Flower

Isn’t it ironic that, to share her greatest bounty with the world the flower must, at each step, attend not to others but to herself?

She must become tall, nourished by soil and decay, by sunlight and gentle rain. She must strengthen root and stem in the buffeting winds, bending and swaying with a grace that is more determination than surrender. She must attend single-mindedly to her own growth and balance all along.

She brings deep joy to others, yes, but their joy is not her purpose. Her purpose is to be, to live, to flower. To open to the ecstatic tremble of wing-flutter and proboscis, to the exchange of nectar and life-dust in the most ancient of dances, and to the subsequent shedding of her own delicate splendor. To bulge, to fruit with sweetness, and then to bear the long decay of her own body as she bears forth from her own dying strength a hundred new dramas of sprout, flower, fruit and seed.

She belongs utterly unto herself, but she is never alone. She shares root space with creatures mysterious to her. She finds herself in a sea of breeze-blown buds, aching with an unknown, and unifying, longing. Sun-brightened, rain-soaked, and wind-caressed, she briefly marries earth to sky in a shock of joyful hue. She embraces the hum of suitors, reveling in her inclusion—no, her inciting—of the frenzied pursuit.

But neither friends nor suitors are her purpose. And when it is time, she will turn inward, to fruit and to seed. She will find that this work is hers alone, and that she has within herself the power to distill sun and soil into the germ of life to ensure future flourishing. She sees others doing this, and she bows to them. And to herself. But no one can do this work for her. She-and-God (for they are One at the deepest core) will do the living, and the dying, together.

Photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash