Chat & Photos 


Tip-toeing to Mary

Mar 25 2003, Amy and Andrew J. DiMaggio, Jr., New Orleans, LA

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       New Orleans "Clarion Herald"            September 11, 2002


Mar 27 2003 - John Stokes, Mary's Gardens

This is to express appreciation for your extraordinary "Tip-toeing
to Mary" photo and commentary, someone sent me and which I
forwarded to a number of our Associates and friends and posted to
our Mary's Gardens website Chat & Photo section on Mar 24 evening.
20 website visitors accessed it yesterday, and some have sent
message comments such as, "The picture entitled baby talk was
precious" and "What an adorable picture!"

Happily, in doing an address search I found your e-mail address on
a St. Patrick's Day message sent out by Mary Garden lecturer,
Robert Carney, whom I am sending a cc of this message.

One of the wonderful aspects of my 52 years of Mary's Gardens
work, is the unending number of things like your photo, which
bring joy, and from which I learn.

Among the things I learned from your photo is that in a family
Mary Garden the statue of Our Lady should be near the border of a
flower bed, and on a low pedestal, so a small child, like yours,
can walk right up to it (and stand on tiptoes to be ay the same
height to babble/talk).  My own home Mary Garden, when my children
were small, had a focal figurine up high in a pole-mounted wayside
shrine shelter, not accessible to a small child  (but accessible
to the birds, another "miracle"),  as described in "In Mary's
Garden".

Another thing I learned from the photo is that it is not necessary
for a child to have learned to talk words in order to become
devoted to Mary through her image (and to talk "babble" to her).

Do you have many Flowers of Our Lady in your garden?  I've
recently become more aware that most of the cold temperate
perennials of the European research - per our website lists -
which we grow in the Northeastern U.S., are not suited to your New
Orleans "Gulf South" sub-topical climate - too hot in the summer,
and no winter cold dormant period required by others; so that you
are more dependent on annuals, the more hardy of which, however,
bloom for you all winter, while we can't grow them December
through April.  Are you familiar with "The New Orleans Garden" by
Charlotte Seidenberg?  I've made a Mary Garden analysis of it,
accessible on the website (in draft form and not indexed, as
"Flowers of Our Lady for Gulph South Mary Gardens".

Thank again, for the photo!


Mar 27 2003 - Andrew, Amy and Anna DiMaggio

Thanks for your email about the picture of Anna!  We have heard
from so many people world wide about the picture, we still can't
believe it.

The story about the picture goes like this, my wife took Anna
outside to take some pictures of her in her new dress.  As she
began to take the pictures, the batteries in our digital camera
died.  They came in and Amy said that they could only get one
picture because of the batteries.  I told her that we have lots of
batteries and replaced them for her while they went back outside.
After I gave the camera to Amy, Anna walked up to the statue and
began talking to Our Lady.  She would talk for a while with her
hands up, stop and wait for Our Lady's answer before talking
again.  After a few minutes, their conversation was over and Anna
went back to playing.

Now she does not only talk to Our Lady, but stops and kisses Her
goodbye before we leave in the morning.

Attached to this message is a copy of the original picture which
is in a higher resolution than the image of the article that you
can post on your site if you like.

Thanks again for your email!

  


Mar 27 2003 - Sr. M. Jean Frisk

Thank you for this beautiful innocence!
May God bless you for sending it!!
It brought me so much joy!


Mar 28 2003 - John Stokes, to Sr. M. Jean 

Yes, innocence - and also baptismal grace.

A reminder that parents are to nurture children's original
innocence and baptismal grace - in the virtues of purity, humility
and love, etc. - as Joachim and Anna nurtured them in immaculately
conceived and graced Mary; and as Mary nurtured them in the
divine/human Child Jesus.  Parental nurturing is clearly present
here, including the placing of the statue of Mary devotionally in
their flower border.

And as children receive the graces of eucharistic communion and of
the sacrament of reconciliation, they are to be counseled to
themselves keep fidelity to their original innocence and baptismal
graces - with continuation as adults.

But more marvellous is this demonstration of the actual graces of
sacramental blessings - here, of the Marian statue.  The article,
"The Blessing of Mary Gardens as Holy Places" refers to the widely
encountered experience of the holiness of sacramentally blessed
Mary Gardens (and their statues) - quoting from the Catholic
Encyclopedia that "Blessings...produce...excitation of pious
emotions and affections of the heart" - of which we have this
exquisite (if not "historic") example in a one-year old child.
The same is true of the blessing of symbolic flowers, as
documented in "In Mary's Garden".

