I don't want your stinkin' compost, thorns, dirt or roots, just give me your flowers!

Yesterday afternoon I was out harvesting Rosehips while saying prayers for family and friends who had lost a young loved one in a tragic accident. As I was picking fruit from the thorny bushes, Momma Nature wiggled her way into my heart as she is wont to do, and I became very aware of a metaphor playing out before me:

Here grew a Wild Rose, the beauty of summer blossoms having passed, and I was gratefully harvesting its fruit to make tea (the fruit is sweet, yummy and high in vitamin C). At no point did I curse the dirt that grew the Rose, nor did I stomp my feet at the roots below the surface or the thorns that sometimes pricked my fingers. I accepted all these things and even the tiny little pile of poop that a rabbit had discarded at the base of one cluster of Rose bushes. I wouldn't think to look at the Wild Rose and say, "I don't want your stinkin' compost, thorns, dirt or roots, just give me your flowers!"

Yet, in life, when we're given dirt and thorns, how difficult it can be to turn our mind toward the Roses and trust there is always beauty, even in the face of tragedy: beauty in a life lived fully, beauty in the impact that sweet life had on those around him, beauty for what that life created.

Thank you, Wild Rose, for imparting comfort and wisdom from the neutral source of nature herself. Love and care to all those who have lost beautiful friends and loved ones.


If you enjoyed this blog article, you might enjoy another I wrote some time ago expanding on a quote from one of my favorite books, The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett:

"Where you tend a rose...a thistle can not grow."