This time has been so "fraught" with anxiety. (Don't you love that word? It apparently comes from a word meaning "freight", or the process of loading up a ship.) This debt ceiling thing has almost done me in...I'll probably speak about that soon, but today, I thought it was time to provide some balance with a new Goddess word.
So...flowers! Spring obviously comes extremely late in Northern Minnesota, later still right by the edge of Lake Superior where it can be in the 40's when it is 80 or 90 degrees over the hill. This spring has also been unnaturally dry. Here's where we are at as of this morning. Tulips and dandelions came out about a week ago. Lilies of the valley are just starting to come out, as are a number of flowering trees and shrubs. Lilacs look to me to be about five days away from flowering. Down at the Rose Garden, as of a few days ago the buds were just starting to appear...
One of the paradoxes of my life is the fact that I have never been particularly focused on nature, not in any kind of close, loving kind of way -- the exception being a passion for water, particularly large lakes like Champlain and Superior. When I was young, my family had friends who had a "camp" (summer house) in the southern Adirondacks. The dad would take us kids on hikes up the mountain behind the property, and he would stop about every two feet to point out plants, flowers, trees and mosses, all with their Latin names. It was just too much for an eight-year old, and unfortunately his passion backfired into putting me off both mountain climbing and plants. To this day, I can identify only maybe a dozen flowers, a dozen types of trees, a dozen birds, and a dozen wild North American animals (squirrels, chipmunks, deer, etc.) Overall, I'd say most of my life, I would have been just as happy looking at paintings of nature as at nature Herself.
But the COVID era combined with an inner revolution toward all things Goddess/Nature/Gaia seems to be changing me. While I'm certainly still at sea with naming (Latin or English, both of which could ultimately be seen as that scientific separation I mused about last time), my heart finally loves flowers, trees, animals, birds...I talk to them. Call them "sweetheart". I'm in charge of about half a dozen small outside pots of flowers for the summer, and I'm thrilled to see the colors coming out, the textures, the shapes. I feel the current drought, want to keep these flowers alive, want to "care for" them. Their beauty astonishes me. Nature's creativity astonishes me.
And like so many of the other Goddess words on my 20-year old list, "flower" can be a noun or a verb. How wonderful it is for any good or beautiful thing to flower, to be planted in the right soil and thrive! Of course, there are seasons: Nature wants Her works to flower and thrive, to blossom at a moment in time, but She also knows that what usually follows is a season of "death" or dormancy. It's not something to fear. Life is everlasting and, if the environment around them is nurtured, the flowers will return. Life will return, just because that is what it does. It doesn't need saving, or too much human intervention. This is, of course, a bigger metaphor, which can be comforting as well as thought-provoking!
Whatever season the flowers are in where you live, go out and say hi to one. See if you can feel its essence, or interact with it in what is a new way for you. See what that one subtle shift does.