"The Rural Life Prayer Book" (1956) of the U.S. National
Catholic Rural Life Conference observes that today such
sacramental blessings are "riches of the Church which have been
long unknown and unused like a treasure hidden under our very
doorstep"

May this marvellous example inspire a restored appreciation of
these blessings!


Mar 27 2003 - Julianne G Jackson

That picture is so precious of that baby!  Pictures do speak a
thousand words.


Mar 27 2003 - Lauretta Santarossa

I wonder if you - or even the Di Maggios - realized their daughter
is Anna Maria of May which is what "di Maggio" means in Italian.

Getting ready for Saturday's first class of our "Gardens and
Spirituality" worshop and I have to "freshen up" my talk.  Maybe
I'll use the pic as one of my slides.


Mar 27 2003 - Paula A. Mucha

You're the best.  Thanks for sending me the inside info on this
picture.

I enjoyed it thoroughly and so needed a boost today!

. . . .

This picture should be on the front page of newspapers instead of the war.

Thank you so much.


Mar 28 2003 - Elizabeth Kuhns

I sent that cute image around to a bunch of people myself!


Mar 28 2003 - John Stokes, to the Di Maggios

Thank you for your message of Mar 26 giving the details of "how it
happened".

And thanks for the attached photo of higher resolution.  While
website photos are limited to 72 dpi, I was able to to post a
cropped selection with better clarity of Anna and Mary, with name,
and will have the higher definition photo for print-out and
projection.

In addition to selections from our exchanges of messages, I am
also posting some feed-back excerpts for all to share.  If you
would like wider Internet distribution of selections from the
"so many people world wide" you have heard from, send them to me
in a message and I'll post them also.  Plenty of space.

For complete documentation. what is the publication in which the
original "36 New Orleans September 11, 2002" picture and text were
published?  (September 11 !)

Also, while from my faith and experience I am convinced your
statue of Mary was sacramentally blessed by a priest, as referred
to in my reply to Sister M. Jean - was this done while it was in
your possession?  If not, surely elsewhere - by manufacturer,
retailer, someone else.  Sr. M. Jean Frisk, incidentally is a
member of the Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary, and was long associated
with the Marian Library of the University of Dayton.  She composed
the meditations in our Associate, Vincenzina Krymow's "Mary's
Flowers, Gardens, Legends, and Meditations" (now in paperback),
and also in her recently published "Healing Herbs of the Bible".


Mar 31 2003 - Robert Carney

It was nice hearing from you.  I sent you the article Tip-toeing
to Mary.  I got that picture from an e-mail friend locally and
thought it was her grand daughter but it wasn't.  I had a friend
of mine track it down, his son lives in Louisanna.  They provided
me with the information I needed.  Name address and telephone
number.

I wrote the Di Maggio's a letter and through e-mail correspondence
they sent me an 8 x 10 photo through the mail.  I intend to make a
35mm slide and use it as the closing slide for my Mary Garden
Presentation.  I have a friend that has a digital setup on his
computer and if you would like a copy I'll have him send you a
copy.  I have framed it for the time being and last week at a
presentation I passed it around at the end of my presentation and
it was received with all sort of beautiful comments.

May Our Blessed Mother keep you in good health.


Mar 31 2003 - John Stokes

Thank you for your message of 31 Mar, telling me it was you who
sent me "Tip-toeing for Mary" - for which I especially thank you.

This beautiful spiritual event, with its photographic capturing,
and the description by the DiMaggios of how it came about, is of
historic religious importance and potential.

I had just written a paragraph in a MS on education I am working
on:

     Just as there is a time when infants and small children
     reach and display a readiness to learn each basic skill
     - to roll over, crawl, manipulate, eat, walk, talk and
     read, etc. - so is there a time when they show readiness
     to learn the Gospel through the family praying of the
     Rosary Mysteries.

in which I assumed that such learning starts when children learn
words, and are present at their parents' praying of the Rosary -
before a figurine of Our Lady.

"Tip-toeing" shows that Anna Maria - before learning to talk -
evidently learned from her parents praying (speaking) to Mary with
devotion, and also through inspiration from the placement of the
statue in the flower border, especially if sacramentally blessed,
to commune with Mary in love.

I recall the Jesuit saying, when parents asked when they should
start teaching their child religion, "If you haven't started
yet, you are already too late".

