Hiding in Plain Sight

 

July 14, 2020

We have sixty-six pots of New Guinea impatiens in our back yard.  They are a brilliant shade of fuchsia, especially cultivated for us by a local greenhouse.  The lovely impatiens adorn two fountains and a hot tub which border a central area of white summer tables shaded by dark green umbrellas.

Our grassy European courtyard has an interesting history.  It began years ago with a single pot of flowers and a hammock.  Several trips to Europe changed all that.  We fell in love with the enchanting outdoor cafés and decided to replicate their ambiance in our own backyard.

On our front porch there are  also bountiful flowers displaying their summer dresses.  They abound in purple, white, rose, and fuscia accented by their rich, dark green leaves allowing only enough space for a sojourn on a white wicker chair to inhale the intoxicating beauty.

Every flower in our front and in our back yard is gorgeous...fresh, vibrant, and more beautiful than ALL of the other summers they have inhabited.  MORE beauiful!  More everything!

And, this, right smack in the middle of a terrible pandemic, the corona virus.  Right when thousands of people are falling ill and our hospitals are overcrowded and our medical staff members are exhausted, some even overcome by the virus from which they’ve worked so hard to save others.

What a paradox!  Such beauty and brilliance and vibrancy In the same landscape as the devastating virus.

I believe the incredible display of beauty and well-being and vibrancy seen in our flowers

is a significant message to us.

The flowers and their foliage are simply being Who They Are.  They are untouched.  Unaffected by any attempt to persuade them to bloom in a different color or less gloriously or at a different time of the year.  They are simply who they are and they are quite brilliant.  And beautiful. Untampered with.

We, on the other hand, in our great experiment of incarnation on earth have willingly consented to experience “limitations” and we are finding ourselves in a drama of mammoth proportions.  We are undergoing sadness, disbelief, distress, profound suffering.  And, while we pass through the very difficult stage of this metamorphosis, the magnificent flowers are there to remind us of the beauty of simply being Who We Are...Creatures of Love.  We have gotten ourselves lost in the quagmire of ego, fear, separation, and scarcity thinking.  And some of us have carried it to massive proportions.  To make a point.  To ourselves.

There is no peace in this place. There is no joy. There’s no satisfaction.  Only the trauma of trying to keep up, the trauma of trying to be better than.  When all along all we need do is return to our natural, loving disposition, to our beautiful, loving hearts. 

Even while the pandemic rages on, we are being given a  reminder...the promise of what life can be.   From the flowers.  A simple gift tucked into our day.  Hiding in plain sight.

                              

                                  Marie Helena

Image on Pinterest:

White wicker chair