With May Day on a Wednesday, not a weekend, a crowning of a May Queen in church was not going to happen, until days or more later as believers have the whole month to use, and there were no Pagan rituals to be found locally, so I would have to find a metamorphical coronation. Such as a “crown” on a beautiful cardinal. But looking for it would require a walk-about, and also appreciating the beauty, if minimalistic, of small natural enclaves in the heart of a city of parks, a designation so many strive for. Find gardening-type beauty where it exists — and it can be seen at particular spades this time of the annual cycle.
One year ago as of April 1, I moved to an apartment building in downtown Hudson. I would no longer be able to view my big yard with wild island and the beauty supplied by dozens of oak trees, forming a ring around the house and leading back into the woods, a large spiritual loss. My new experience would be much different. Would it be fertile?
Yes, in very many small ways that added up, to a bigger sum, and revived me physically with the newfound vigor from this stroll I have now made several times — and also emotionally and spiritually.
All you need to do, I found, is take the time to look.
I did, and noticed things I had not before. Even that usually routine, although entertaining, squirrel who just now first perched on the only arch of a root sticking out of the lawn. Newly found and showing opportunity, and that is the theme of this post.
As is recognized by religious traditions, May Day is the epitome of a coming-of-spring fertility rite, and as such is fertile also with the prospect of opportunity and redemption, as well as regrowth, both spiritual and natural. So all of the holiday is set around the importance of the environment.
If you steer toward being Catholic, Mother Mary, the seen as the original May Queen, is a perfect choice for a representation of fertility, although technically virgin, as you’d have to have such attributes to be the bearer of the Son of God. But they’re goddesses all. These varied themes tie together.
And various religious traditions over such holidays can borrow from each other, over the passing of years and centuries, as was shown when a professor at the besieged Columbia University celebrated a Seder dinner with protestors, and some were probably from both sides of the religious aisle.
They also will meld when, dare I say it, all the beautiful women hit the beach of the national scenic riverway, in bikinis and maillots, just two blocks away from my apartment building, and also a couple of blocks away on the main streets, boasting non-stripped down versions of the same and sporty spring dresses, (after Easter but now moreso), though all bearing natural and enhanced beauty. Downtown businesses cater to these themes, from art galleries to salons, spas to fitness clubs, as the month’s past bearers of the season give way from ropes and boughs of greenery to big potted plants that already show some flowers, all demonstrating again, opportunities newly arising. That doesn’t even mention the flower shop of 50-plus years, and what they provide to the eye, and if outside.
The colors of such flowers, and the pots they were in, could be as many as four and even seemingly on the same plant.
Religious types will also notice in this outdoor decor the ebbing of Christmas and the start of the Easter season, although the continued prominence of birch logs tends to lend a segue, with Easter lilies — also on a door just down from mine — extending the motif. Other religious people, Pagans will note the importance given to the Maypole, that has overtly spiritual graces, but you can’t help but notice what it looks like. Even when positioned in the form of a carousel in the adjacent park. A nursery rhyme brings this back to being more innocent, and includes the richness of nature: “Ring around the rosey, pocket full of poseys …”
Was it chance that on the night of May Day, I saw a TV documentary on how to live 100 percent sustainably. As in totally. Trees all through the house, and beyond. So add such an earthship, and live within it, in more ways then one.
In my new climes, I first noticed that in an uncommon twist, there is beautiful architectural at 360 degrees, upper outdoor library beams, more than one big mural, well-designed office buildings, classic brick facades, and a sculpture that looks like a great big bush, as us humans create using the skills given to them by the original Creator. But also everywhere you walk are large expanses of concrete. Streets, alleys, curbs, sidewalks, parking lots, walkways and traffic bumpouts. But there is natural beauty here and there. Outside my windows, both of them, are trees framing every bit of the glass space you see through, forming golden arches that are not McDonalds. These big bows, such as they are formed, are three in number and and as I only noticed on May Day — heightened awareness? — there are three more smaller ones filling the framework and also the view through the picture window, with also just-acknowledged another three tiered up and down, small but nearer my window, so good for that. I am more and more aware about the way they take up that whole five-by-five space, almost like it is intentional, as in a painting of a planting that makes most efficient use of dirt. And I now saw that especially as there’s new growth greening out, the edges of the-window view are being filled in with beauty.
You could even invoke the little sprigs, that show new progress, that are sticking out of a few edges where sidewalk meets wall. (There always seem to be three of them, like a trinity-ish clover.) Again, the beauty of nature meets concrete.
There was an even bigger arch, of about 20 feet, that stretched between two oak treees back at the house, and gave a spiritual lift just to look at in its near perfection. I toward the end of my stay had placed a bench below, hoping that someone, other than myself, eventually could make just as uplifting use of it.
