Flower Fairies

"Work of the eyes is done.
Now go and do heart work."
-Rilke


I love to arrange flowers. It's a talent I inherited from my mother, along with my passion for scarves and belts. I can still remember helping her put together a blue ribbon winner for her local garden club. When she won, we were both beside ourselves.

Over the years, my appreciation of what makes a lovely arrangement has slowly changed. In the early days, having access to wholesale florists, I would rely heavily on what was available there. Later, when this wasn't so easily obtainable, I, together with a close friend, turned more and more often to using what came from our yards. This raised the bar considerably. Think about it. In the dead of winter there aren't many flowers blooming. Scouring bare gardens and side roads (our sources are top secret) for potential arrangement material soon provided all sorts of new combinations: seed pods, grasses, evergreen branches, sticks, moss feathers. Our motto became 'somewhere out there, is a flower arrangement waiting to be recognized." Between us we discussed inventories of whose garden had what; when or where certain vacant lots held floral treasures; or who we might ask to prowl their backyard. We loved nothing better than to bring in buckets of our gatherings through friends near and far and 'oh' and 'ah' over each little piece. Yes, is is an incurable illness. But, oh, what a way to go.

Slowly over time, we realized that all the beautiful arrangements that came from the florists while stunning to be sure, lacked a certain something. The flowers were gorgeous, but an intimacy we found in the simple garden arrangements we had grown so fond of, had gone missing. When one of our dearest friends died this past fall, it was creating the flower arrangements for her memorial service from the elements of the mountains and gardens she loved, that gave the most solace. All those who knew her looked upon our massing of hydrangea and beauty berry, fall leaves and goldenrod and thought of her. The comfort they created was palpable.

In thinking about all of this, I am reminded of what a very noted flower arranger said while demonstrating her art at the local botanical gardens. She lived in the mountains and her arrangements reflected this. She spoke lovingly about going out early in the morning and collecting the materials that would later turn up along with florist flowers in arrangements for her customers. When she finished the demonstration piece she was constructing, she turned to us and said, "you will know whether or not you have been successful, when everything just seems to fall into place naturally. Then you will see the flower fairies moving happily all among the stems." Ours was a very sophisticated city audience she was addressing, so this was greeted with laughter and by some, a bit of allowance for artistic eccentricity. But for my friend and I and those others deeply in love with the woods and our gardens, this was only a confirmation of what we had already suspected. It wasn't until many years later, as we created those arrangements to celebrate the life of our cherished friend, that I believe I truly understood what this gifted florist was trying to say.

It seems the act of creation carries within it, the opportunity for soulfulness. When we allow our hearts to connect to something we are creating, it becomes intimate and alive. (Remember the story of Pinocchio?) This positive creative force is our link to something mysterious and transcendent. When we bring pieces of it into our everyday lives we create a tangible vessel for something that otherwise cannot be touched and I believe by doing so the highest aspects of our humanity are comforted and affirmed. This is all the more mysterious because not everyone is moved by the same things. Perhaps this is why some art is stirring and moving to some people and not to others. They may be beautiful in shape and form but lack soulfulness, heart. Others, sophisticated or not, finely made or not, have that power. Why is that? Is it the gift we as creators bring to the thing we create? And can it exist without someone else noticing? Does it have to have a receiver?

Maybe we each come prewired to recognize what will nourish our hearts and spirits best? Perhaps there is a hidden truth in the wry slogan decorator's often use: 'there's just no accounting for taste!" They are expressing their frustration of course. But I wonder, if the the real meaning is simply each of our hearts knows what in the physical world comforts and soothes it. Could the moral be: Don't choose or create art to match your sofa; choose and create to match our heart so the fairies will come to dance?

As an artist, in my first attempts I was consumed by getting onto the canvas what I was feeling coming out ofme. There was even a degree of relief in allowing it to exist outside of myself. I gave no thought to what happened after that until during my first show I experienced all the different responses people had in viewing what I had painted. It was a visitation of paint fairies you might say, for me, anyway, and it reminds me how often people will remark on how uncreative they are. "Oh, I can't paint or make pots, or write", they will say, all the while not realizing that creativity is so much more than just these talents. While not all of us have the calling to be artists, it does nonetheless exist in each of us. It is the part of us that is divine--our spark, you might say. And when we share this spark, well, 'the fairies dance among the stems'. A few of us devote our entire lives to it, but most, largely unrecognized, weave it quietly into the fabric of their daily lives.

"In creative work--creative work of all kinds--", writes Mary Oliver in her book Blue Pastures, "those who are the world's working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. Which is something altogether different from the ordinary. Such work does not refute the ordinary. Its labor requires a different outlook--a different set of priorities. Certainly there is within each of us a self that is neither child, nor servant of the hours. It is a third self, occasional in some of us, tyrant in others. This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity."

When I read these lines, I believe Oliver is talking about soulfulness. She is trying to name the part that lives in all of us that even if not shriven to the artistic life, is an essential means of connecting us to our spirituality. When we respond to this voice and act on its urgings, we create good. This experience of goodness when shared with others, has the potential to move them closer to their own souls, and provides a way forward. Perhaps what is most important to remember about the opening chapters of Genesis is not whether God actually created everything in the space of six days, but rather at the end of each day, he saw that what had been done, 'was good.'