What does it mean to blossom? For a plant, a tree, or a vegeatable, it’s the point at which a flower forms. What we sometimes forget in our love for flowers is that it is really just a stage of growth that leads to pollination, and thus bearing fruit.
Blossoming could be compared to that part of our youth when we found our soul mates and produce our fruits and thus our little seeds (children!). But more often it seems as if there should be many blossoming moments in our lives, when the conditions are right for us to burst from our tight buds and become our most beautiful best selves.
Too often, we find ourselves consumed by petty irritations, conflicts, frustrations, and angers. Each of these might be small in itself but, cumulatively, they take the sunshine and delight out of our lives, like mosquitoes spoiling a picnic. Instead of feeling grateful, gracious, and magnanimous, we feel paranoid, fearful, and irritable and we end up acting out of a cold, irritated, paranoid part of ourselves rather than out of our real selves.Why do we do that? Because we are asleep (a long, brutal winter does this to people) to who and what we really are, and we are asleep in two ways.When St. Luke describes Jesus’ agony in the garden, he tells us that after Jesus had undergone a powerful drama, sweating blood so as to give his life over in love, he turned to his disciples (who were supposed to be watching and praying with him) and found them asleep. However he uses a curious expression to describe why they were asleep. They were asleep, he says, not because they were tired and it was late, but they were asleep “out of sheer sorrow”.
That says a couple of things: First, that the disciples are asleep out of depression. Depression is what is preventing them from seeing straight. But they are also asleep to what is deepest inside of them, namely, that they carry the image and likeness of God. Jesus was not asleep to that and, because of this awareness, was able precisely to be big of heart.
As a people of God we believe that what ultimately defines us and gives us our dignity is the image and likeness of God inside us. This is our deepest identity, our real self. Inside each of us there is a piece of divinity, a god or goddess, a person who carries an inviolable dignity, with a heart as big as God’s.
And so it is in a garden. Think about it: What are the conditions we humans need to blossom? Just like plants, we need good nutrition, clean water and tender are. We need sunshine and darkness (good rest). We need to be planted in the right place to optimize our happiness. And once we do blossom, we need the pollinators and the people to enjoy and appreciate our beauty.
Immanuel watches over us as we reflect: “The desert and the parched land will be glad or Western New York version (The snow covered streets and frozen earth will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus,” (Isaiah 35:1).
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends that during this Season of Lent we feel ourselves about to blossom, knowing that something is happening inside of us because we are in touch that we “come from God and going back to God.” It’s like spiritual pollination, bringing joy, understanding, forgiveness and love, beyond wound, irritation, and the knowledge that’s it’s good to be alive because the spirit of the divine dwells within me.
