The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary Hardcover – November 5, 2019

Even though I'm far from a traditional Catholic, I've been receiving a prompt to pick up the rosary and pray with it for many years. I've had all kinds of reasons why I kept putting it off. I'm not exactly Christian. Actually I'm more of a Universalist Mary Worshipping Wiccan. Plus the idea of praying 53 Hail Marys, 7 Our Fathers and a bunch of Glory Be's felt DAUNTING. Not only that, my mother had left the Catholic church years before I was born and like many other people I'd been led to believe the rosary club was meant for practicing Catholics alone.A few months ago I slipped and fell on the ice, smashed my head on our propane tank and sustained a concussion. Talk about a literal whack upside the head from the Universe! My life as I knew it came to a grinding halt. Interestingly this was almost exactly 3 months before CoVid19 hit the US and brought our country to it's own grinding halt. I have no doubt the timing of this was more than a mere coincidence.As anyone who's had to deal with a concussion knows, this injury led to many inevitable hours resting in a dim room. About the only thing I could do was listen to audiobooks, cook food, eat and sleep. However, I kept getting an increasing urgent message to pick up a rosary and pray it. I shared this awareness with one of my dearest friends. She generously gifted me with a cherished rosary she'd purchased at the Vatican decades earlier for a beloved uncle who'd passed on a few years ago.Once in my grasp I started to pray the very basic Mater and Pater prayers as I lay in the dark with my jumbled brain. Yet, I noticed I was still getting overwhelmed with the length of the decades. Midway through my first round of Hail Mary's I'd hit a wall. I kept imagining a shorter sequence of maters with a miraculous medal instead. After doing a little research, I decided I'd experiment by making my own 7 mysteries chaplet. Nearly everything I'd been able to do easily before made my head hurt and set me back for days BUT fortunately working with beads and wire actually felt good and soothing for my brain. Soon I was making more prayer beads to gift to friends and family. I posted a photo of one of these chaplets on IG. Someone commented about the photo and mentioned that I should check out this book. I immediately downloaded the audiobook and devoured it in a few days. It was EXACTLY what I needed so I could "go all in" with this simple yet profound practice.What I LOVE about this book is that it articulates everything I believe and feel about Our Blessed Mother and how she welcomes ALL of us into her embrace. The Way of the Rose reflects a spiritual path of inclusivity, acceptance and merciful grace anyone is worthy to receive. I'm grateful that this sweet elegant book is an invitation to cultivate our own personal relationship with our beads. As Perdita and Clark say in the Way of the Rose Fellowship they founded (but make very clear they do not lead) all invited to participate because here there are no rosary police.This book combines the history, lore and simple folk traditions of devotions to the Blessed Mother with personal stories, messages received from Our Lady and straightforward instructions with prayers to guide anyone who wishes to embark on their own rosary journey.I'm so grateful to have found not only this book but a community of faithful devotees who've come together because of it. Definitely a book I'l not only treasure for years to come, but one I'll surely gift to many others as well.Thank you so much Clark and Perdita for writing and sharing the medicine I needed exactly when I needed it!

The Way of the Rose turns everything I ever thought about the rosary on its head -- and I didn't think much about it at all after my first communion. As a recovering Catholic, I found this book to be a rewarding journey into new territory that is actually not new at all, as the book makes abundantly clear. If you're like me, a modern and very jaded seeker of wonder, the book is a spring welling up from deep sources. Climate crisis, misused technology -- all the ills of the anthropocene benefit from wisdom that goes way back to divine feminine and its many cultural manifestations, which in this case focuses on the Lady, Virgin, Mary or Mother. The rosary -- a string of beads with no strings attached, to paraphrase -- asks us to hold on to something while repeating words we can believe in -- words that don't even have to conform to any institutionalized religion.The book weaves the authors' lived day-to-day experience, stories of their travels as well as cultural history into a revelatory narrative -- how the sacred touches our everyday lives. I keep it handy to browse a random chapter now and then, many of which are brief but rich in meaning, a reminder to connect that old wisdom to my breath. How the rosary came into my life is a long story, but suffice it to say that this book helped nourish my heart-centered practices in a way that reaffirms "the prayer of life for Life itself." The aliveness and passion of this little tome cannot be underestimated; it brings the generative, recursive potential of the heart to the fore. Here you'll find no earth mother cliche -- she's real, raw and powerful.The book also refreshingly lacks a guru -- as it should be. Strand and Finn share their story generously and then get out of the way. The fellowship that sprung from their journey reflects that -- and it's beautiful.Anyone interested in cultural history will probably also enjoy this book when it digs into the origins of the rosary.I love The Way of the Rose so much, I gifted a copy to a friend and no doubt will gift others in the future when there's resonance.

This book has helped me grow so much to love and appreciate all things feminine. I highly recommend. It is a beautiful read and for me, such a game changer. I could not be more grateful to the authors who wrote this ❤️🙏🏻

I loved alot about this book. It is an expansive expression of the rosary that has mystical and practical connections to the Divine Mother that has birthed all of creation into being. Wonderful. Eco feminism has an important role in the salvation of the entire planet these days. For those with a more Christian bent, I would also recommend the writings of Julian of Norwich who wrote about the second person of the Trinity as Mother. There are indeed wonderful connections to both concepts. If I have any reservations about the book, it is the authors' bias against the Catholic Church and their "digs" against Vatican II and Catholic statuary images of Mary as "sedate". As a Catholic who is well aware of the institutions many flaws, I am also aware of the immense good Vatican II has brought. The Mary who appeared to me was not sedate, but inviting, with her hands and feet and robes swirling in an invitation to participate in the dance of her struggles. But we can sure use alot of "sedate" even in our statues these days. The book does a great job in reassuring readers that Mary will forever be holding us, supporting us, loving us from start to finish and beyond in our journey through life. The rosary beads help us to connect with that great love.