Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,
Tomorrow, we begin a 7-week journey with the fairy tale The Handless Maiden!
I mentioned in last week’s love note that I first fell in love with this story about 20 years ago and it continues to speak to me. It became woven into a profound series of synchronicities that led me into a deeper relationship with Mary and the sacred feminine.
In 2012, soon after John and I had first moved to Vienna, Austria on our grand midlife adventure and pilgrimage, I was co-teaching a class called Women on the Threshold where we told stories each week of thresholds and transitions. I chose the story of the Handless Maiden because it has spoken to me in profound ways in the past and the maiden finds healing in the forest, the place of my own great joy and connection. I wanted to let this story inform me once again.
What seized my imagination in my reading of it that time was the maiden’s journey through the forest to the pear garden. I was so moved by the image of her, vulnerable and alone, finding nourishment in the gift of pears. I discovered a poem by Nan Fry, a contemporary poet, about the handless maiden which reads in part: “you bent to her, Pear, / and offered yourself, breast / and milk both, the earth / grown pendulous and sweet.”
Those words: “you bent to her, Pear, and offered yourself” broke something open in me, a longing I had for receiving rather than reaching, for sinking into an even deeper trust of life’s nourishment for me. I was hearing other whispers within me about not striving, not needing to work so hard. The pear became a symbol for this.
As I was falling in love with the wisdom of Pear for my life, my local grocery store in Vienna had started a promotion. They had plush toy fruits and vegetables you could get free with the points earned on your store card. I had enough for “Birnadette” (the German word for pear is “Birne” and so this is the name she came with), a silly but absolutely delightful plush pear who made me ridiculously happy, because the story and her full body is a reminder of rest for me, of receiving the plushness and abundance of life. She reminded me (and still does) to be playful and take things less seriously.
Soon after, my dear friend and teaching partner Betsey came to visit me in Vienna for a few days before she was heading to France to help lead a pilgrimage which included visits to several Black Madonna sites. I told her of my unfolding journey with Mary and the pear. She told me that very often the Black Madonnas were carved from pear wood! I began looking on the internet to see if Mariazell, a Black Madonna in Austria I had recently visited, had been. I was never able to find out the wood she was made of, but what I did discover stunned me. I found a photo of her statue without the elaborate dress she was wearing in the shrine, her unadorned beauty I had been longing for when I visited. In her hand, beneath that elaborate dress, was a pear.
Here was Mary offering me the very pear I had fallen in love with from the fairy tale. Here was Mary saying in a new way, “let me bend down and offer you the nourishment you need.”
There are, of course, many more layers to it all. But this is what it means to me to follow the thread. I also call it living organically, letting go of long-term plans, and stepping into each moment from a place of deep listening, unfolding, ripening.
The pear remains to this day a symbol of something quite potent in my life. An ongoing intimacy with the divine presence who calls me to rest and be in the arms of the beloved. I am still learning this practice of surrender and yielding, of releasing my need to control and direct things, but the pear and Mary continue to be symbols of this movement in my heart and soul.
This is what the story of The Handless Maiden is in part about. Going with our wounds into the orchard and forest and allowing ourselves to be nourished and healed. What journeys of synchronicity and insight might await you?
The Handless Maiden begins tomorrow and is a 7-week series with weekly live sessions led by me and Te Martin will be present to offer the gift of song (including songs they wrote for each threshold of the story). I will also be joined by Polly Paton-Brown, Aisling Richmond, Dr. Kellie Kirksey, and Dr. Jamie Marich to invite you into a kaleidoscope of creative ways to engage the story’s meaning for your own life. We would love for you to join us.
With great and growing love,
Christine
Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE
Image: Paid license with Canva
