Flowers are My Spirit Animal

Last week a new friend shared an article with me about seeing God in nature - Through the Creation to the Creator. She and I had been talking about my love of trees and flowers, and so she copied the article and gave it to me the next time she saw me. It's a fairly dense essay. I think it may have originally been a seminary lecture.

Here's a taste of it, including a fantastic chunk of an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem:

The world is a sacrament of the divine presence, a means of communion with God. The environment consists not in dead matter but in living relationship. The entire cosmos is one vast burning bush, permeated by the fire of the divine power and glory:

                 Earth's crammed with heaven,
                 And every common bush afire with God;
                 But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
                 The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

I've been thinking of that stanza this week as I've watched our new yard surprise me with bright new bursts of color every day. It's our first spring in our new home, so I had no idea what, if any, early blooms to expect. Auggie's morning perambulations are a blissful scavenger hunt. Daffodils! Crocus! New shoots of to-be-determined flowers muscle their way through the winter debris, impaling brown leaves with their shocks of green. And today, on this drizzly, stormy day, my heart thumped with joy when I realized that the Random Twiggy Bushes In the Back were, in fact, Forsythia. Forsythia! In my yard! Not even the threat of new snow flurries tomorrow can dampen my spirits. There are forsythia in my yard.

Can blossoms be a holy thing? They feel like that to me. My mom and I used to call each other the first day that one of us saw an actual bloom on a flower somewhere, often when snow was still melting, winter taking her dear sweet time to drip away. "I saw a crocus today!" was usually how that phone exclamation would start. When you are watching, scanning every berm and bed and patch for that first pop of color, the first flower of spring is like a burning bush. It does seem a bit like holy ground. Hope just forced her way through the frozen dirt to explode right in front of our feet..

Not from our yard, but still amazing.

I recently started a job working for a florist. It's pretty much my favorite thing ever. I may go back to the Non Profit life eventually, but for me, in this season, working with flowers all day is the source of a deep river of joy. It feels like a gift, and I'm choosing to wrap my arms around it, at least for a while.


The only thing that keeps me from being off-the-rails ecstatic about the job is the knowledge that the floral industry has an enormous environmental footprint. It takes a LOT of water, chemicals, fossil fuels, and intense human labor to bring the beautiful blooms from field to vase. I'm just putting that out there, because some days I really wrestle with being part of it. I've talked with florists, including my current employer, about "greener" options like locally-grown flowers and pesticide-free or Rainforest Alliance Certified flowers, but I've been told that there just isn't enough consumer demand for those things, and so people aren't willing to pay the extra cost and a business would struggle to stay competitive. Local flowers in Illinois are a very seasonal commodity, so that would only be an option for a few months a year anyway.  

I assuage my queasiness about it by telling myself that my choosing not to work at a florist is not going to revolutionize the industry. A job boycott? Of one? I don't see a lot of ripple effects from that, other than the effect of my being sad to not get to be around flowers all day. Maybe I can find some simple ways to green-ify what we do, or connect to local options when they are in season. I don't know yet, but I'm going to be on the lookout. 

What do you think? Is it an ethical compromise to be part of an industry with a negative environmental impact? Do the emotional and relational benefits of brightening someone's day with flowers or bringing the beauty of God's creation into people's Big Life Events counterbalance the squickiness of the fact that those particular specimens of creation were produced with the help of noxious pesticides and through the back-breaking labor of field workers? Some may say that I'm just looking for new topics for my Debbie Downer repertoire. Maybe. But I want to be a conscientious consumer AND worker. It ain't easy.

I'm thankful that there are flowers popping up of their own accord all over my yard. I'm thankful that I have a job that speaks Beauty to me and sings quiet songs of gratitude to the Creator while I work.  I marvel that God is so incredibly good that it occurred to God to make all these crazy flowers in the first place. Presumably, there could have been a less beautiful way to ensure pollination and honey-making. A blander option for nectar or seeds for birds or ingredients for healing teas. But no! Myriad variety, fragrance, color, and purpose. What an extravagantly beautiful way to orchestrate an ecosystem!

Spring in the Midwest is kind of a communal healing and restoration. Especially after this winter. I think of these early flowers as the main ingredient in a tincture of renewed hope and thanksgiving. The huddled bulbs and bushes have made it through the winter under their thick coats, and so have we. New life from the daily dread of snow and gray. Our yard, at least, is aflame with green and yellow blessings.