The Religion of Flowers

The Religion of Flowers

I was up to my neck in bouganvilla, a plant I hate after stepping on so many thorns (barefoot at home) and having them spear my heels. I was working for Lou and clearing out a space around his light way up in a trellis, at a top of a ladder. I had clippings in my ponytail and down my bra, but I was chopping out all the dead vines, and pulling out chunks of brown leaves with big fat gloves (I never do gloves at home, no wonder I hate this thorny plant so much!)

And I was thinking about why I hate the bouganvilla, even though it flowers so well and requires no actual water and covers ugly buildings and makes them appear beautiful. I had my head stuck directly in growing vines, pink flowers all around me, blue sky above and those nasty thorns and I thought I should be happy, nature is my religion, so this is my church. What is going on. This one doesn’t speak to me. Then I thought hmm, there are so many plants. Is all nature the religion, and the different plants are the different churches?

It was kind of crazy, standing up there on that ladder and realizing that it doesn’t matter if the bouganvilla isn’t my church. It’s okay. It’s pretty. But it isn’t the Jacaranda tree. I can see a Jacarnada tree from far away with the weeping purple flowers all over the street and my heart just squeezes with radiance. That is my church. The tall protective leafy sycamore, that is my church.

I don’t know the names of all the plants that sing to me, but I know when I am amongst them, that they heal me and comfort me. There’s a huge tree in hilly Maryland that I had to stop my car and just stare at and write a poem about years ago. There’s a creek under a bridge in Vancouver, in Stanley Park, where my dad and I stood and listened to water bubbling along its way. There is a section of woods here in Hansen Dam where I sit on my horse and listen to the wind in the trees. Other people rejoice in the thorny bouganvilla. Or maybe it has the least followers. I just felt happy to discover that nature gives us so many churches, and we walk amongst them all the time, not aware that we are picking our places of worship without it ever crossing our minds.