The Forest Rosary

Holy Saturday is a time of breathless anticipation. Of mourning, of waiting. So, after participating in the Washington State Democratic Caucus, I decided to go for a walk in my favorite forest in Bellingham–The Stimpson Family Reserve.

Alone, I brought with me a small wooden rosary carved by hand at one of the monasteries I recently visited as part of my PhD research. Being Holy Saturday, the day Jesus was still in the tomb, I decided I would pray the Sorrowful Mysteries. As I walked the trail, nodding to hikers and runners, trying to keep my clanking beads inconspicuous at my side, I began to fall into sync with the prayers and Mysteries of this Decade of the Rosary, the most gruesome and devastating of the 20 Mysteries that make up the Rosary prayer.

Bookended by ‘Our Fathers’, ‘Hail Mary’s’ and ‘Glory Be’s’, the five Sorrowful Mysteries guide us along the Via Dolorosa of Christ’s final hours; from the Agony in the Garden, to the Scourging at the pillar, to the Crowning with Thorns, to Walking with the Cross, to his death on the Cross. The Sorrowful Mysteries are a brutal reminder of the pains of mortality, suffered by a nonviolent and silent Jesus.

As I walked and prayed, the scenes of those brutal last hours began to blend into the mossy, still mostly dormant, old growth forest. The geese honked along to an ‘Our Father’; the cross appeared in the trunks and branches of trees; the frogs croaked along to ‘Glory Be’; every round stump became a crown of thorns; a tinkling creek whispered a ‘Hail Mary’… I stood in silence at the base of an ancient tree. And though sorrowful today, the mysteries dormant in the naked trees were all around me showing signs of the Glorious Mysteries of spring, of Resurrection….

The First Mystery: The Agony in the Garden

The Second Mystery: The Scourging at the Pillar