Way of the Rose - Outside of a Dog

320 pages

English language

Published Nov. 13, 2019 by Random House Publishing Group.

ISBN:: 9780812988956

(1 review)

Before a vision of a mysterious "Lady" invited Clark Strand and Perdita Finn to pray the rosary, they were not only uninterested in becoming Catholic but finished with institutional religion altogether. Their main spiritual concerns were the fate of the planet and the future of their children and grandchildren in an age of ecological collapse. But this Lady barely even referred to the Church and its proscriptions. Instead, she spoke of the miraculous power of the rosary to transform lives and heal the planet, and revealed the secrets she had hidden within the rosary's prayers and mysteries--secrets of a past age when forests were the only cathedrals and people wove rose garlands for a Mother whose loving presence was as close as the ground beneath their feet. She told Strand and Finn:

The rosary is My body, and My body is the body of the world. Your body is one …

Before a vision of a mysterious "Lady" invited Clark Strand and Perdita Finn to pray the rosary, they were not only uninterested in becoming Catholic but finished with institutional religion altogether. Their main spiritual concerns were the fate of the planet and the future of their children and grandchildren in an age of ecological collapse. But this Lady barely even referred to the Church and its proscriptions. Instead, she spoke of the miraculous power of the rosary to transform lives and heal the planet, and revealed the secrets she had hidden within the rosary's prayers and mysteries--secrets of a past age when forests were the only cathedrals and people wove rose garlands for a Mother whose loving presence was as close as the ground beneath their feet. She told Strand and Finn:

The rosary is My body, and My body is the body of the world. Your body is one with that body. What cause could there be for fear?

Weaving together their own remarkable story of how they came to the rosary, their discoveries about the eco-feminist wisdom at the heart of this ancient devotion, and the life-changing revelations of the Lady herself, the authors reveal an ancestral path--available to everyone, religious or not--that returns us to the powerful healing rhythms of the natural world.

1 edition

Wolverine reviewed Way of the Rose by Clark Strand

Disappointing Marian Devotion wrapped up in Misogyny

2 stars

Everything is a womb if you try hard enough! Quite disappointed, was hoping for a lot more from a book focusing on the rosary and Mary outside of organised christianity. I found Perdita's chapters to be insightful and caring (bumping from a one star to a two), but the other chapters were short and began to become repetitive. I think this would've benefitted from longer chapters with citations for some of the historical & ecological claims. On top of all of the previous, a good chunk of the book read as though Clark Strand had just found out women are also people with feelings and thoughts. The appendix and practical information on the rosary was fine though.