Roses for Princess Diana, or roses for the Queen of Heaven?
Princess Diana was very fond of the sunken garden which runs parallel to Kensington Palace. I pop across to the garden often and I see why Diana often called it 'beautiful': it is situated on top of a high grassy embankment, you get to the garden by winding your way uphill through the thicket of green hedges or climbing the stairs. Once there, you have a feeling of seclusion, of being in your own secret garden as you feast your eyes on the flower displays and catch the glint of golden fish swimming in the ponds and the restful rhythm of the cascading water from the fountains.
To mark the 20th anniversary since Diana's untimely death the garden was planted with 12,000 white flower bulbs which have burst and bloomed to become the 'Diana White Garden'. Here is a photo from May when the bulbs were still being warmed in the earth.
A virtual perfumery when the wind sways the roses a milky,
maternal scent washes over you. A hive of tourists it may be, but there during my frequent visits to the garden I've also met little groups of close friends and lone souls who visit the garden because they felt a kinship with Diana, they believe she and they were kindred spirits.
These dear people approach the garden with a solemn reverence: they feel grief for Diana but also an overwhelming gratitude. "She helped me cope during some very bad times" is on the lips of women and men who went through the same trials as Diana; they had an unfaithful husband or wife who left them for someone else, they've known rejection and psychological agony. These ordinary people are given to say succinctly, "what Diana lived in public, I lived in private".
Congregating around the sombre white flowers which are like wreaths on a coffin, you will find people who are emotionally robust and emotionally fragile. There are highly successful people and there are people who fail to fit into society or find any human affection. One lonely, poverty-stricken person told me something that haunts me; "Diana would have given me a hug". Diana was a vortex of need and the love-starved who cannot find someone to give them the love they crave find in Diana a figure who makes them feel less alone.
Affluent, smartly-dressed successful gay men can have a intensely private devotion to her as well as a fascination for her, feeling, "I think she would have liked me for me, and would have accepted me in a way my own mother never did". The younger set, older teens and Millennials in their 30s who are not married have precise reasons of their own for revering Diana. She was from a broken home and her beautiful eyes always looked splintered with sorrow; the damage she sustained during childhood was never healed and in her they see the damage they carry.
I am not devoted to Diana as they; but I have sympathy with her, just thinking of the jealousy and hurt she felt when Charles cavorted with Camilla is enough to make me wince.
I am not a critic of Diana, rather I am a critic of the critics of Diana, I feel even the memory of Diana provokes a lot of jealousy in those who will never have the masses adoring them and they strive to diminish her in the eyes of others by saying she had little academic intelligence (true, but she was good at caring for the school hamster) and was manipulative (she certainly courted the media with stories of how she was wronged, but then the public wanted to be an appendage of her dress's sleeves).
The masses adore her because while Diana's assuages their self-doubt and insecurities, for those who feel they would not have been jilted or betrayed by a lover or spouse had they been better looking, more charming, well-heeled, she soothes their insecurity by the example of her life of heart-break and rejection. Diana's beauty, sex-appeal, shy charm and most of all privilege were no insurance policy against pain.
The Diana devotées do not know an easy characterisation; they are people from all over the world and from all walks of life. The British middle-aged woman who stoically holds back tears in the garden and felt herself a contemporary of Diana and got divorced at the same time as her is likely to have a tearful Colombian lady follow behind her in the garden who had an abusive husband but they are both likely to say, "if someone as gorgeous as Diana couldn't keep her marriage together, it makes me feel better."
At the garden, peering at the mournful roses, this is like a wake without whiskey. I can tell you that the smuggled in spirit of choice is Smirnoff, usually in the handbag of a woman who passes it between her and her besties as they sit on the benches surrounding the garden and compare their sufferings to those of Diana. Some of the Smirnoff slinging is done by bitter women of the battle-axe variety who protest their love of Diana in loud tones, they are adamant no one loves her more than they. They need the hooch to get them through their day-long vigil in the environs of Kensington Palace. The Diana fans go to the garden as though going to the site where a saint was martyred.
And I believe when they set their wills to loving Diana, when they meditate deeply on her life and leave roses by the gate of Kensington Palace they have crossed the line from paying their respects to revering Diana in an eerily similar way to how Catholics revere Our Lady. Surely some of the people who in 2017 pay homage to Diana had ancestors in old Catholic England who made Mary Gardens complete with white flowers such as lily of the valley which was thought a symbol of Our Lady's tears shed during her life.
