Mary's Vineyard

Many seekers and lovers of God of all kinds and faiths are agreed that the single most important aspect of the spiritual life of the world today is that everywhere we are witnessing a return to the Mother, to the long-forgotten, long-derided Mother-aspect of God.

For too long the major religions and mystical traditions have been biased towards transcendence and attached to detachment. This bias and this subtle attachment to a vision of the Divine that separates it and us from our bodies, our ordinary lives, our sexuality, and Nature have, it is becoming clear, abetted the destruction of the planet and not worked to prevent it. Those who love the Mother know that unless we turn to her and allow her profound and passionate knowledge of interdependence and love-in-action at every level and in every dimension to penetrate, transform, inspire, and guide us--we will not find in ourselves the vision or passion or wisdom necessary to preserve the planet.

To a world ravaged by disunity, the Mother offers the revelation of oneness; to an age inwardly destroyed by apathy and anxiety, the Mother offers the grace of a holy and peaceful passion that blesses, loves, and protects all things and knows all things and beings as sacred emanations of a common source; to beings panicked by the threat of a worldwide ecological catastrophe, the Mother offers strength, hope, and the inner power to effect a change of heart, and the radical political and economic action that must follow such a change; to those depressed by the harshness of working for justice and transformation in so deluded and secretly devastated an age, the Mother offers her protection and her humble stamina and that force of unconditional love that is her essence and her gift and that no power can defeat.

In this worldwide return to the Mother and to the healing and invigorating wisdom of the Sacred Feminine, nothing is more significant or inspiring, especially for those brought up, however difficult, in the Christian tradition, than the extraordinary attention being paid by seekers of all kinds to Mary. During the last 150 years, Mary has been appearing all over the world, delivering short simple messages of infinite love, wisdom, and urgency, trying to wake her children up to the enormity of the danger they are facing and to the remedies of prayer, mutual honor, and hard work in every dimension that alone can save the situation. Increasingly and for people of all faiths, Mary is being liberated from the golden cage of patriarchal adoration that has kept her prisoner for so long and is being revealed for what she is: the Divine Mother in full force and splendor, as essential to the working-out of the Christian mystery as her son--the most human of all the faces of the Mother, the one turned with most urgent and passionate love towards humankind.

Kali and Saraswati, Isis and Astarte, and the great Goddesses of South America and Africa are all marvelous cosmic revelations of the Mother. Mary has the power and range of all of these, but being also once human, it is clear to anyone devoted to her that she has a very personal interest in the world, a very anxious interest, one that emphasizes--as none of the other aspects of the Mother do with quite such intimacy or anguished passion--the glory of this world and the absolute necessity of doing everything in our power to preserve it.

Mary's message is a simple one: "Realize the essential unity in my Sacred Heart of everything that lives; ripen that knowledge and love through continual prayer; enact that knowledge in every aspect of life to irradiate life with my power, truth, tenderness, and passion for justice. All the old barriers between faiths, peoples, sexualities, castes must now be dissolved, for differences create division, and there is no more time left for the dubious luxury of divisiveness.

Mary knows, and makes clear again and again that she knows, that our situation is desperate, that evil is extremely powerful, and Nature--the body of the light--is in appalling danger. She knows that we cannot preserve ourselves unless we undergo a massive change of heart that leads to a commitment at every level to make love real in action and to implement justice in every arena. She knows that there are immense forces ranged against us, ranged against the success of the human enterprise.

Mary also knows that if we can turn to the Mother, to her mercy and her power and her love that live in us as our deepest identity and heart-truth, miracles of transformation are possible--miracles that are not simply personal and spiritual, but ones that effect the changes that will save the whales and the dolphins and Antarctica and Amazonia, as well as the future of the soul of every human being. Nothing is impossible to her children, if they recognize, honor, and pray to their Mother. Together with the Mother, we can still, even at this late hour, do anything.

My Immaculate Heart will triumph, Mary said to the children at Fatima, after being terrifyingly clear about the dangers ahead. Mary's heart--and the heart of her Son--will triumph, but only if we all turn to them now, with humility and confidence and complete lack of illusion about the potentially terminal danger we are in.

Eryk and I have made this book as an aid in this turning of the whole being towards her. Mary, our Mother, needs no elaborate address, no fancy meditations, no complex prayers. Saying her rosary and talking to her from a full heart are always enough, and she will answer every request directed to her, as everyone who risks intimacy with her knows beyond doubt. We have brought together here those prayers, meditations, and mystical insights culled from her greatest lovers over 2,000 years that have most intimately helped us in our longing to be closer to her and to realize her love in the world.

Weave the meditation we have given into your prayers, thoughts, and actions each day, and you will find, as we have, that your whole being will be strengthened in the fire of the Mother's hope and truth. And with that hope and that truth increasingly established in our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls, nothing will be impossible to us, her children.

The Virgin said to Sister Faustina in the 1930s, Mankind will not have peace until it turns with trust to my mercy.

To Father Stefano Gobbi, the Virgin said in 1987, "I am gathering my children from every part of the earth, and enclosing them in the refuge of my Immaculate Heart, so that they may be defended and saved by me, at the moment of the Great Trial which has now arrived for all. So, in the very years when evil is triumphing by leading humanity along the road of its own destruction, my maternal heart is also triumphing, as I bring my children along the way of salvation and peace. She added, My light will become stronger and stronger the more you enter into the decisive moments of the battle."

This battle for the future of humanity is now raging in every field of human life. Everything depends on the intensity and the seriousness and the comprehensiveness with which we summon the Mother's love and power, and enact it.

We pray that this book will furnish all who come to it those arms of love, mystical trust, and insight that we all need, to endure, to struggle calmly, and to win, in her name and for her glory.

O Divine Mother, Save, Inspire, Elevate, Stabilize, Humble, and Embolden us all.

Published with the permission of publisher Quest Books, Theosophical Publishing House. Copyright © 1996 by Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut ($20.00).