After three years of getting ready, the first peony has appeared in the garden. A beautiful white blossom with a blush of pink, it unapologetically stands amid an assembly of “weeds.” It welcomes all who come to visit, ants, humans, butterflies, bees, earwigs…unconditionally.
When I first volunteered to plant flowers in the Monastery garden it was all going to be perfect flower beauty. The garden would be a glorious symphony of beauty and I would conduct. Then the drought hit with limited water supplies. It was necessary to prioritize resources. After some grief I began to notice there was a larger dance going on, thankfully, beyond my control.
The flower garden today is beautiful, just not in the conditioned sense. It is beautiful in the same way that life is beautiful when allowed to flow rather than when we get in there and muck about trying to get things to go our way. The flower garden is no longer limited to the garden. Flowers pop up in places never expected or planted. Where did those pink snapdragons just outside a Monastery structure come from? Hardy, drought-tolerant survivors continue to bloom. Without the drought I may never have noticed that something so fragile looking and transitory as a flower has a steely strong commitment to life.
Could this be what draws us to flowers? That same transcendent transitory beauty recognized in this human form…..so fragile yet strong, so committed to Life. A deep gassho to the mirror flowers provide and to Practice for encouraging the looking.
In gassho
Sequoia