by Jo Wardhaugh Doyle                                       Ireland                                      06.06.2026

What saved me from my storm and fire Michael Angelo, Glenna Good acre, and August Rodin. These are three magnificent people and their statues, which held my soul long enough to heal. The first time I saw the Pieta was in 1990 in Rome. My eyes opened and I saw with the eye of my soul a stirring pain deep within, from where I did not know. It touched what I thought was grief, and I thought to myself how ridiculous that was, but I looked at the magnificent marble with living sinews in their hands. The large, sad, helplessness over awed me, but the aliveness within the statue filled that area of the Vatican. It would be many years later that I would be triggered into understanding the depth of that original feeling.
Over time I would think of that strength and dire disturbing compassion of holding the lifeless Christ over Mary’s lap. By that time, I was in Attleboro, MA USA doing my War therapy. One of the therapists was a Vietnam veteran, I was intrigued as I grew up watching on TV the nightly horror of that war. These vets had a look about them. Jim Stone was a Vietnam veteran and a therapist.
He made us do our own wall!! I had not realised there was a Vietnam Wall in Washington, but there was. With thousands of names on it RIP. If you stand in front of it, you are in the wall, your reflection and the wall are one. That sums up a lot.
We were to make our own personal wall. We were asked to come to the front of the group and write two people’s names whom we had loved and lost, and we were to verbalise their names.
I feared.
Two by two our classes wall grew. The names of our loved ones that we had lost. From the abyss of my soul, I heard a groaning, a banshee wail, that I was scared to hear. My breath was gone and I stuttered out.
“A man whose name I never knew.”
It was such a shock to me that that grief, loss, breathlessness was there, so deeply embedded within me. The boy really, was killed in Gulu, Uganda in 1981 and I witnessed it. A growing pain erupted. A man whose name I did not know, but I loved him with an intense love and always will. I realised that I have been his witness, his Centinel, for 45 years and I will continue to be.
Worn out completely after that session, I was handed a magazine which contained a wonderful article with photos about The Washington Wall and the surrounding war sculptures.
The first sculpture put up was simply called War Nurses. I saw it and absorbed it. That was me. It was also a modern-day Pieta. There were three nurses. One held the dying body of the nameless soldier over her lap, later I found the sculptor’s name was Glenna Goodacre. She had named that first nurse Hope. The second nurse was an African American woman. She stands looking up towards the medivac helicopter searching the sky for Divine help. She has been called Faith. The last exhausted nurse sitting on the ground was called Charity. She stares at an empty helmet. Reflecting on the psychological tolls of war.
How this statue helped me and accompanied me on my journey. This was my Emmaus walk and they were attending to me all the way. So often people get fed up that you are not fixed. But these war nurses strengthened me through the bewildering journey of war, hatred, vengeance, and grief. A mindless Pandora’s box. Hope, Faith and Charity both counteracted and dragged me at times into new life.
In the same magazine was an article about August Rodin. This felt like a gift from Hope as I was feeling hollow with loss. But this Rodin sculpture gave hope. This gift was that hope, and love could be a future. The sculpture was called The Eternal Spring, although wrongly named in the article. It was vulnerable, voluptuous love. With two bodies arching passionately with pleasure over each other. Their bodies nearly entwined with erotic Joy, and I thought of the Eroticism of the Song of Songs.
Their bodies in similar positions as the injured Vet and the Pieta. Now there was the eternal spring. The woman lay over the man happily erotic in her love making. Like the song of songs, it was crying out,
” Let me kiss you with the kisses of my lips.”
From the death arching of the Pieta to the erotic arch of the life in the eternal spring, yes, hope filled me that new life was possible. I suppose this is what resurrection is about?
Hope from the war nurses. Their experiences handed over to other generations, other nurses, And Rodin over the decades showing that passion never dies. The three statues, made for different purposes over different centuries, had a connection. It was love, beautiful, connected love. And there is a journey to be made. The Journey from the lifelessness of grief to the fullness of love.
For many years I wondered, how do you move from grief to grace? Grace. Grace will bring me home, so the song says and what I wrote in my book in 1987 in Addis Ababa. Grace. I am not even sure what it is, but it is from grief to grace and many on my Emmaus walk are grace for me. Remember, every time you stop and see or stop and listen or stop and carry or stop and laugh or play or give your time, that’s grace. But I know I have been given grace in abundance, and I am able to hold all three sculptures with gratitude for the Graces. Grace is from people who saw me. People who saw my needs and gave grace graciously. Healing me. Slowly healing me. Walking with the gifts given by these three statues, these three nurses Hope, Faith, and Charity.
For all that, I am grateful.