Margaret Rose Realy isn’t really an artist, she insists, even though her paintings of flowers, clouds and the Sacred Heart hang in houses all over the world. She isn’t a natural author, either, even though she’s written four books: “A Garden of Visible Prayer,” “A Catholic Gardener’s Spiritual Almanac,” “A Garden Catechism,” and “Planting with Prayer.”
“The only reason I did it is because God asked me to,” she said.
Listening to God is one of the few things Realy, 70, will admit to being skilled at. She is, in some ways, a professional: She’s a Benedictine oblate, associated with a local monastery in Michigan, who has lived an eremitic life marked by silence, solitude and prayer for many years. Realy follows the rule of St. Benedict, which she calls “a gentle rule.”
The silver-haired, soft-spoken woman whose chronic health struggles have made it harder and harder for her to move seems like mildness personified. She is a master gardener and says that working among flowers has brought her closer to God. Her gardens are a form of “gentle evangelization.”
But do not mistake Realy for a sentimentalist. Her docile manner veils a soul on fire with passion, courage and fierce trust.
Facing pain and violence
Realy speaks quietly of her physical pain, and just as quietly of her harrowing personal history of abuse and neglect; and she speaks of her desire to see her abusers again in heaven.
“I can’t wait to know who God really meant them to be, who they were supposed to be,” she said. “I still want to love them, and I still want to know that love, and give it.”
Beauty and grace are like seeds that God has planted in even the darkest and most tormented souls, she said. It takes a terribly strong conviction to refuse forgiveness from God.
“I don’t think hell is as full as we might like to think it is.”
Again, do not mistake Realy for a pushover. Many of her paintings are sweet and simple depictions of the beauty of nature. But some, like her Sacred Heart series, are a disciplined exploration of something she didn’t understand and didn’t want to face.
“I was highly repulsed by some of the older Sacred Heart images, this graphic, gory mass. It was beyond my ability to connect to it,” she said.
The images were so gruesome, they pushed her away from Jesus. So she pushed back. She prayed, pressing the Lord for an explanation of this distressing devotional. He told her to paint.
She obediently began to depict the Sacred Heart, but “bound up in nature,” intertwined not only with thorns but with vines and buds.
“I was drawing the Sacred Heart in a way that wasn’t frightening. Drawing closer to what it means to have a heart so sacred (that) our Lord was willing to let it stop beating,” she said. “It was drawing closer to the heart of Jesus for me, who has experienced much violence in my life.”
Realy’s post-traumatic stress disorder used to make the sight of a crucifix intolerable. Now she embraces it. That turn marks the time when she began to converse with the Lord “casually, personally.”
She does say the Rosary and other formal prayers. But she also simply speaks God.
“And I listen, of course,” she said. Using something like the Gestalt “empty chair” technique, she is ready to hear answers that aren’t verbal.
‘What am I supposed to do now?’
Her faith began to grow many years before she took up a paintbrush, in a physically active season of her life, full of backpacking and canoeing. The beauty of the natural world drew her to the Lord, and she returned the favor by throwing herself wholeheartedly into gardening and teaching others how to do it.
But her physical challenges began to mount, until a debilitating bout of pain and inflammation landed her in bed for five days. When she got back on her feet, she headed to adoration to hash things out with God.
“I sat down in a pew, and said, ‘Lord, you made me a gardener.’ I was crying, ‘I can’t do this anymore. You know I can’t do this. What am I supposed to do now?’ I heard very clearly, ‘Write.'”
She laughed out loud, startling the woman in the next pew.
Realy, who had failed English class twice, was in disbelief that the Lord could expect her to write professionally.
“I just looked at him point blank, and said, ‘Fine. You’re going to have to make it happen,'” she said. He did.
A journalist friend told her that her gardening class notes amounted to a book in themselves. Another friend hooked her up with the Catholic Writers Guild. One piece after another fell into place: a scholarship, a last-minute cancellation, donors, even the gift of a dress, so she’d have something to wear to an important conference. Realy was disabled, unemployed and penniless; she didn’t even know what a manuscript was. But within a few hours of challenging the Lord, she found herself perfectly positioned to pitch her first book, “A Garden of Visible Prayer.”
“That first book is God’s book. I dared him, and that is what he did with my life,” she said.
Realy has since written three more books, as well as countless columns, articles and presentations. But writing, too, turned out only to be a season.
A new call to a new art
Close to 10 years ago, a neighbor whom Realy knew mainly for her raucous lifestyle invited her to a painting party.
“Oh, Lord, sitting in a room with people, and smoking and drinking!” Realy thought with dread. Even sitting would be hard, because of the pain in her spine. But she agreed, and went along to the garage, where a group of women were painting a cardinal.
“The weirdest thing happened. Two-and-a-half hours passed like three seconds,” she said. It was easy, and painless.
She wondered, and tucked away the memory in her heart. A few months later, the neighbor invited her again, and the same thing happened: Time flew. She forgot herself and got lost in the colors.
The Lord was calling her in a new direction. She began to take art classes, pushing herself, but not expecting perfection.
All of her paintings are sacred, even if they show only a blossom or a bank of clouds.
“My paintings are not gallery quality. But they are pure,” she said.
Realy pays close attention to ancient symbolism — myrtle as a symbol of marriage, a Lenten rose that blossoms as Easter arrives — but her images also speak for themselves, especially through color.
“At one level, people will perceive a spiritual connection, if not the exact symbolism,” she said. “I did a house with storm clouds in the background, but the light comes through.”
The house stands as a symbol of the human self. Even in a storm, it is illuminated.
Realy has returned somewhat to gardening, with adaptive tools. She longs to get back to painting, when she is physically able, and until then finds visual relief in books of flowers, paintings or even catalogues. Her prayer life, though, has remained vigorously alive.
“Any living thing slowly moves in and out of seasons. Some of the seasons depend on circumstances, some are based on our maturity and our faith,” she said.
Just as in nature, seasons all have their purpose.
Living in solitude but praying for others
Although she has painted a saint or two, Realy has little desire to paint people.
“I’m connected with nature. My heart and my inclination are in that direction. To [paint] people well, you have to be able to read the human person,” she said. That is something Realy struggles with.
Thus the call to an eremitic life. She is not completely isolated from other people, but withdrawn. She doesn’t spend much time with other people physically but prays for them ceaselessly.
“There was this comfort in the fact that I was not able to interact fully with people, but also this drawing toward people, which is kind of contradictory,” she said.
She lives out her vocation in part by helping neighbors who are disabled; she also prays on behalf of the many incarcerated people in the state of Michigan and frequently solicits prayer requests on social media. She can do this work without leaving her home.
This season of solitude, too, may be drawing to a close. For most hermits, withdrawal from the world is not meant to go on forever.
“I feel I’m being drawn to more interdependence with people. I have no family, I have no backup; but there seems to be a shifting in this eremitic life,” she said.
The Lord has told her that sometimes he calls her to do things whose significance she does not know.
“I surrender my own knowledge to God,” she said. “I could offer prayers while watering the garden, and have no idea what that prayer is for. I don’t know if I’m praying for healing or peace or finding someone plane tickets — or who knows?” she said.
Her purpose in writing, gardening and painting — her whole purpose in life — is to become quiet and sit with God and to encourage others to do the same.
“I’m not afraid to share my simple art online. I want to be an encouragement to others to go ahead and try,” she said.
It doesn’t matter how good it is; it matters whether it brings you joy.
“I present opportunities to really see God’s creation, and the Holy Spirit will take over,” she said.
