Wildflower Wisdom
Job 12:7-10; Psalm 24
Wild strawberry. Yarrow. Indian paintbrush.
Harebell. Buttercup. Arnica.
These are some of the wildflowers that grow on the
Montana horse ranch where I live part of the year.
It has been a life-long hobby of mine:
identifying wildflowers,
though I am no expert.
I love trying to match the flowers to the names in my book.
Knowing the name
and being really present with the flower
are not the same thing, I know.
Humans assigned the names,
and I’m pretty sure the flower doesn’t care much.
Still, I love the hunt, for the flower and the name both.
For one thing, the names are so delicious!
Who could not fall in love with the few-flowered shooting star, hound’s tongue, northern bedstraw or kinnikinnick?
I find these wildflowers in the pastures, or in the forest,
or along the edge of my cabin porch.
I think of them as grace in every color.
They refresh me with their beauty,
and when I remember to pay attention,
they offer me wisdom.
I’d like to share some of that with you.
There’s lupine on the ranch,
and this year the bear grass was stunning:
so thick the hillsides looked to be snow covered. Penstemon, of course, and pearly everlasting.
It is easy to miss them sometimes.
We saw a ladyslipper a couple weeks ago,
which my book says is rare in these parts.
There was only one,
on the edge of a little traveled trail;
we could easily have overlooked it.
Other flowers are so common and plentiful
that it is easy to look right past them,
and miss their grace.
So that’s some wildflower wisdom: Be there.
Wake up. Be here now. Be aware.
See what you see, I mean really see it.
How often is your body in one place,
but your mind is somewhere else?
How many times has someone claimed to listen to you,
but you know they were really miles away?
Have you ever watched how much of your day you spend thinking about the past or future, missing the present?
Wendell Berry writes about one—
each of us, I suspect, at some moments in our lives—
who was not able to see, who chose not to be there.
Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.
(“The Vacation” p.157. The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry.)
All of our wisdom traditions teach us to live in the present,
That is probably the first step toward inner transformation.
When we learn to live in the present,
life becomes suddenly vibrant,
and more centered.
But it is so easy to forget.
The wildflowers remind me:
Wake up. Be aware. See what you see.
Be here now, in the present moment. Be there.
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Pussytoes: how can you resist a flower named pussytoes?
There’s clover and daisies, glacier lilies.
They’ve taught me something else, these wildflowers:
hang on to amazement.
Let me read some words from Mary Oliver.
I’ll tell you a half-dozen things
that happened to me
in Indiana
when I went that far west to teach.
You tell me if it was worth it.
I lived in the country
with my dog—
part of the bargain of coming.
And there was a pond
with fish from, I think, China.
I felt them sometimes against my feet.
Also, they crept out of the pond, along its edges,
to eat the grass.
I’m not lying.
And I saw coyotes,
two of them, at dawn, running over the seemingly
unenclosed fields.
And once a deer, but a buck, thick-necked, leaped
into the road just—oh I mean just, in front of my car—
and we both made it home safe.
And once the blacksmith came to care for the four horses,
or the three horses that belonged to the owner of the house,
and I bargained with him, if I could catch the forth,
be, too, would have hooves trimmed
for the Indiana winter,
and apples did it,
and a rope over the neck did it,
so I won something wonderful;
and there was, one morning,
and owl
flying, oh pale angel, into
the hay loft of a barn,
I see it still;
and there was once, oh wonderful,
a new horse in the pasture,
a tall, slim being—a neighbor was keeping her there—
and she put her face against my face
put her muzzle, her nostrils, soft as violets,
against my mouth and my nose, and breathed me,
to see who I was,
a long quiet minute—minutes—
then she stamped feet and whisked tail
and danced deliciously into the grass away, and came back.
She was saying, so plainly, that I was good, or good enough.
Such a fine time I had, teaching in Indiana.
(The Poet Goes to Indiana, p. 13 of Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver)
You tell me if it was worth it.
White water buttercups are the mountain’s version of
lilypads
laying on top of the water in Mill Creek,
opening in the sun, very tiny white stars.
I was excited to find a new, tall plant: henbane.
We learned it is so toxic that it shouldn’t even be handled, and when we go back to uproot it, we wear gloves.
When I walk up the hill to the outhouse behind my cabin, the hillside is covered with white, yellow, purple, red, blue and new colors appear in profusion
that weren’t even hinted at the day before.
Amazement, and awe, and gratitude.
It is easy to lose hold of that, though.
Easy to be too busy to notice,
too tired to come forth with amazement,
too worried to remember about the grace of it all.
Borrowing from Mary Oliver again,
the end of a poem called “When Death Comes.”
When its over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
(Last 3 stanzas of “When Death Comes” New and Selected Poems of Mary Oliver.)
Hang on to amazement.
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So far this summer I have identified 48 different
wildflowers on our land!
But even though, when I go out walking,
I have four wildflower guides in my backpack,
I find some flowers that I can’t identify.
They don’t seem to be in any of my books.
That’s some wildflower wisdom, too, I suspect:
we don’t have it all in control;
we don’t know all there is to know;
it doesn’t all fit in a box.
That’s hard wisdom for our left brain, scientific,
technological society to take in.
But it’s true, none the less.
So when I can’t assign a name to one of these flowers,
I take in this wisdom:
bow to the Mystery.
Poet/essayist Mark Nepo tells us
The Mystery is everywhere
yet unknowable,
like the ocean a fish can’t see because it lives in it.
Just this way,
the sea of Mystery we live in
holds us all,
moves through us,
keeps us alive.
To honor the Mystery is not just to glimpse it
or even to acknowledge it,
but to live our days
with Mystery at the center of our understanding.
If we open ourselves to Mystery,
we can commit to leaning into life
until it drops us beneath our surface maps of reality.
Anything that does that is a holy gift.
(adapted; The Exquisite Risk. Mark Nepo, p.207-8; 210)
I can’t figure out all the wildflowers,
or God either,
but I with reverence and trust,
I bow to the mystery.
There’s stonecrop; that’s yellow, and mountain sorrel, that turns the hillside red. Tumble mustard is yellow, too, and thistle is magenta and alpine forget-me-nots put a dash of blue on the hills.
Do you think wildflower wisdom might be useful if you apply it to the challenges your life sets before you?
Be there.
Hang on to amazement.
Bow to the Mystery.
Think about the relationships in your life: your beloved, the kids, the parents, the co-worker, that jerky brother-in-law. It’s not bad wisdom for relationships, is it?
Be there.
Hang on to amazement.
Bow to the Mystery.
And what about faith?
Doesn’t it speak to us, this wildflower wisdom,
of how we live in faith, how we live in God?
Be there.
Hang on to amazement.
Bow to the Mystery.
The other day I saw a new purple flower—
I haven’t figured out what it is yet;
I’ll let you know.
©2009 Janice Jean Springer
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