The planting of and caring for a Mary Garden before Our Lady's
statue is likewise a devotional example and teaching for small
children.  When we have said this people have often let it pass
over them as our devotional enthusiasm, but no longer now that we
have the photo and story of tip-toeing Anna Maria.  See posting to
website CHAT.

Thanks again.


Apr 01 2003 - Andrew J. DiMaggio, Jr.

As far as I know, the statue has not been blessed.  Or at least we
have not had it blessed.  The publication the picture was printed
in is our Archdiocesean new paper, The Clarion Herald and it was
published on 9/11/02.


Apr 02 2003 - John Stokes

Thanks for the information regarding the possible blessing of the
statue.

I'm most interested in the religious motivation of children; and
on seeing Anna Maria's tender communion with Our Lady am moved to
see if I can learn anything from you which might be helpful to
other parents - yet wish to avoid any invasion of your family's
devotional privacy (which, on the other hand I appreciate your
sharing with us - how did the photo and text come to be published
in the Clarion Herald?).

In this spirit I ask if there are any special examples or pictures
of devotion you could further share which might have moved Anna
Maria - such as family prayers before the statue, or simple
reverential regard of it, or of another statue, or at the time of
its placement in the flower bed, or the reverence of a visitor,
etc.

Or do you and Amy consider it it "out of the blue", a gratuitous
movement of grace and/or the goodness of her pure, innocent.
child's heart - which is one's simple, direct, immediate (and
continuing) sense on viewing the photo?

When Mary herself has appeared to some (older) children, she has
been seen initially, without further identification, as the
"Beautiful Lady", who spoke to them; and this is a beautiful
statue.  Also Anna Maria and the statue are of the same height, so
there is a certain equality, as it were, rather than an
adult/child relationship.

While the devotional motivation of flower symbols of Our Lady
comes from the learning of their medieval names, and a resulting
quickened imaginative envisaging in the context of the Gospel
story, something more direct, and non-verbal, is involved with an
image of Our Lady.


Apr 01 2004 - Andrew J. DiMaggio, Jr.

As far as it getting published, after Amy took the picture we
printed up a couple of copies and showed them to the people we
work with.  If I have not already said this, we are both Catholic
school teachers who teach at the same pre-k to 8th grade school.
Amy teaches 6-8 reading and I teach pre-k to 8th computer.  Well
almost everyone we showed the picture to said that we should
submit it to the Clarion Herald.  So, I typed an email with the
description of how the picture came to be and sent to the editors
along with the picture expecting that nothing would become of it.
Well, when we got home on September 11, 2002, there were 5
messages on our answering machine of people satng how they loved
the picture of our daughter.  At first, we did not have any idea
about what they were talking about.  Then it hit us, and we looked
through the mail and found our copy of the Clarion with Anna's
picture on the back cover.

As far as special examples of devotion, that's a tough one to
answer.  We have brought Anna to Mass just about every Sunday
since she was born, we pray before meals together, we say a
blessing over Anna before she goes to bed, but I wouldn't really
call any of that special.  It's just what we do as a family, sort
of our routine.  We have always considered what Anna did as "just
out of the blue" because of Mary's special connection with
children.  The only special thing that I can think of is that our
Church has always prayed the Rosary before Mass starts as a
congregation.

I hope that helps!


Apr 02 2004 - John Stokes

Thanks for your generous reply to my further questions.

"Out of the blue" is beautiful and precious.  And how much more so
when there is "nothing special".

One other detail: was the statue placed in the flower border with
Anna Maria's awareness, or was it "always" there as far as she is
concerned?

However, 52 years ago when we started Mary' Gardens, home outdoor
statues and shrines of Our Lady were very much something special,
at least here in the Northeast.  When I first began growing the
Flowers of Our Lady in my own backyard garden, it didn't occur to
me to have a focal statue for a couple of years - and then what
beautiful consequences, per "In Mary's Garden".  One of my
colleagues in this work wanted to have a statue in his yard, but
his family objected: "What would the neighbors think".

So, back then, we were like the "recusants" and hidden "closet"
Catholics of post-Reformation England who had important devotional
and testimonial recourse to the flowers of Marian symbolism in
their gardens when ritual and artifacts were prohibited.