Love for Diana is an attempt to fill the void in the soul for maternal love and more precisely for heavenly motherly love: Roman Catholics know this love to be the rich, creamy love of Our Lady. Protestant religions are often guilty of patriarchal bullying in that they instill a fear of loving Our Lady in their followers lest they become like those pesky Catholics who snuggle up to Our Lady.
I am not a feminist, yet I feel the word 'patriarchal' is justified here because the maternal love of Our Lady was relegated to the realm of a danger to the soul. When the 'reforms' of Protestantism ensued they entailed the emphasis was completely placed on Christ our Saviour without mere recognition of the sinless woman from whom the Saviour took his Flesh that was offered as a bloody sacrifice on the cross as redemption for our sins.
Devotion to Diana can be so very like the way Catholics pay homage to Our Lady's sorrows by praying The Seven Sorrows while contemplating the excruciating anxiety Our Lady felt at losing the Child Jesus for three days and when she beheld her Son succumb to death on a blood-stained cross.
But the key distinction is that devotion to Diana is narcissistic, while devotion to Our Lady is anti-narcissistic.
In looking at Diana's sad, searching eyes us ordinary people see our own brokenness and this is essentially narcissistic; it makes us feel better about ourselves, and more at home in our brittle natures. It makes us love our reflection all the more and you see in the die-hard Diana fans a visceral reaction if their goddess is criticised in any way; it's like you've insulted their mother.
While Diana was more sinned against than sinning, she was still a sinner who often indulged in the wrongs which cost her so much such as adultery and manipulative game-playing. Sure, there can be a feeling we have elevated ourselves when we compare our troubles to those of Diana's; yet we stay stuck looking at another creature with much of the same failing as ourselves; stuck in the smugness of our sinfulness.
Love for Our Lady and devotion to her can be entirely anti-narcissistic.
We were conceived with original sin, while Our Lady was conceived in St Anne's womb without the taint of original sin and was the best human woman to ever walk the face of the earth, full of grace and the most pure crystal to radiate God's love. When we look at Our Lady and want to see our own reflection staring back at us and we find a reflection of our humanity in her humanity, but our imperfections find no place in her perfection.
At the heart of the reason why people rebel against closeness to Our Lady is that looking at her makes them conscious of their weaknesses and failings; it irritates their inner narcissist which means they are in love with their own image and are unsettled to find a creature of peerless perfection. I can't say I have never felt this way; when I was growing up someone gave me a photograph of a statue of Our Lady and I ripped it to pieces; so determined was I never to look up to Our Lady. If someone had told me I'd become a journalist who wrote pieces on The Third Secret of Fatima I'd have stopped speaking to them.
But like I once did, they cheat themselves because the better the person is the better they are at giving love and by this definition no human mother has ever been better at loving her children than Our Lady.
PS - This article is tagged under A View From The Crown's Rest.
To mark the 20th anniversary since Diana's untimely death the garden was planted with 12,000 white flower bulbs which have burst and bloomed to become the 'Diana White Garden'. Here is a photo from May when the bulbs were still being warmed in the earth.
A virtual perfumery when the wind sways the roses a milky,
maternal scent washes over you. A hive of tourists it may be, but there during my frequent visits to the garden I've also met little groups of close friends and lone souls who visit the garden because they felt a kinship with Diana, they believe she and they were kindred spirits.
These dear people approach the garden with a solemn reverence: they feel grief for Diana but also an overwhelming gratitude. "She helped me cope during some very bad times" is on the lips of women and men who went through the same trials as Diana; they had an unfaithful husband or wife who left them for someone else, they've known rejection and psychological agony. These ordinary people are given to say succinctly, "what Diana lived in public, I lived in private".
Congregating around the sombre white flowers which are like wreaths on a coffin, you will find people who are emotionally robust and emotionally fragile. There are highly successful people and there are people who fail to fit into society or find any human affection. One lonely, poverty-stricken person told me something that haunts me; "Diana would have given me a hug". Diana was a vortex of need and the love-starved who cannot find someone to give them the love they crave find in Diana a figure who makes them feel less alone.