So these arches a good place to start, as the buds are just now beginning to grow.
I am reminded of an old autumn ritual of mine, and really you can practice it in any season, where I’d find a beautiful tree, any one really although the multiplicity effect of a big park is a draw, and pick out a leaf or two and rumple them in my fingers, while gazing at the color of others and listening to a faint rumble, all while praying or meditating. And those oaks at home and also at 360, that drop their leaves in phases over 12 months, although its only right now that we see the buds of various species taking their crowns at several-day intervals. Thus comes to bear a longtime question of mine, which is more profoundly spiritual, in what it represents as a ritual of choice, the mighty strength of an oak, or the frail beauty of a maple.
Spaced among my current concrete — viewed off the bottom edge of those windows — are a number of tiny mini-gardens, or just stretches of still valuable dirt that could be enhanced, with a few hostas, or other small forms of greenery. Thinking of this, those who have their gardens in their small urban yards must experience a burst of joy. Like those in my building who, also, who take full advantage of a four-by-two-foot shelf of a patio that’s also a garden. If there are April showers, you can always go inside and view, or maybe even finger the leaves, of a bunch of big potted plants, as flowers ahead of most of May. Even the scenes of somewhat-varied green are fantastic if viewed in the right way, before the numerous colors of actual flowers arrive. This again invokes the current time as a season of opportunity, and this hit home with me when viewing, out my window, and being moved by it, an empty planter with a bit of brown plant residue (that’s not an earth-friendly term considering the nature of this article) and more dirt, as there is much more beauty to be found if I just wait a month or so.
There are two other big patios aside the building at the south and west, where people can have a tree or two providing shade but, alas, their time and branches were cut short by a windstorm last year around this time, but if you look there still is more to be seen. Off in the distance is the high rise of bluffline trees that help form Birkmose Park, held sacred by indigenous peoples. To get a closer look, you have to walk several blocks. That’s the rub, a reverse of Not In My Back Yard scenario, where homeowners want what they want as far as nature, and they don’t want to have to travel a few miles or more to get it. We have a planet full of very crowded cities but also expanses of hundreds of miles of houseless forest or mountains or dessert. One thinks of such bounty or the lack of it, when crumpling a maple or oak leaf, or aspen or ash too.
So I walked on down. For the first time I noticed that the big pieces of mesh, meant to hold back any falling rock, were almost like terracing for the flora, which I could now see in three different tiers.
Even though summer is a month or so away.
For now, the Pagan version, especially, celebrates the return of youth, growth, and the warm weather that triumphs over the cold and dreary and dark. They ask the May Queen spare their life for yet another day, as the Pagan and Catholic traditions and their similar themes of redemption intersect. The former embrace the belief of her battling an evil diety to gain such, through the growing of spring.
So at their core, Mary as queen and nature are as one, and can be experienced that way.
So St. Patrick Catholic Church marked the May Crowning, days later on May 3, with a morning all-school Mass and feast on hope, as Mary did. So poignant these days. on May Day itself, there were a bunch of first communicants in attendance, but they were not crowned. But coming up shortly, though again not on May’s first morning, was a devotion to Joseph the Worker.
May Crowning is most widely observed as a traditional Catholic ritual held as a solemn procession, and at its closing a statue of the Blessed Virgin is crowned with a garland or crown of flowers, and here I go again on the nature tie-in, honoring her as “the Queen of May.” There is a special honor attached to being to crown the statue. That this year it was St. Patrick eighth-grader Megan as the lucky girl, and her two attendants.
The being honored maid of Nazareth, a term I find creative, is also called queen of heaven.
The faithful saw Mary’s attributes in the herbs and flowers growing around them. Many flowers and herbs are symbolically associated with Mary’s life and many people create varied Mary gardens. Such gardens can be seen as a spring clean for the May Queen, to borrow a term from Led Zeppelin, and can be a small sacred ones enclosed with a statue or shrine of the Virgin. Select flowers, shrubs and trees associated with Mary (and I think and now saw they are many) are planted in the garden.
“Who doesn’t love to sing a song to Mary,” a commentator asked. But there indeed are such people, and my Lutheran family would abhore such a practice. But there are many Marian hymns often sung at a May Crowning, including Hail Holy Queen, Immaculate Mary (Ave Maria), or Hail Mary (Gentle Woman). My family, in particular, was never a fan of Ave Maria, but despite my upbringing I do find some of the operatic versions impressive.
The Vatican announced Pope Francis’ decision that the church celebrate her role as “Mother of the Church” every year on the Monday after Pentecost. So again, have to wait. He added the memorial to the Roman Calendar after carefully considering how the promotion of devotion to Mary under this title might encourage growth in “the maternal sense of the Church.” So be it. This year it will fall on May 21. Three weeks away.