Then came the immediate aftermath of Vatican II, with its
downplaying of Mary "to get along ecumenically with Protestants".
All five or so of the religious article and statuary wholesalers
on Berkeley Street in New York City went out of business.  An
editorial in the Diocesan paper of my Mary's Gardens partner,
Bonnie Roberson of Hagermann, Idaho - who assumed the primary
responsibility for our project from 1968 through 1983 - even
downplayed the praying of the Rosary.  And when she complained of
this to her Bishop, who some years before had visited with her in
her Mary Garden (of which she made a tape recording) they had a
parting of the ways over this matter.  An early 70's article by a
priest in a Canadian magazine praised Bonnie for heroically
keeping up her Marian work in this anti-Marian period.

(Bonnie and her Bishop happily became reconciled some years later,
when, on  fishing trip down the Snake River he showed up at her
front door in his boots and asked for the key she had for the town
chapel so he could say Mass.  When he said, "Body of Christ,
Bonnie" at communion, their eyes met and she realized their
differences about Marian devotion were of the past.  Her sister,
who was there with them, told me of this, after Bonnie's death in
1983 (R.I.P.).)

With this history, you can see how much I value home outdoor
statuary, which I like to think we helped promote, and that it is
now considered nothing special . . . although in Tip-toeing to
Mary it has occasioned something very special!

Thanks again, Andrew, for all the information.


Apr 07 2004 - Andrew J. DiMaggio, Jr.

Anna was not aware when the statue was placed there; she thinks is
has always been there.  I bought the statue for Amy for Mother's
day when she was still pregnant.  Statues of Mary in our gardens
are fairly common here in the south where we live.  You will
usually see at least one on every street you turn down.  And
that's not counting the one's you do not see in the back yards.
My grandmother had one in her back yard as did my great
grandmother.  So for me, it only seemed natural that when we got
our first home that we would have a statue of Our Lady.


Oct 25 2006 - John Stokes

Once again I am moved to report the continuing "hits" each day on
the "Tip Toeing to Mary" files on our Mary's Gardens website -
still after 4 years.

This year there have been 17,056 direct "hits" through September
30th, or over 50 a day - 51 yesterday on October 24

While many of these are direct hits addressed to the Mar 24, 2003
website Chat and Photos file, significantly, a number of others
come via Google Internet searches from people who have evidently
learned of "tip toeing" through hearsay, but don't have the website
address

Thus, of the 51 hits on 24 October, 21 came through Google
searches, which led to the "tip toeing" posting by way of the
following queries (per our daily access log):

    6: anna maria dimaggio
    6: tip toeing to mary
    3: andrew dimaggio
    1: little girl talking to mary
    1: conversation with mary dimaggio
    1: tip toeing to mary new orleans
    1: amy and andrew j dimaggio
    1: mary and child garden statue
    1: picture of little girl talking to blessed mary
    1: statue of mary and a little girl

In addition to these there have been 34,079 "hits" this year
through 30 September (106 on 24 October) on our

    EDUCATION & SCHOOLS
       Background Reference/Index for Teachers

file, also containing the New Orleans "Clarion Herald" September
11, 2002 article and photo.

It can be said that the challenge of Catholic parenting and
education is the preservation of this childhood goodness into
adulthood, as Mary preserved the purity and graces of her
Immaculate Conception.

To this end it has been proposed (by Einstein) that a major
challenge of education is the preservation of curiosity.

Rote catechism teaching, virtue formation, sacrament training and
Mass attendance all too often fail to generate curiosity insofar as
further Catholic understanding and wisdom are concerned - even with
the sacrament of confirmation - so that the temptations of world,
flesh and devil encountered seem more vital to many.

I recall a NY Times report re, NYC police corruption years ago in
which the police commissioner said the typical officer then
involved in corruption was a Parochial School grad, often a former
altar boy, who had no personal preparation in how to deal with the
corruption encountered in the streets.

It would appear that the remedy for this for our times, for
Catholics, is an educational approach fostering unending curiosity
as to how one is to contribute incrementally to the sure building
of God's Peaceable Kingdom in each personal life encounter in the
sinful fallen world, starting with each one's immediate life
circumstances.

Thus, after children's initial expression of curiosity about life
provides the occasion for the teaching of God's creation of the
world to show forth and share with us the divine goodness and
action, with culmination to be in the grace-guided human building
of God's Earthly Kingdom . . . this curiosity is to be sustained
through discernment with them at each stage of life as to: how each
situation and event encountered is to be met with grace-prompted
Kingdom building virtues of truth, justice, love and freedom; how
each contrary allurement experienced is to be met personally with
grace-preserving resistance of temptation; and how each offense
experienced, however large or small, is to be met with
offense-absorbing sweet forgiveness and non-retaliation.

