The Mary Pages: An Atheist’s Journey to the Mother of God
The Mary Pages: An Atheist’s Journey to the Mother of God
by Sally Read
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Raised in an atheist household, Sally Read nevertheless saw images of the Blessed Virgin Mary from earliest childhood—and they remained with her in the most remarkable ways. Conscious of the conflict between her feminist values and what came to be a fascination with Marian art, Read—through tumultuous relationships, loneliness, and distant places—began a unique quest to discover the true essence of Mary.
These pages contain the strange, raw, and epiphany-filled stories that led to Read’s dramatic nine-month conversion from atheism to Catholicism. Focusing not only on Read’s life but also on the lives of others who, knowingly or unknowingly, encountered the Virgin, this literary memoir is a testimony of how a Mother patiently brought one child home to her Son—and slowly revealed her own heart.
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What People are Saying
“This is a gorgeous, soul-stirring book. There is no sanctimony here—only evocative imagery and poetic prose that lays bare the terrain of a complicated, Mary-haunted, grace-ridden life. The Mary Pages is a work of art, an icon in words.”
—Abigail Favale, author of The Genesis of Gender and Professor of the Practice at McGrath Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame
“I am in awe at what Sally Read has given us in these pages. What an extraordinary journey she has been on, and she now takes us with her in her discovery—step by patient, even unsettling, step—to understanding the beauty and necessity of falling in love with the Mother of God. There’s humor, wit, honesty, vulnerability, poetry (yes!), and a profound understanding of Mary’s life entwined with God’s, and her radiant presence over the centuries, from Nazareth to Walsingham to Mexico City and a hundred other places. Reader, listen. You will come away changed, even transformed, by what you find in these pages.”
—Paul Mariani, University Professor of English Emeritus at Boston College
“The Mary Pages provides a unique tour through some of the most iconic images of the Blessed Virgin Mary, making them strikingly relevant to women of today. Sally Read’s moving memoir recounts the dilemmas and distractions of modern women, but also reveals her poignant game of hide-and-seek with the Mother of God through a series of works of art. As a poet who searches for meaning beyond the immediate, Sally Read helps the reader see that those faces of Mary—above altars, in museums, by bedsides—are calling to her children in whatever circumstances they may find themselves. A truly inspiring read.”
—Elizabeth Lev, art historian and author of How Catholic Art Saved the Faith
“‘If anyone is in Christ,’ writes St. Paul to the Corinthians, ‘he is a new creation.’ Through her search for some real Mary represented in art, Read examines her own life as a self-creation, seeking ‘liberation’ in a fallen and sordid world. What Mary, the ‘unsurpassed solely human icon,’ reveals to her is that her ‘body was made to be a piece of Eden.’ It is in recognizing in the Blessed Mother an image of what it is to be a ‘new creation’ that the writer finds her own soul luminously remade.”
—Sally Thomas, author of Works of Mercy
“Sally Read follows a winding path into the Church, led by the arresting beauty of Mary’s fiat, not a sanded-off, sentimental, safe kind of love. Read’s own prose mirrors the jarring loveliness of God’s invitation.”
—Leah Libresco Sargeant, author of Arriving at Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers That Even I Can Offer
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note to the Reader
Prelude: My First Marys (My first Marys: La Madonna del Granduca by Raphael and Madonna and Child with Two Angels by Fra Filippo Lippi)
Chapter One: New Eve (In which Madonna and Child with Two Angels by Fra Filippo Lippi comes with me)
Chapter Two: Tower (In which Our Lady of Guadalupe, acheiropoieton, finds me)
Chapter Three: Mother (In which La Pietà by Michelangelo teaches me)
Chapter Four: The Answering Call (In which The Statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, anonymous, helps me to an answer)
Notes
Works of Art
Bibliography