She is the Vineyard

in honor of the Dormition of the Mother of God

Two winters ago, in early December, I wrote a little piece of devotional writing to the Virgin Mary while listening to this beautiful medieval Georgian hymn “Thou Art A Vineyard” on repeat in my dear friend Rima Staines’ attic studio in Devon. It was a song she particularly loved, and in that season we would sit together listening to Orthodox hymns (her selection), I writing while she painted, sustained by copious cups of tea and oat biscuits. I was thinking about the nativity then because it was close to Christmas, but the words that came out carried the grapes of August in them.

Today, August 15th, is a very sacred, very old feast day to the Virgin Mary— the Assumption in the west, the Dormition in the east—the day, according to tradition though not scripture, that Mary died and was taken bodily into heaven. There Jesus reunited her soul with her body (sometimes depicted as a little baby in her arms, her own soul birthed again to her by her beloved son). I love how corporeal Mary’s presence is, even in death— she is somehow in heaven, and yet both body and soul have gone together, so that even now, when you call on her, there is a way in which she arrives bodily; she is enfleshed, both fruit and soul, all around us.

I am on the whole enormously ignorant about this day from the inside of either Catholic or Orthodox traditions, where it is observed most devotedly. For any readers who are more familiar with the interior of this holy day, do please share anything you’d like in the comments. It would be a gift and a delight. I love this day, and her of course, and slowly circle like Rilke’s falcon, trying to understand more, in body and soul at once.

I’ve been in Crete during two August seasons, when the entire month is devoted to the Theotokos and great dance feasts called panigiri (connected to the Panagia, another name for the Mother of God) are held most nights of the weekend, village by village, all month long. Dancing and music last til dawn. The musicians, playing traditional Cretan music, know enough old songs to not repeat a single one all the ten hours they are singing. I’ve never made it past 4 am, but I believe it. In old times, friends have told me, these dances would last three days and nights, and the musicians knew enough songs, or made up mantinades on the spot, to not repeat themselves the whole time. People would feed them and tip raki down their throats to keep them going.

It’s a kind of Panagia fervor, August in Crete, though the fact that the panigiria are named for her isn’t very present at them any longer. Still, she is everywhere, in the church services, in the height of the fruit harvest, the grape harvest, when the wine will go into barrels, in the yearly bright showers of Perseid meteors always just near the Dormition, the bright hot dog star rising, the nights as balmy as a warm sea.

So, in honor of the this holy day, this day of Mary’s death and therefore a celebration of her life, I wanted to share both the hymn & lyrics that inspired this piece, and the piece itself.

I want to say too that when writing about any of this I feel like a tiny speck in a tiny coracle on a great ocean, the ocean that is her mantle, her womb, the unbearably beautiful daybreak and whole encircling vastness that is her son. I am all too aware of how little I know, but I am also aware of how much I feel. And she has watched over me faithfully and with a love I can barely fathom for many years now. She has been there in moments I truly didn’t think I would pass through, when there was absolutely no other ground in me to hold to. I have spent nights when her name, and her son’s, were the only things on this earth that could calm me enough to sleep. And she has continually directed me toward an inarticulable but overpowering trust in Love— sometimes it feels beyond reason, I can assure you—and also reoriented me with greatest tenderness again and again toward humility, away from judgement, into peace.

These words, on this day, are an offering her. I hope they bring some of her grace to your hearts.

Here are the lyrics of the Georgian hymn itself, followed by the piece I wrote inspired by the song.

Thou art a vineyard, 
 newly blossomed out. 
Tender, beautiful, 
planted in Eden, 
Aloe-scented from Paradise.
God adorned thee, 
no one deserves praise as thou, 
And thou art thyself a brilliant sun.

Thou Art A Vineyard

In the old heart of the morning was a woman carrying the son of God. He filled her, lushly, a weight like pure water longed for, a heat like all the daybreaks in the world. Sunrise, and she was swelling, her body the heart of the old country, her body the vine, the grape, her body the great roost of all wintering longings, her body where love's star slept, her body what the angel came to earth just to stand near.

That day, her hair had fallen dark down her back in a spring wind under the blooming vines, and the petals landed there, catching as if on the warp of a loom. The angel would always remember her hand, holding out a cup of water to him—his wings were hidden then— and how her eyes were clear, and how she saw everything as he said it, and still was not afraid. The angel had come all that way, and yet he trembled before her, at her dark and steadfast eyes which had all the earth in them, and knew she would be asked to love and to feel and to lose everything, and still was not afraid. Yes, she said. Yes. I am his, my son's. I am my own. I am God's.

In the old heart of evening, a woman carries the son of God. Soon she will give birth. Over the west, stars set under the ridges, and her husband with hands that smell of the grapevines and the well-built fire rubs oil of myrrh on her ankles, and oil of spikenard on her soles. 

You are the vineyard, people will sing to her.

Anyone can go there, to the vineyard of ten thousand years. All you have to do is ask for her, and then walk toward her. Up the mountain in the high place, where the wild pear blooms in the sea's wind, where the vines have been tended continuously since the beginning of the world, where her beloved first said to her: you are the vineyard. That was before they sang of her, before the angel came and said to her: Mary, you are the Mother of God.

You can hear all those love songs still, up the mountain, in the mountain, at the mountain's root. Even in winter when the vines are bare, their great root burls buried in snow, you can hear them singing her those songs.

You are the vineyard, we sing to her.

You are the great ground where vines root, and you are the vines themselves, and you are the women who come to gather the grapes, laughing, telling all their secret longings, picking the fruit into baskets, and you are the men pressing them beneath their dancing feet to bring the wine.

You are the vineyard, we sing to her, you are the bearer of transforming fruit.

You are the vineyard, shelter of delight.

Up the mountain I go, time and again, to see her. I climb the ancient wall, down into the place of fruiting, down into the place of change. I go to sit where she sat, singing to the child in her womb. I go to stand where she stood, looking out to sea. I go to bow down where she bowed down, seeing the angel's dove-white wings. I weep where she wept. I weep where she wept. I weep where she wept. I see her carrying a cup of wine. I see her knowing she will have to give him away to the whole world. I see her give him away. I see the dove land on both of her shoulders.

Inside the arrival of daybreak, there is a woman birthing the son of God.

Inside the arrival of daybreak there is the son of God himself, whose light reaches all the way through and also beyond life into a peace whose name moves beyond the stars. It is that vast, and yet it is also as tiny and earthly as a mustard seed, and it is living water, pouring and pouring through my heart.  

© Sylvia V. Linsteadt—December 2022; edited in August 2023