Redemption in the Blue-Eyed Mary

I went for a hike on a new trail.

I’d been to Fernwood State Forest plenty of times, to stand on the overlook and watch the stars or the clouds. This was the first time I tried the trail. It was supposed to be a three-mile loop, but “three miles” can mean different things in the Appalachian foothills. The trail I hiked last week at the Wildflower Reserve was three miles, and took an hour. The Lakeside Trail at Jefferson Lake is just about three miles, and it took an hour and twenty minutes. This one took three hours.

We’d had a nice cold winter, but now it was hot for late April, and the trees weren’t too shady yet. Every time the trail meandered past the crick, I wanted to jump in.

Both sides of the path were lined with a blue and white wildflower that looked like a cross between a violet and a forget-me-not. The name of that flower is “Blue-eyed Mary.”

The blue-eyed Mary is a shade-growing wildflower in the Veronica family.  Each stalk bears a cluster of flowers with four petals each: two white on the top, and two bright blue on the bottom. Picture Our Lady of Grace, in the white veil and blue cape, appearing over and over again on the forest floor.

I have written a lot about the Virgin Mary.  I have struggled with religious trauma regarding her, and wanted to love her, and wondered if she hates me.  I have been trying again to have a relationship with her lately. I’ve been asking her to go on hikes with me– as long as she stands at arm’s length, and lets an archangel stand between us. I am still a little wary of her hands. Spiritual abuse can do that to a person.

Blue-eyed Mary is a plant that stays in the valleys, in the little hollows between two hills where the earth is damp. As Mary, the angel and I hiked uphill, we passed less and less blue and more and more white. The sides of the trail were dotted with wild strawberries: not mockberry with yellow blossoms, but real wild strawberry with white. Mockberry tastes like nothing at all, but wild strawberries taste like strawberries. Out in the trees beyond the wild strawberry were brambles of wild black raspberry that bears sweet fruit in late June, after the strawberries are done. Some hiker is going to have a feast in a few weeks.

In Eden, our first parents were free to eat any of the fruit they liked, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They could harvest wild strawberries and wild black raspberries, play in the streams that watered the garden and rest in the blue-eyed Mary, and all of these things were free. No one had to buy or sell anything. No one even had to ask, for no one had thought of ownership yet. There was only one human, and God said “this is not good” and split the man in half. Then there were two humans and the man cleaved to his wife, and then God said “this is very good.” We are supposed to cleave to one another, and enjoy the fruits of the earth.

Then something went wrong.

Mary, Michael and I trudged further uphill, farther and farther from the main road. There were shale cliffs rising up on the other side of the crick, stacked like the vellum pages of a great big church Bible. The shade fell over the crick, but not over me, and I started to sweat.

Down on the trail in front of me were paw prints, great big clawed ones. I knew they were probably the prints of somebody’s dog, but I decided to pretend it was the Big Bad Wolf, stalking me somewhere nearby.

The whole world was once a garden. In some places, the world still is a garden. A garden is not a place where you buy and sell, where you hoard things and say “mine.” A garden is a place where gifts come out of the ground, and you harvest them to eat or enjoy looking at them or relax in their shade. That is what the world was supposed to be. But the world became something else. An enemy appeared on the scene. A serpent. A swindler. An accuser. The big bad wolf. Something that enticed the humans to steal from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They broke the rules. They took something that wasn’t theirs and said “mine,” and that was the beginning of ownership. And then they did have the knowledge of good and evil, because the only ways to know evil are to do evil, or else to have evil done to you.

Nothing was right after that.

The angel of the Lord was sent to guard the tree of life.

The earth bore thorns and thistles, which aren’t all bad. Berries grow on thornbushes. Some thistles are nutritious, if properly cooked. But it’s lots of work to get past those thorns. Having to struggle through thorns can make you angry. Working all day for the food that the Lord meant to be free can make you covetous. People started coveting things that God had meant for us to own in common. They put a fence around the fruits of the earth and said “mine. Don’t take any.” That sin has crucified the human race ever since.

At this point on the trail, I was exhausted. The sun was much stronger than it felt like when I’d started. I didn’t want a wild strawberry or a handful of blackberries. I just wanted a drink of water, but I hadn’t brought any. And even if I’d dared drink unpurified river water, I was far, far up from the crick now, nearly on top of the shale hill. Trilliums, mayapples and periwinkle cascaded down to the ravine. It would have been beautiful to me, if I weren’t so tired. I was so exhausted, I could have been in the Garden of Eden and I would have thought that I was on Calvary.

Up above, the sun blared down through the branches, where the leaves weren’t quite big enough to shade the ground.

Mary, the angel, and I sat on the dust of the trail, catching our breath.

Somehow, into the ruined earth, came a Somebody who wanted to restore Eden.

He came through the fiat and the consent and the generosity of somebody else: A brown-eyed Mary, lovely like the tents of Qedar, saved from the wound of that original selfishness through an act of God.  Somehow, through her saying “let it be done to me” instead of “it’s mine,” the Son of God descended from Heaven. Somehow, God Godself wore a crown of thorns and dragged a tree up to the top of a hill. People took hold of His clothing and said “It’s mine.” He, Himself, was sold. He was murdered. They buried Him under the ground. And  that was the beginning of making things right. And somehow, that was the beginning of making things right.

Somehow, that was the beginning of making the earth back into a garden.

It can be a garden again.

Creation was once a thing that gives us gifts to eat and share and enjoy, instead of what it is now. It can be that again. That is one of the meanings of the death and resurrection of Christ.

Mary, the angel, and I got up. We hiked on. Every time I thought we’d reached the crest of the hill, the hill got higher. But somehow, after too many disappointments to write down, we came to another patch of blue-eyed Mary. That meant we were nearing a hollow again.

And then I was out of the woods and near the ranger station. Near the station was the scenic overlook. The world dropped away in front of me, miles and miles of green hills rolling on until they touched the blue of Heaven itself.

 I felt as if I understood every mystery there had ever been. But of course, I didn’t.

When I got back to the car, it was nearly evening, and the day was almost over.

I went home to Steubenville. Nothing had changed, but I was all right.