her new Substack is called Take Back the Magic.
Perdita’s 2023 courses look amazing.
Join the global Way of the Rose community on Facebook.