Thus, beginning curiosity as how to deal with selfishness,
aggressiveness or bullying encountered beginning in pre-school or
immediate neighborhood is to be extended step by step through
youthful years to adult vocational, professional, work and social
situations.

Working with flower symbols of religious truth and action at Mary's
Gardens, I am struck with the difference between the general rote
learning of Christianity in our era of printing, general literacy
and classrooms - protected and then going out into the world - in
contrast to the general learning of religion on location in life
itself in the oral traditions of Christianity of the first 1500
years of the Church.

Initial learning through parents and preaching in the traditional
society pf the Middle Ages was in the context of life situations,
and continuously supported in these by nature symbols, and by
itinerate preachers, mendicant friars, wandering minstrels, roving
players, pilgrims, merchants, missionaries and other travelers
intermixed with life itself; by religious processions; and by
pilgrimages to cathedrals, with their sculptured, stained glass and
religious art visual teachings.

A further aspect of Christianity especially needed for our times,
for the building and coming of God's Peaceable Kingdom, is recourse
to and participation in Christ's redemptive reparation of remote
violence and terrorism, of which we learn daily through press,
radio and TV,

All Catholics have recourse, in the sacrament of reconciliation, to
assigned penitential reparation for the dissolution of the residual
temporal effects of their confessed and absolved sins; and recourse
to the offering of Mass sacrifices for the freeing of souls in
purgatory from the temporal effects of sin carried with them after
death - that they may have heavenly rest.

But recourse is also sorely needed to penitential, reparational
dissolution of the temporal effects of sin on political leaders,
dissidents and insurgents, that delivered from the evil of these
effects they may be freed to respond in their inherent created
goodness to the graces and initiatives of peace, forgiveness,
reconciliation, justice and Kingdom beseeched in the prayers and
sacrifices of the Holy Father and all the faithful.
 
As in the Marshall Plan following WW II and in the peaceful
resolution of the Cold War, the freeing of just a few key leaders
to act with the goodness of peace, forgiveness and reconciliation
can dispose entire nations towards Kingdom.

This is indeed the key to world peace - which is clearly why Our
Lady beseeched at Fatima the consecration of the world to her
Immaculate Heart, and beseeched the reparational offering by us,
through her, of all our daily aggravations, obstacles, sorrows and
sufferings for and with Christ in reparation for the
Kingdom-blocking effects of sins of he world.

While our individual sacrifices may be small in relation to the
effects of sin to be repaired in leaders, our offering of them
through and with Christ joins them with the totality of his
sacrifice, in fulfillment of the Father's creational desire for
divine/human sharing and cooperation in the building of Kingdom,
and thus also in the necessary redemptive reparation for this
building in the fallen world.  Finally, our offering is in
emulation of Mary's co-redemptive offering with Christ in
reparation for all the effects of sin in the world, revealed to her
through the spiritual sword of sorrow piercing her heart and soul.

It is because of our ability thus freely to offer all our
aggravations, adversities, sorrows and sufferings - and also our
duties and actions - in voluntary sacrificial union with Christ,
that Our Lady at Fatima, Amsterdam and Akita has beseeched us to
do, through her Immaculate Heart, for world peace, . . . that we
may freely avoid the severe penances of urban destruction from
accumulated unrepaired world effects of sin, as the alternative
projected in the Third Secret of Fatima and Third Message of Akita.

Thus, Amy and Andrew, some thoughts prompted by Anna Maria's
tip-toeing.


Blessings,


Oct 26 2006 - Ann Ball to John Stokes

You should let them know that not only do you get hits but people
have also sent me that photo in email many many times !


Apr 30 2007 - John Stokes to Paula Mucha

Hi Paula,

Knowing of you past successes in locating e-mail addresses, here's one that doesn't work any more

     "Amy and Andrew J. DiMaggio, Jr." 
       
but I don't think they've moved.

The last message I had from them from this address was in September 2004.

A message I sent them in October 2006 was unanswered, but I didn't check the delivery.

Then, I sent them one this month, checked delivery, and found it was undelivered because "address unknown" 

They both had teachings jobs, a ("Tip-toeing to Mary") child (maybe more now), and a home South of New Orleans, which survived hurricane Katrina OK.

Hope you are well.

Blessings,