I came upon one of my mother’s old rosaries in my collection of family stuff. I paired it on a tack beside my writing desk wall with some old religious medallions (or devotional scapular), which I earned on some long-ago Holy Day at Our Lady of the Rosary or Holy Spirit. I forget which. One of the Ohio schools where they tried to inculcate Catholicism into me. It didn’t take in the end, but I appreciate the art and resonance of the accoutrements. And the one thing was my Mom’s and the other was mine, so there’s that. | TheStoryIsTheThing.Substack.com photo
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2 comments
I have one of those. Actually both. I have various rosaries but I hadn’t thought about the other thing in a while. I thought it was a scapula but that is a shoulder bone. It is a scapular, representing devotion, piety and such. Since it is worn over the shoulders (Scapulas) that may be where the word came from. What I can’t remember is where/how I got it. It might have been given at one’s confirmation. That big cloth worn over the shoulders covering front and back of many nuns, monks and priests is the big version of the thing. I will stick to the mini version.
Reminder of paraphrase from Parker Palmer: every search for meaning is the search for God.
In whatever way God chooses to reveal God’self.