Day 15: An Unexpected Tango

I've long appreciated the Buddhist wisdom about nonattachment, but today it did a tango with the Christian wisdom about release & return. I'm giddy: what had been lost, was found! Something surrendered has been returned to me, twofold.

Most mornings, I pray five-mysteries of the Rosary’s ‘fifteen’ mysteries with a rosary I crafted myself. It’s a feminine-centric strand, with rainbow-like painted jasper stones ordered in the colors of the body's chakras. The mystery beads are miniature replicas of the Venus of Willendorf and there is a lotus connector, reminding me beauty arises out of the mud of life. I didn’t know I would enjoy this one so much, because I had created it when I was grieving the loss of my very first rosary…

…which was crafted especially for me by Geralyn Kamaha’o Camarillo, an artist I first learned about on the Way of the Rose (closed but welcoming) Facebook page. I appreciated her energies that often invited joy, wonder and creativity. Her devotion to Our Lady (by whatever name you may call Her) was palpable and contagious. She hand-crafts rosaries for sale, so I had treated myself to one for Christmas during the pandemic shutdown—a chakra-ordered gemstone rosary. It really made a difference for my own sense of invitation into this prayer practice. I had tried to pray with an olive-wood rosary with a cross on the end of it, but that one was energetically painful. I had stopped. When Geralyn’s creation arrived, I couldn’t keep it out of my hands. I loved it.

So much so that I wore it on the plane, visiting my folks in Portland for the first time, post-Covid. I wore it in the Redwood forests. I returned home, unpacked, and panicked. I could not find it anywhere. My disappointment was visceral.

I then remembered the Buddhist wisdom of nonattachment. Attachment is the root of suffering, they say. I practiced letting the rosary go, imagining it had fallen out of my bag when we were in the airport travel of our day. I sent along my prayer that whoever found it would benefit greatly from it, finding the peace and invitation into the feminine the way that I have. I truly let it go, giving it little thought these last many months.

This past Friday, the painters were so very gracious to put our living room back in order for the weekend, before they finish the job this next week. This morning, I saw a pile of beads on the table by the couch. I actually had walked past them for an entire day, not seeing them. My first rosary. The one I had lost. It was found. Behind the couch? The stereo table? Who knows... Something cherished that I had surrendered was returned to me, except now I have two!

It was good to let the first rosary go, learning the gifts of emptiness.

I delight to receive again what I had truly surrendered, smiling at the twofold.

And I can be an answer to my own prayer, finding the peace and invitation She is…