beads on a necklace

The image of “beads on a necklace” has been prominent in my thoughts for over a year now. It is not a new direction or project, but rather a new image to describe the activities that have been integral to Mary’s Ward from its inception on May 13, 2006. Happy Twentieth Birthday, Mary’s Ward!

The image first suggested itself when I was reading Journey into Kashmir and Tibet by Swami Abhedananda, whose party stayed during their travels by train, bus, horseback, and foot, at a series of dak bungalows, rustic rest houses built by the British for government officials and mail carriers and offering basic hospitality for anyone else at incomparably low cost (including camping on their grounds). These shelters were located every 12-15 miles along most rural routes of travel - like beads on a necklace.

Those of us resisting fascism today are including in our work the building of, as Peter Maurin would say, a new society in the shell of the old. The four tenets of the Indian Independence Movement, swaraj (self-rule), swadeshi (local production), boycott, and national education, can be adapted as four pillars for our struggle as spirituality, mutual aid, arts, and education. These four can be re-worded and re-ordered to create the acronym b e a d: beatitude – “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” etc. = mutual aid; education - soul-led individualized learning for all ages, finding one’s svabhāva (one’s soul’s own leading) and following it; arts – visual, plastic, textile, literary, performing arts as an alternative way to see and imagine the world, as creative self-expression; divinity – following the soul’s leading to find the Divine within and without, making all sacred (literally sacrificing – from sacer holy and facere to make) to create heaven on earth.

A person, a place, or a collective can all be a bead. Mary’s Ward offers beatitude, education, arts, divinity in the forms of Matthew 25:34, Mary’s Ward Global Classroom, SPANDA Dance Company and Ascend and the Kawandi Project, and Solace of Migrants Mission and Mother of Strength Sri Aurobindo Hub. The possible expressions of b e a d are infinite however, and the greater the diversity, locality, and uniqueness, the better!

The b e a d vision can inform a quiet movement of replacing the old with the new even while the old decays around us. Enclaves of hyper local beads can connect along pathways of reimagined production, communication, and transportation while regional collective spaces (St. Maximilian Kolbe’s “cities of the Immaculate” or The Mother’s Auroville) can facilitate larger scale b e a d activities.

मत्तः परतरं नान्यत्किञ्चिदस्ति धनञ्जय । मयि सर्वनिदं प्रोतं सूत्रे मणिगणा इव ॥७॥ (Bhagavad Cita 7.7)

mattaḥ parataram nānyat kiñcit asti dhanañjaya । mayi darvamidam protam sūtre maṇigaṇā ॥7॥ (Bhagavad Cita 7.7)

7. There is nothing else supreme beyond Me, O Dhananjaya. On Me all that is here is strung like pearls upon a thread. (Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation of Bhagavad Cita 7.7)

Kṛṣṇa refers to Arjuna as Dhananjaya – literally money conqueror – in this verse. As we battle against the power of billionaires and trillionaires, this subtle image of beads on a necklace can give us the victory.