Affluent, smartly-dressed successful gay men can have a intensely private devotion to her as well as a fascination for her, feeling, "I think she would have liked me for me, and would have accepted me in a way my own mother never did". The younger set, older teens and Millennials in their 30s who are not married have precise reasons of their own for revering Diana. She was from a broken home and her beautiful eyes always looked splintered with sorrow; the damage she sustained during childhood was never healed and in her they see the damage they carry.
I am not devoted to Diana as they; but I have sympathy with her, just thinking of the jealousy and hurt she felt when Charles cavorted with Camilla is enough to make me wince.
The masses adore her because while Diana's assuages their self-doubt and insecurities, for those who feel they would not have been jilted or betrayed by a lover or spouse had they been better looking, more charming, well-heeled, she soothes their insecurity by the example of her life of heart-break and rejection. Diana's beauty, sex-appeal, shy charm and most of all privilege were no insurance policy against pain.
The Diana devotées do not know an easy characterisation; they are people from all over the world and from all walks of life. The British middle-aged woman who stoically holds back tears in the garden and felt herself a contemporary of Diana and got divorced at the same time as her is likely to have a tearful Colombian lady follow behind her in the garden who had an abusive husband but they are both likely to say, "if someone as gorgeous as Diana couldn't keep her marriage together, it makes me feel better."
At the garden, peering at the mournful roses, this is like a wake without whiskey. I can tell you that the smuggled in spirit of choice is Smirnoff, usually in the handbag of a woman who passes it between her and her besties as they sit on the benches surrounding the garden and compare their sufferings to those of Diana. Some of the Smirnoff slinging is done by bitter women of the battle-axe variety who protest their love of Diana in loud tones, they are adamant no one loves her more than they. They need the hooch to get them through their day-long vigil in the environs of Kensington Palace. The Diana fans go to the garden as though going to the site where a saint was martyred.
And I believe when they set their wills to loving Diana, when they meditate deeply on her life and leave roses by the gate of Kensington Palace they have crossed the line from paying their respects to revering Diana in an eerily similar way to how Catholics revere Our Lady. Surely some of the people who in 2017 pay homage to Diana had ancestors in old Catholic England who made Mary Gardens complete with white flowers such as lily of the valley which was thought a symbol of Our Lady's tears shed during her life.
Love for Diana is an attempt to fill the void in the soul for maternal love and more precisely for heavenly motherly love: Roman Catholics know this love to be the rich, creamy love of Our Lady. Protestant religions are often guilty of patriarchal bullying in that they instill a fear of loving Our Lady in their followers lest they become like those pesky Catholics who snuggle up to Our Lady.
I am not a feminist, yet I feel the word 'patriarchal' is justified here because the maternal love of Our Lady was relegated to the realm of a danger to the soul. When the 'reforms' of Protestantism ensued they entailed the emphasis was completely placed on Christ our Saviour without mere recognition of the sinless woman from whom the Saviour took his Flesh that was offered as a bloody sacrifice on the cross as redemption for our sins.
But the key distinction is that devotion to Diana is narcissistic, while devotion to Our Lady is anti-narcissistic.
In looking at Diana's sad, searching eyes us ordinary people see our own brokenness and this is essentially narcissistic; it makes us feel better about ourselves, and more at home in our brittle natures. It makes us love our reflection all the more and you see in the die-hard Diana fans a visceral reaction if their goddess is criticised in any way; it's like you've insulted their mother.
Love for Our Lady and devotion to her can be entirely anti-narcissistic.
We were conceived with original sin, while Our Lady was conceived in St Anne's womb without the taint of original sin and was the best human woman to ever walk the face of the earth, full of grace and the most pure crystal to radiate God's love. When we look at Our Lady and want to see our own reflection staring back at us and we find a reflection of our humanity in her humanity, but our imperfections find no place in her perfection.
At the heart of the reason why people rebel against closeness to Our Lady is that looking at her makes them conscious of their weaknesses and failings; it irritates their inner narcissist which means they are in love with their own image and are unsettled to find a creature of peerless perfection. I can't say I have never felt this way; when I was growing up someone gave me a photograph of a statue of Our Lady and I ripped it to pieces; so determined was I never to look up to Our Lady. If someone had told me I'd become a journalist who wrote pieces on The Third Secret of Fatima I'd have stopped speaking to them.
But like I once did, they cheat themselves because the better the person is the better they are at giving love and by this definition no human mother has ever been better at loving her children than Our Lady.
PS - This article is tagged under A View From The Crown's Rest.
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