Letters From My Kitchen Table - Rosaries
They rattle. The rosaries that I wear on my right wrist. Most would call them Malas, but I just like the word rosary. Did you know that rosary originally referred to a rose garden? It was later that the word came to mean a series of prayers, a garden of prayers. A garden grown on my wrist and tended to over and over. Sounds funny, but I like it. So I like the word rosary and mine rattle.
I’ve worn these stones on my wrist for some time now. The first stones added there, disguised as a gift, by an old man who took me on, when I was a young man. He was the one who began in me the digestion of my life learning. The digestion and learning that makes the chords of my daily song, as I sing it today.
Then another old man helped me understand the weight of the stones I carried. He did this by telling me a story, where a farmer piles the stones of his regret along the edge of the back forty, keeping them close by, so that he might visit with them from time to time. Not having a back forty to create such a pile, I carry mine and they’ve grown in number over the years. Just as they should have.
These stones I carry have been gifts to me from people close in my household. People I love. Adding to those stones placed there by that good Old Man. Reminded, as I am, of their hands in my life each time I roll them through my heart. The passage of the beads in my hand sometimes evokes the joy of my time with this person, sometimes my regret. So I have come to know them simply as my stones, joy and regret included. In any case, I love being able to visit with them from time to time.
The rattle of my stones have been with me quite a bit in these troubled times. Recently, I have been doing a lot of construction. Projects moving towards some semblance of a response or a song to what might be next. As we all consider what “reopening” might mean for each of us. For me this has meant building one home office and planning another. So the sound of my rosaries have been in time with the beat of my hammer along with the gentle rolling they make in the turn of a screw, rattling along in their accompaniment of my work.
As I work, I am often left to the thoughts of these times. Turning the worry and effort of my life, over in my mind, each thought a counted bead. Especially now, worried over these troubling times. Then there’s those rosaries that occupy my mind while I stand aimlessly in the middle of my living room arguing with what and who isn’t there, because I miss someone or not knowing what to do next. I’ve turned more beads this way in my life, than I’ve ever turned in prayer I think. The ruminations of my daily life, my gardens of prayers. My lived questions, my muttered mantras, asking what to do? Most of the time there’s no answer, thus the lived part of the question.
My attempts to be a good person in the world are beads on this rosary too. Each realization. Each insight. Each skill. One bead. One prayer. Said over and over. Not learned, mastered and forgotten, but practiced, tended to. The skills of household being something more akin to the turn of a rosary and a muttered mantra, than the seven, ten or twelve steps to the better me.
It is often these beads of skill that I most treasure. The kinds of beads that were once the kindling of my belief that I’m trying to be a good person in the world. A wish that started as a bead that grew to be a mala, a garden that became a rosary. With my ruminations often centered on waiting for the answer of what to do with these people and this place of my household. Waiting for my bones to rattle.
I make prayers to my place and my people all the time. My mind turning my life over in my hands. I look for the skills that will help. So I went to therapy and wrote in my journal. I read the books and listen to the podcasts trying to learn the skills of being a better person. I effort at what I have learned over the years in trying to be a good person. The skills of my life are often marked by the stones I pile, when wisdom came to visit. At the end of my learning.
The rosaries that are this place and these people of my household rattle my bones. It’s one of the ways I know my household, by how the timbers rattle. They are the rosary I polish in the turn of my hands and the care of my heart as I pray. My love of them keeping time with the work of my hammer, these stones on my wrist helping me remember to tend to the garden. A garden of prayers, that’s nice to have close by, so that we might visit for a time.
May your household be full of prayers and your gardens well tended.
Wings wide…
Raven
